In an article on The Athletic, two-time National League MVP Award winner Dale Murphy says that Mike Trout is the best player he’s seen.

“Mike Schmidt was among the best players of my era. So was Pete Rose (the all-time hits leader deserves a tip of the cap). So was Keith Hernandez (maybe the most clutch hitter I ever played against). So were a lot of other guys. And Mike Trout is better than all of them,” he writes in the article.

Murphy takes the example of Schmidt, whom he calls the best player of his generation, and says that, though Trout still has to play longer to catch Schmidt’s numbers, he’s already a better player.

“With Trout, however, all things are not equal. He is ahead of everybody.”

Murphy goes on to note Trout’s American League MVP finishes -- top two in each full season of his career except for his 2017 injury-shortened campaign -- to honor his consistency.

It isn’t just Trout that Murphy cites. His point is more broadly about players today, too, not just Trout’s greatness alone. He says that “today’s players would run circles around us,” with the "us" referring to him and his contemporaries. He points to the athleticism of players like Javier Baez, and notes that players’ arm strengths and acrobatics are second to none.

“Never before have the best players in baseball been this young. Mike Trout put up historic numbers in his age-20 season and has been doing that pretty much every year since.”

Murphy also makes sure to say that his statement isn’t meant to be a knock on players of yesteryear. “Rather,” he says, “it’s a celebration of today’s player.”

Murphy himself was quite accomplished, winning the aforementioned two MVP Awards in back-to-back years in 1982 and '83, making seven All-Star teams, winning five Gold Glove Awards and four Silver Slugger Awards.

Murphy’s statement may harken back to Adam Ottavino’s comment that he “would strike out Babe Ruth every time” from this past offseason, even though it’s coming from the past player, as opposed to the active player in Ottavino’s case. Much of the argument there, as with here when Murphy says that today’s players would “run circles” around him and his contemporaries, has to do with how the game and the players themselves have changed over the years. Just as Ruth probably didn’t face 95 to 100 mph-velocity pitches, even Murphy and his fellow players in the 1980s likely did not have the same set of circumstances as players today. Training regimens are different, pitchers throw harder, and batters can learn even more about what makes them successful.