Major League Baseball boastings a high number of quality third basemen, evidenced in part by the fact that nine regulars at the position totaled at least 4.5 fWAR last-place season. The Athletics’ Matt Chapman and the Red Sox’s Rafael Devers ended up in the top five in that list, and as players who is currently controllable for the foreseeable future and only in their 20 s, they represent a duet of the top building blocks in video games. The question, though, is which musician you’d rather have going forward.

The easy explanation( or so it seems) is Chapman, whose busines production has trounced Devers’ since the two debuted in 2017. Not merely is he a defensive hotshot, but Chapman can flat-out reached. The soon-to-be 27 -year-old’s all-around greatnes had led to 15.5 fWAR thus far, including back-to-back seasons of 6.0 fWAR or better. He’s now coming off a career-best campaign as a power hitter in 2019, where reference is batted. 249/.342 /. 506( 125 wRC +) with 36 home runs in 670 plate appearances.

Chapman still has four years of team control left, including one more pre-arb season( that’s if there is MLB in 2020 ). The same disappears for Devers, so the two are even in that regard. As mentioned, Chapman’s output has vanquished Devers’ in the aggregate. Nonetheless, Devers closed the spread a season ago with a 5.9 -fWAR showing, and he’s also several years younger than Chapman. Devers, who won’t even turn 24 until October, was approximately a league-average offensive player from 2017 -1 8, but the proverbial light bulb went on last-place season during a. 311/.361 /. 555 exertion( 132 wRC +) in which he slugged 32 homers over 702 PA.

Devers has absolutely nothing on Chapman at third- the former put up minus-1 0 DRS and plus-2. 7 UZR last year; the latter recorded an otherworldly plus-3 4 DRS and plus-1 4.8 UZR- but they’re close in terms of offensive prowess. And Devers is so much younger than Chapman that it’s hard not to take that into consideration when comparing the two. Going by fWAR, Chapman was the third-most valuable third baseman in baseball in 2019. Devers was fourth. You can’t lose with either musician, but all things considered, whom would you instead have honcho into the future?

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