Goldschmidt, Trout, and the Greatest Weeks of the Century

One week’s worth of at-bats isn’t going to tell you a lot about a player. Hitters can look very good or very bad for entire weeks or even months, and it doesn’t necessarily represent their talent level or tell you a whole lot about it. For example, on April 9, Shin-Soo Choo began what has been thus far the worst week of the entire season. He came to the plate 29 times and got one hit, a single, which was good for a -70 wRC+. However, on the season, he has a 134 wRC+, which is not too far from his career line. Didi Gregorius had a 336 wRC+ the second week of the season and a -66 wRC+ the second week of May. Crazy things can happen in 20-30 plate appearances, and two of the craziest stretches of this century happened in the past two weeks.

You’ve probably heard that Mike Trout has been on a roll lately. That last statement has almost always been true for the past seven seasons, but it was particularly true last week. From June 11 to June 17, Trout came to the plate 28 times. He reached base via a hit 13 times, including four homers and a double. He was walked on seven occasions and was hit by a pitch once. He struck out five times. That leaves just two occasions where Trout made contact with the ball and got out. Once he hit a sacrifice fly and once he grounded into a double play. He was not named the American League Player of the Week.

That Trout was not named Player of the Week is a surprise, but sometimes consistent greatness doesn’t get rewarded. What’s more surprising is that Trout’s week wasn’t the best offensive week of the season. More specifically, it was not even the best offensive performance this month. That honor goes to Paul Goldschmidt one week earlier. From June 4 through June 10, Goldschmidt came to the plate 29 times. He reached base via a hit 16 times, including four homers, one triple, and six doubles. He also walked three times and was hit by a pitch. He struck out four times and made an out on a ball in play six times. His 455 wRC+ narrowly edged out Trout’s 439 in a week’s time.

To look at the best weeks of the season, we can go to our Splits Leaderboards and look at weighted runs above average (wRAA). This figure accounts for offensive output and factors in plate appearances. Below we see the best one-week figures of the season thus far (min 15 PA).

Goldschmidt’s week was amazing. The difference between his week and third-place Francisco Lindor’s is the same difference between Lindor and the 25th-best week, which also happens to be Trout’s third-best week of the season. If you aren’t all that familiar with wRAA — there’s not a big reason you need to be — here’s this year’s leaders on the season for context.

Goldschmidt’s one week accounts for roughly two-thirds of his runs above average on the season. Goldschmidt and Trout had very good weeks, but where do they rank in recent seasons? Here are the biggest weeks since the beginning of the 2010 campaign.

Maybe one week can’t tell us too much about a player, but that list is pretty impressive, featuring quite a few MVPs. Goldschmidt’s 455 wRC+ is still better than anyone else’s on this list, and the only players with a greater wRC+ were Carlos Quentin in 2010 in 16 PA, Lucas Duda in 2015 in 21 PA, and Ryan Spilborghs in 2010 in 17 PA. Our weekly Splits Leaderboards actually go back to 2002, so let’s get Barry Bonds on one of these.

Remember the time Shawn Green hit nine homers in a week? It included a four-homer game and propelled him to the greatest offensive week of the past 17 seasons. Trout and Goldschmidt aren’t at the very top of the leaderboard, but the weeks they just had are two of the best this century. They are rightfully joined by some pretty high-quality players.