The Nature of Mike Trout’s Problem
The default introduction: Mike Trout is among the least-troubled players in baseball. By WAR, you could split him into four or five parts and have four or five decent everyday players, at least given good enough prosthetic limbs. Trout’s coming off an MVP award he deserved, after back-to-back seasons of not winning MVP awards he probably deserved. Regarding his very well-known weakness, I’ve written about this perhaps literally countless times, so maybe you’re tired of hearing about it. And I’m about to make a post out of one quote offered at the beginning of spring training. You know what you’re getting, here. Read on, and the blame lies with you.
Trout has checked into Angels camp. Because he’s a star, people want to know what he’s thinking, and as he stood before a horde of media types, Trout said he’d like to increase his stolen bases. Good news, fantasy players! Trout also said he’d like to cut down on his strikeouts. Probably to 0%. Maybe that’s unrealistic, but Trout opened up just a little bit about what was giving him issues, and it’s not often you can get Trout to say anything of substance.
From Mike DiGiovanna’s column:
“Plain and simple, I was chasing the high pitch, everybody knows that,” Trout said of his strikeout figure. “There are things you can work on. The majority of time, they’re balls, and I was chasing them.”
There’s no way around it — Trout identified high pitches (high fastballs) as the reason behind his strikeout increase. It’s been one of the loudest secrets in the game, so, maybe that’s why Trout was willing to admit it. It comes as news to no one. But let’s parse this just a little bit. “I was chasing the high pitch.” Was Trout really chasing the high pitch? It seems like a stupid question, given all the content we’ve generated about this subject, but the answer here might surprise you.
In fact, I’m not even going to cite numbers. I’m looking at numbers, here on my own laptop, but I’m not going to write them. Numbers are ugly to read and oftentimes they’re unnecessary. I can just give you some true statements, based on PITCHf/x.
Against elevated pitches out of the zone, Trout finished with one of the lowest swing rates in baseball.
Against elevated pitches in the zone, Trout finished with one of the lowest swing rates in baseball.
Looking at the same things, but with two strikes, Trout finished with some of the lowest swing rates in baseball.
How about we split it to just the second half, when Trout’s strikeouts really took off? Great, so, in the second half, against elevated pitches out of the zone, Trout finished with one of the lowest swing rates in baseball. The same applied to elevated pitches in the zone. Ditto the same stuff, with two strikes. We all saw Trout swing through plenty of elevated pitches, but his actual swing rates were far from obscene. If anything, they were obscenely low. That’s not actually true, but Trout wasn’t out of control with his swings at pitches up. The problem wasn’t exactly his chase rate.
The problem was more that Trout just couldn’t do anything with pitches up. Very rarely did he do any damage, so while he infrequently swung, he even more infrequently swung and did something good. This is what pitchers identified: not that Trout was swinging too much upstairs, but that his swings weren’t real threatening. No one in baseball saw a greater rate of fastballs in the upper half. No one in baseball saw a greater rate of fastballs in the upper half with two strikes. The trend got more extreme as the season wore on. Trout wasn’t chasing more, on a rate basis, but he was swinging upstairs more often just because he was getting pitched upstairs more often. His weakness was amplified.
Against pitches in or beyond the upper third, Trout just batted .078, slugging .138. The two seasons before, against the same pitches, he batted .184, slugging .382. His own personal swing rate against pitches up did increase, but by fewer than three percentage points. He didn’t turn into a hacker. He just swung through those pitches more, and when he made contact, the contact was weaker. This probably has to do with the same swing or approach adjustment that caused Trout’s groundball rate to plummet between years. As Trout tried to get more air under low pitches, he made himself even more vulnerable against high pitches, and if there’s any batter worth studying for a hole, it’s the best player in the game. Trout couldn’t hide.
So let’s say Trout has a weakness against high pitches. Seems fair. He was weaker in 2014 than he was in seasons previous. What’s the solution? I think there are three ways to go. One: do nothing. Change nothing. Trout was just voted the Most Valuable Player! Let’s not exaggerate this vulnerability — it didn’t stop Trout from being absolutely incredible. Even down the stretch, he was one of the best players in the world.
Two: tweak something with the swing mechanics. I don’t know what. I’m not a swing expert. Maybe try to get back to 2013 form. If you make a change to try to address pitches upstairs, you’ll probably end up a little weaker against pitches downstairs. That’s just the nature of balance, and I don’t think anyone’s capable of covering every pitch in every part of the zone. Even Trout. An MVP has his relative strengths and weaknesses.
Three: try to swing up even less often. And maybe this is what Trout intends to try to do. If he feels like he chased too much, it sounds like he wants to chase less, even though, as it turns out, he didn’t chase at an extraordinary rate. I don’t know how much lower Trout’s rates could go, but if he can’t hit those pitches well, maybe it’s best to let them go by, even if plenty of them nip the zone. It would be worthwhile to go back to Eno’s Brandon Moss interview. Moss talked about understanding his weakness up in the zone, so he’d try to just ignore those pitches, or foul them off if there were two strikes. Mike Trout is better than Brandon Moss, but maybe they see this the same way: let ’em go. Swing if you have to, but stay focused down. Eventually, most pitchers will throw a pitch down.
I don’t know how many more times I’m going to write “it’ll be interesting to see how Trout gets pitched early in 2015.” But it will be. And it’ll be equally interesting to see how Trout gets pitched late in 2015. People ask me about the storylines I’m most interested in following this year. If my writing is any indication, it turns out I care about Mike Trout’s pitch patterns more than I care about my own favorite team, or health.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Please pay attention to your health, Jeff. It’s more important than Mariners, Trouts, or even volcanoes.
bullshit
Very 🙂
It’s all about your health, ’bout your health, ’bout your health — no bullshit.
“Trout’s coming off an MVP award he deserved”
Personally, I have a hard time thinking he deserved it when he struck out almost 200 times. One-third of his plate appearances were K’s, while someone like Victor Martinez had a high WAR as well but with one-third the K’s of Trout.
That’s dumb. What year is this?
WAR is gonna be a better stat when it starts counting strikeouts!!!!
thanks for the modeling tip, Timb
You don’t get bonus points for grounding out weakly to second.
But it is better to GIDP than K!!!
Can you help me understand why a GIDP is better than a K? A K will end up with at most 1 out and GIDP is 2 outs…
VMart was way better than Trout at avoiding strikeouts; that is true. But Trout’s play, taken holistically, was more valuable than VMart’s, in no small part because of his (Trout’s) defensive contributions.
To suggest that it would be a good thing for Mike Trout to cut down on his strikeouts, if possible, while maintaining good contact is a smart, if not obvious, thought.
To suggest that Victor Martinez should have won the MVP over Mike Trout because he struck out fewer times than Mike Trout (and virtually solely on that premise) is indicative of a hater.
Don’t hate the player.
V-Mart is an atrocious fielder and spent a ton of time at DH anyways, while Trout is a good CFer. Interesting that you cite WAR too, because Trout’s was 3.4 points higher than (almost double) V-Mart. Nothing about your “argument” bears any merit.
It always seems to be a Tigers’ fan complaining.
Dude, those guys from Baltimore…?
It’s all in the game.
who said he was a Tigers fan? Maybe he’s just a person with an irrational hatred of the K.
I’m pretty sure this is a troll. And based on the response, not a bad one. What he said was just not quite retarded enough to be obvious, I guess.
Guess he hasnt been taking enough notes on Free_AEC posts then.
If only we had a way to properly value the negative affects of strikeouts, we would be able to account for this. Oh wait, we do. I mean George Ruth struck out at record levels before the true value of a strikeout was known and so people could be excused for believing he sucked. Oh wait, no they couldn’t be.
Still better than most players, so it is very well deserved. It’s also not just his performance at then plate but also in the field, where he is outstanding.
My little league coach always told me to lay off the high ones. The first and last thing I have ever had in common with Mr. Trout.
I’m guessing your little league coach was Dottie Hinson? Trout seems to have more in common with Kit Keller. Luckily she kept after the high ones or else the Racine Belles would have never won the championship.
HaHa! A League of Their Own reference. Nice. That’s, nice.
I have absolutely nothing in common with Mike trout except I have played baseball before and the color of my skin! That is it!
This is the type of thing for which the phrase “Achilles heel” (or “kryptonite”) is so obvious and so appropriate that you don’t even need to say it.
If a spear to Achilles’s heel turned him into merely the best warrior on the battlefield, instead of a demigod, then yeah.
Achilles probably couldn’t hit the high fastball either. Then again if the pitcher threw him one he would disembowel said hurler, strip him of his valuables, and drag his carcass around the warning track. And you thought pitching changes take a long time now!
Trout always comes into spring training with something. He usually says a thing or two, like “I want to be more aggressive this year,” after a 15% walk rate in 2013. He seems capable of doing just about anything with his swing and approach at the plate. And he seems to adjust on the fly in-season, quite well too. Trout will do what he thinks is best and we just have to sit back and watch.
He should anticipate “up” in order to turn “up” into “middle” … then he will enjoy the same glorious second half Moss did.
I was thinking about whether Trout would correct this “problem” recently and am surprised by Sullivan’s findings, because I really was taking everything at face value.
Sorry my comment got cut off because the new spam filters on Fangraphs keep on messing up my posts. The rest of what I had to say was unimportant. Now I feel like a criminal reporting to my parole officer when I try to post.
…however I want these criminal spammers prosecuted HARD.
A whole article thingy and no pictures…I am so depressed.
GIFs! I want GIFs!
Out of respect for my pittance of a mobile data plan, I want HTML5 videos :-/
One additional adjustment suggestion: Practice hitting the high-pitch with a swing specifically for it. Then he could guess up when pitchers are likely to pitch him there. His swing wouldn’t be an adjustment, just a new trick he’s learned. When he’s not guessing up he could continue his stingy swing rate on balls up, since his natural tendency doesn’t really jive with that pitch. The idea would be to practice a “high-ball swing” that could be as different from his normal swing as needed, and he could use it strategically to counteract pitchers’ tendency to try exploit his weakness.
And then he guesses high, changes his swing, and gets a ball low-middle and beats it into the ground because his “high swing” can’t get under that pitch. Completely guessing pitches, especially nowadays, can make you look really foolish.
Not to sound oversimplistic, but he needs to work on adjusting with his back elbow, not slotting it below the belt when the pitch is belt high. His closed front foot also affects his ability to hit high pitches, as he can’t get his hips separated as well, so his hands can’t be near his chest with any power. Just a couple theories that could help, but I’m not claiming to have the definitive answers.
LeeTro,
I agree with your point about what goes wrong when a hitter guesses wrong. Guess hitting as a general strategy is probably not the best approach. However, with our current wealth of knowledge, some hitters could benefit from guessing sometimes. For example, in Trout’s case, he already can’t handle the high pitch so his response to it is to take. Even if it’s a strike, even if there are two strikes. Given that Trout faced high heat so frequently, there must be certain situations where guessing high heat would have a high probability of success. The idea would be to swing if you get what you’re guessing, take if you don’t.
The adjustment you’re suggesting makes mechanical sense with regard to hitting a higher pitch, but should Mike Trout be changing his typical swing at all? I’d say no. If he can figure out how to do something with a high pitch when he’s expecting it, it will only take a few bombs or extra base hits and pitchers will start to lay off that pitch. Which, of course, works for him in the long run. Given that Trout is awful against high pitches already, it doesn’t seem like he’d have much to lose by looking for them when he’s likely to get them.
He has plenty to lose by guessing for pitches up in the zone: the productivity on pitches down. The last thing I want to see is him taking pitches down because he was looking high. My elbow adjustment really isn’t major, as the elbow already has to move down. It would just be figuring out how far down it should go. His “low swing” would be the same, and his “high swing” would have more chance of getting on plane.
Leo, I only know enough to know that you have no idea what you are talking about! Back elbow??? Maybe Trout just isn’t squishing the bug hard enough.
It is funny to hear the Fangraphs clones weigh in on how Mike Trout can have more success at the plate. This is comedy. As if any of the Fangraphs clones ever even put down their calculators and protractors long enough to watch an actual baseball game let alone study the actual playing of it.
Again, this is just a theory, but you’ll find a lot of hitting coaches stressing the importance of the back elbow. You can use it to adjust the height of your swing, and it seems like Trout’s elbow naturally drops below his waist. This is why he can get underneath the low pitches, but you can’t hit a ball consistently if the barrel is above your hands. He also dives a bit out towards the plate, which would also drop his elbow a bit more.
“That’s just the nature of balance, and I don’t think anyone’s capable of covering every pitch in every part of the zone.”
I’ll just leave this here. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/miguel-cabreras-ridiculousplate-coverage/
http://www.fangraphs.com/zonegrid.aspx?playerid=1744&position=1B/3B&ss=2013&se=2013&type=7&hand=all&count=all&blur=1&grid=10&view=bat
http://www.fangraphs.com/zonegrid.aspx?playerid=1744&position=1B/3B&ss=2014&se=2014&type=7&hand=all&count=all&blur=1&grid=10&view=bat
“Against elevated pitches out of the zone, Trout finished with one of the lowest swing rates in baseball.
Against elevated pitches in the zone, Trout finished with one of the lowest swing rates in baseball.”
I obviously cannot dispute the data, but it isn’t particularly relevant. Trout ranked 140th out of 146 qualified hitters on overall swing rate. Trout doesn’t swing at much of anything – high, low, or in between.
No one who’s come up since mike trout has hit 30 homers in a season.
No one [worth mentioning in the same sentence, paragraph, or article as Mike Trout] has come up since Mike Trout.
No worth [worth mentioning
in the same sentence, paragraph, or article as Mike Trout] has come upexcept Mike Trout.The hell you say…
…damn 9 games!
Eventually they will have to throw down, right? But what if they do not. It would not surpise me if the way he was thrown in the playofs is the new norm.
“I don’t think anyone’s capable of covering every pitch in every part of the zone.”
Barry Bonds may disagree. He was also capable of covering many pitches outside of the zone.
I think he was referencing human beings. I don’t think Barry was human, instead some sort of baseball mashing cyborg.
First we accuse him of steroid use, now cybernetics? And we wonder why he’s been the only space alien to play baseball?
The hell you say…
Old age gets all of us eventually. Trout is just getting old.
Just by reading the headline, I thought this article was going to be about Mike Trout’s weak arm. He just needs to learn how to foul off a pitch. He has a great batting eye; he just needs to spoil pitches he can’t put in play with authority.
“[L]iterally countless”? If true, this is amazing! At least continuum many articles on Trout’s weakness?! Well done, Jeff!
Literal man is literal, man.
Continuum? No, all we know is that the cardinality of articles about Mike Trout’s weakness is at least that of the power set of the natural numbers. As for the continuum, can’t prove that!
Oh man I can’t believe I got called out for assuming the continuum hypothesis was true! I love it!
But wait … the cardinality of the power set of the natural numbers is continuum … I think we just both made the same mistake. Let’s just agree that you can’t prove from the Zermelo Fraenkel axioms that there is a set with cardinality strictly between |N| and |R|.
Yup, I just made the same mistake in different words, assuming that 2^(aleph_nought) = aleph_one. So we can *finally* conclude that the cardinality of articles by Jeff Sullivan about Mike Trout’s weakness is greater than the cardinality of the natural numbers, but that within ZFC we can’t say anything more.
Really, Jeff should have been more specific about how many articles he’s written.
Yeah, and shoeless joe jackson had trouble with the high inside spitter. Great hitters adjust to this kind of stuff. In my opinion, trout is a great hitter, so he will adjust. Tony Perez had trouble with high let-up pitches. When the spaceman threw one too many at him in the ’75 series, he crushed it so hard, no ones sure if it has landed yet.
Good high fastball hitters, all few of them, keep the top hand on top to contact. It’s awkward. Some take the bat out of the top hand palm and grip with the middle knuckle to better throw the bat head out high. Also awkward. But you never see a high fastball hit with the top hand turning under, a position which is more natural and does not hinder a low ball swing. Once the bat head drops there is no getting it back up again.
McGwire quit the game when the strike zone was raised back above the belt. His top hand always came under. Even the needle couldn’t bring the bat head back up above the belt. Bonds kept his hands fixed.
Sounds like you’re talking about the way Dustin Pedroia swings, if I am understanding you correctly.
Pedroia can even hit a shoulder high fastball when his hands-fingers-wrists are healthy. There’s even fewer that can do that than hit strike zone high fastballs, and they all share the same tricks. Trout could learn to do this but most players hate the way it feels in their hands.
Regarding ‘guessing’ on pitches, and ‘cant wait to see what they throw him’ – Trout and everyone else knows what they are going to throw him. Until he proves he can hit the high cheese, he’s going to get a steady diet of high cheese. So put the tee belt-high to letter-high and rep it out. And Mike’s got to realize that most of time he wasn’t ‘chasing’ – most of those pitches that he struck out on were in the zone…just ask the umpires that repeatedly rang him up with the lumber still on his shoulder…and confirmed by FoxTrax.
Trout let too many pitches early in the count pass by for strikes. He faced many more 0-1, 0-2, 1-2, and 2-2 counts in 2014 than he did in 2013.
2013, 716 PA:
0-1: 348 PA
0-2: 113 PA
1-2: 184 PA
2-2: 186 PA
2014, 705 PA:
0-1: 370 PA
0-2: 131 PA
1-2: 249 PA
2-2: 227 PA
Doesn’t matter how good you are, you’re going to struggle to perform at peak levels when you’re frequently falling behind – often deeply behind – in the count.
Mike Trout sometimes simply lets his emotions get the best of him at the plate.