Starting in December and ending on Opening Day, Joe Posnanski will count down the 100 greatest baseball players by publishing an essay on a player every day for 100 days. In all, this project will contain roughly as many words as “Moby Dick.” Yes, we know it’s nutty. We hope you enjoy.



Mike Trout has led the league in at least four major statistical categories every full year of his big-league career. We should take a moment, or many moments, to appreciate just how absurd this is. Many of the greatest players in baseball history — say Hall of Famers Robin Yount or Ryne Sandberg or Ron Santo — hardly ever led the league in a major statistical category.



Vladimir Guerrero, for instance, led the league in four major statistical categories in his entire career. Robbie Alomar led the league in one.



And Trout does a minimum of four major categories every single year. Here, you can see it for yourself:



2012: Led league in runs,...