Whos the best all-around center fielder in baseball? Well, thats easy. Its Mike Trout. I could provide you with a bunch of stats to illustrate that, but I wont. Its Mike Trout. Discu sion over, a minimum of with that point. Second-best? You may make an instance for Carlos Gomez. You may also justify Andrew McCutchen. Theres not just a wrong answer there backward and forward. One provides you with a bit more defense, one a bit more offense. No matter which one is No. 2 or No. 3, its reliable advice that theyre the only two names there. But after that, it gets a a bit more questionable. If this was 2 yrs ago, maybe Austin Jackson is in that conversation, but hes well into his second consecutive year of decline from a great 2012, to the stage thats hes TJ Jones Jersey playing like a replacement player at this time. Colby Rasmus has his supporters, and hes also had a .266 OBP. Lots of people like Adam Jones, and its difficult to argue with the 55 homers he hit over 2012-13. Hes also been a below-average hitter in 2014. Jacoby Ellsbury probably belongs within the discu sion, but his 98 wRC+ isnt doing him any favors. You may likeCoco Crisp, although his once-stellar defense has collapsed recently. I gue s the purpose here is this: the number of totalnames can you need to go through Desmond Jennings, Lorenzo Cain, Denard Span, Juan Lagares, etc. before you got to ArizonasA.J. Pollock, whobroke his give the weekend when Johnny Cueto hit him with a pitch? A dozen? More? But, Pollock is one of just five true center fielders worth six WAR since the start of 2013. (Im discounting Shin-Soo Choo here, who isnt a center fielder now and was merely attempting to impersonate one last year.) If you like over the final twelve months, hes stillNo. 5, behind the big three and Ellsbury. With 2.5 WAR through 50 games this year, he was on pace for 6 WAR in 2014 alone, coupled with been behind only Trout and Gomez prior to getting hurt. As usual or, at least, as should be usual no ones trying to make an indisputable value judgement based on WAR alone, which isnt designed to convince you that Pollock is preferable to, say, Ellsbury. But because Pollock plays on Crezdon Butler Jersey a team that both isnt extremely popular nationwide and is mainly known in 2014 to be so awful that theyre attempting to wedge Tony LaRu sa into their front office structure, its pretty easy to understand that Pollock has gone under the radar. (Unle s youre the man within the pool that the Pollock homer got earlier this year. Theres no extra Cornelius Lucas Jersey points in WAR for that, but there should be.) For example, using the last 30 days split on the leaderboards, sorted by WAR: 1) Giancarlo Stanton, 2.32) Yasiel Puig, 2.13) Edwin Encarnacion, 2.04) Josh Donaldson, 1.94t) Pollock, 1.9 And as the standard reply is probably something like yeah, well, Charlie Blackmon & Dee Gordon were both ideal for per month this year, too, and look what they did in May, Pollock would be a 2009 first-rounder who only needed 233 minor league games in 2011-12 (after mi sing all of 2010 having a broken elbow) to reach the big leagues, and managed 3.6 WAR in his first full season on the basis of league-average offense and stellar defense. Like a lot of other guys in early area of the season, including Encarnacion, hes not this good, but he still might be good. The Diamondbacks, remember, bet partly on Pollock when they made their generally-panned moves to import Mark Trumbo and discard Adam Eaton this winter season, expecting Trumbo to play left, Cody Ro s in right, Pollock in center, and Gerardo Parra spotting in both center and right. That never really happened, of course, because Ro s recovery from hip surgery delayed his 2014 debut, and he and Trumbo started all of two games together before Trumbos broken foot took him from the lineup. That pushed Parra to right, Ro s to left, and left Pollock alone in center. Obviously, Pollock wasnt likely to sustain a .370 BABIP throughout the year, particularly because it appeared hed started to become unattainable a little in search of more power, seeing his line drive rate decrease as his fly Nick Bellore Jersey ball rate (and HR/FB% increased). It had been working, mostly, because his six homers in 192 plate appearances was a considerably higher pace than the eight he'd in 482 last season, thoughtheres probably a really thin line to become drawn between the proven fact that all six came at home and the truth that all would have been out of at least 23 parks.But while those numbers counseled me but sure to come back down, he was creating for it somewhat with indications of limiting his previously large platoon split, at least within the small sample size we have open to us. This all matters, because in the end all wrote the Diamondbacks off weeks ago for a good reason these were a minimum of beginning to show some respectable play, rebounding to play .500 ball given that they bottomed out at 5-18. Now, with Trumbo still out, theyre right down to starting outfieldersEnder InciarteandDavid Peralta, who spent 2006-07 as an A-ball pitcher with St. Louis, 2008-10 from baseball, and 2011-13in independent ball. Its a problem for a team that had seemingly a lot of outfielders, and today not enough. Now, theyre without a surprisingly good center fielder for the next 8 weeks or so, and this Quandre Diggs Jersey particular injury can be a tricky one. Its been reported that Pollock fractured the hamate bone, and weve observed that before. Aaron Hill mi sed two months last year with a similar injury, even though the upside here's that Troy Tulowitzki, Dustin Pedroia and Pablo Sandoval (twice!) have all had hamate troubles, and all returned to become as productive as ever, following a time. For the Diamondbacks, its recently been a dreadful season, with Patrick Corbin & J.J. Putz injured, Trevor Cahill booted in the rotation in favor of the kind of Michael Bolsinger, Zeke Spruill and Chase Anderson, Paul Goldschmidt succeeding although not as much as his 2014 pace, and no other person on offense apart from Miguel Montero being even league-average. You wouldnt have had to try very hard to make the case that Pollock was their finest player, even if some quantity of offense regre sion was coming. Now hes gone until August at the least, through which time a lost season will be long over the point of interest.