The Preposterous Mike Trout
It’s that time again, when we provide your somewhat regularly scheduled update on the exploits of Mike Trout. When we last saw our protagonist, he was rocking a 210 wRC+ on April 24th. That was good enough for sixth best in baseball, but given that it was April 24th, we were sure to see some regression. Right?
Now it’s May 24th, and Mike Trout has a 220 wRC+. That’s the best in baseball. It means he’s been 120% better on offense than the league average. He’s twice the average offensive player and then some. Since he’s often considered to be a reincarnation of Mickey Mantle, it should be noted that Mantle never had a single season wRC+ that high, his best mark being a 217 in 1957. He was worth 11.4 WAR in 144 games.
Speaking of WAR, Trout’s accumulated a 3.3 mark so far this year. That naturally also leads the league by a fair margin and has taken Trout over the 50-win mark for his career. In doing so, he’s passed a number of all-time greats in total career value. Those players include Luis Aparicio, Orlando Cepeda, Fred Lynn, David Ortiz, and Jimmy Rollins. He’s very close to passing George Sisler and Enos Slaughter. He’s still got a few months until he turns 26.
Of course, it’s not surprising to see Trout playing this well. It’s not surprising that this past Monday’s game was only the seventh 0-for he’s taken over the first 42 games he’s played this year. (He still managed to walk twice.) It’s not shocking to see Trout playing out of his mind like this, or to know that the above homer from yesterday tied him for the big league lead in homers with Aaron Judge.
And that’s because he’s Mike Trout, the guy who’s already punched his ticket as one of the best players to ever play the game. He’s the guy who’s finished first or second in MVP voting in every full season he’s played, and arguably should have won every time. He’s been the most consistently great player in the game since the second he was called up in 2012. He’s among that extremely small percentage of players who shouldn’t be discounted from being able to carry a 200 (or larger) wRC+ for a whole season, because he’s simply that talented. And by typical player aging curves, Trout hasn’t even hit his prime yet.
Trout, as good as he’s been, has never finished a season having outpaced the league by this much. It’s important to note that it is, indeed, just May 24th, but Trout’s hitting profile looks pretty similar to what he’s produced in the past. He’s just simply hitting the ball with even more power. His walk and strikeout rates are generally the same as last year, and he’s basically taken just two percentage points of ground-ball rate and put them into fly-ball rate. The only marked difference is that his soft contact rate is somehow up to 20% from 12%.
Ben Lindbergh recently noted in an excellent piece of work at The Ringer that Trout is swinging more than ever, and that he’s swinging more often at meatballs in the middle. Swinging more often can sometimes be dangerous, but Trout is pulling it off with aplomb, as Ben noted.
In his first, brief exposure to the big leagues, Trout’s selective aggression ranked in the first percentile compared with qualifying hitters. He swung at fewer than half of the pitches he saw in the strike zone and almost a third of likely balls, showing relatively little ability to differentiate between pitches he could punish and pitches even he would have a hard time driving. His ratio improved in 2012 and again in 2013 and 2014 before regressing in 2015, when he was probably playing through a wrist issue. Last year and this year, his strike zone judgment has made further strides, to the point that he’s now in the 94th percentile — one of the game’s smartest swingers
Having a strong feel for the strike zone isn’t the only ingredient of offensive success: Plenty of hitters have the ability to distinguish balls from strikes but lack the coordination and power to make the most of that skill. But when a hitter with Trout’s physical gifts adds elite discipline to the mix, pitchers can’t counter. Thus far, they’ve thrown fewer pitches in the strike zone to Trout than ever before, but he’s not biting on bad pitches. Over the course of his career, Trout has produced a .465 weighted on-base average when swinging at pitches inside the strike zone and a .250 wOBA when swinging at pitches outside the strike zone. It makes perfect sense that he’d be even more potent now that he’s swinging at the former pitches more often and the latter less often.
Ben also pointed out that Trout is pouncing on first-pitch curves more than ever, which counters a previously popular method of attack against him. Trout is plugging the few tiny holes in his game, and it’s resulting in some dazzling production.
There’s probably going to be a bit of regression from the phenomenal offensive high he’s currently riding, but there isn’t reason to expect a ton of it. We’ve always wondered about the hypothetical of whether or not Trout has peaked yet, of whether or not there’s still room between his current state and the upper limit of his possible performance. That may be what we’re looking at right now. If Trout is reaching his physical peak, maybe that explains his .411 ISO, which is well above that even of the behemoth Judge.
Nothing should be surprising with Trout, except if perhaps if he took the mound and started striking people out. As I noted over the winter, he’s basically already a Hall of Famer. He’s just gotten even better now. Trout could very well come back down to his heightened version of reality at some point in the near or distant future, because it’s extremely hard to hit this well for an entire season. There have only been 32 instances of a qualified batter carrying a wRC+ of 200 or greater for a season. Many of those campaigns were had by men named Ruth, Bonds, and Williams. That’s how good Trout has been, and what kind of company he would have to keep to do this from now until October.
We shouldn’t put it past him. We shouldn’t expect him to do it, either, but we shouldn’t immediately discount it. Trout is a special player, and possibly the greatest to ever play the game. He’s the one thing keeping the Angels from being basement-dwellers.
He’s absolutely, incredibly, ridiculously great. We’re lucky to be able to watch him perform.
Nick is a columnist at FanGraphs, and has written previously for Baseball Prospectus and Beyond the Box Score. Yes, he hates your favorite team, just like Joe Buck. You can follow him on Twitter at @StelliniTweets, and can contact him at stellinin1 at gmail.
it is criminal that the Angels can’t put a couple of supporting players around Trout to get to the World Series. Maybin is second in wRC+ at 111. Pujols is at 77 and getting paid $26M and has four years remaining on his idiotic deal…
My jaw just dropped. Pujols still has four years left!??!?! Crippling.
I’m surprised he only has four years left – how quickly ten years fly be!
Miguel Cabrera still has six years left on his deal (and then two option years).
Yes, but Cabrera is still good, at least for now.
Cabrera is still good and you would never predict a Pujols-like decline, but the cracks in the armor are there for Cabrera. Comparing 2014-2016 with 2011-2013 his K% is trickling up, ISO and BABIP trickling down, Hard% and HR/FB down, contact % trickling down, SwStr% up. His eye is still good, but he just doesn’t hit as many or do as much with the pitches he does hit as he used to. It’s subtle, but it’s there. PLus, after being a model of durability he’s now missing games with old man injuries. Heck, in 2015 he missed the first significant time he has ever missed and it was with a pulled calf muscle simply running from 1st to 2nd on a ground ball. And of course, he offers no defensive or baserunning value whatsoever which is likely to get worse.
(His numbers are off this year but they’re also kind of wonky. They’ll look a lot different by year’s end.)
I wouldn’t bet on that deal looking very good in a couple years. Star players become simply above average a lot quicker than we tend to notice.
The underlying metrics say he is getting quite unlucky
What are you talking about? They have defensive marvel Danny Espinosa at 2B hitting 0.146. Do you know how hard it is to find a replacement for him? I mean he has accumulated -0.3 WAR . . . oh . . . by definition he is easily replaced. That’s totally on the front office.
You can’t ask for a better leadoff hitter than Yunel Escobar though! Well, except for the 9 guys (min 100 PA) hitting better than him…
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=100&type=1&season=2017&month=48&season1=2017&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=17,d
WHERE ARE THE RBIS TROUT
Angels have been in the top 10 in wRC+ for 4/5 years Trout’s been there. Without Pujols mentorship of Trout, Trout probably wouldn’t be as consistently great as he has been. As for Pujols production he is one of the best RBI guys in the league, also he is the most clutch hitter in the game this year. Unfortunately they have had a lot of injuries and that will always make your team look bad.
The Pujols deal has been a pretty crippling mistake. It turned south on them quicker than they could have thought, but regardless it looked like deal that would be bad 6 years in when Trout was still cheap and awesome. This team is extremely poorly built.
Somehow, even without Pujols’ mentorship, I have a feeling Trout would have been OK.
TL;DR: Pujols has TWTW totally srsly guys
Can’t tell if serious…
RBI? Mentorship? Ditch your 1987 calendar. Methinks you should be writing letters to Baseball Digest while defending Andre Dawson’s MVP selection.
I am never going to forgive them for wasting Hall of Fame seasons like this. They don’t deserve Trout’s greatness.
Nevermind the fact that currently their top 3 pitchers by WAR are all relievers. One of whom has only pitched 6.2 innings.
Nevermind the fact that those 6.2 innings generated an insane 0.7 WAR due to a 12+ K/9 and 0 BBs.
This narrative has just been beaten to death. Sure, Trout doesn’t play for the Dodgers, Yankees, or Red Sox but the Angels have been a competitive team for the majority of the years they’ve had Trout and it’s far too early in 2017 to already be parroting this cliche seeing as the Angels have a winning record and are just a game out from a wild card spot.
I don’t THINK that Mike Trout is as good a hitter as Bonds, Ruth, Williams, but if he ends up to be, then he very well may be the G.O.A.T, at least for an all-around player. None of those guys played CF, and Bonds was a mere mortal until his age 25 season. First, he has to show that he is clearly above Mays and Mantle, though, which is enough of a hurdle for anyone.
Bonds maybe was a mere mortal until age 25, but he more than made up for that by putting up 47.3 WAR in his ages 37-40 seasons. Trout needs to bank as much as possible early in his career if he is going to challenge for best player ever, because there’s virtually no way anyone will ever again put up those numbers so late in his career.
Well, Trout might have to try for best of all time in the non-enhanced division. Seriously, though, the top WAR’s of all-time are in the 160-165 range. If he stays healthy, he does have a legit shot at that, assuming normal aging curves. That’s a big “if”, though, and a long way off.
There’s my personal feelings on this issue and then my rational side. My personal feelings is that Bonds doesn’t get to be considered the greatest of all time. That level of blatant cheating just shouldn’t count when measuring “greatness”.
My rational side says that regardless of our personal feelings, we shouldn’t consider Bonds a good comparison for anyone. He was literally playing in a different game. (And I’m willing to extend that argument to pre-integration baseball too, which is relevant since Ruth kicks everyone’s butt on fWAR).
Did I miss something? I don’t see anyone disagreeing below me. I think this is a pretty reasonable statement.
Yeah, I thought so too. Most players at ages 37-40, if still playing, have become compilers. Trout may be the exception (hope he is!) but until then I don’t see a clear path to the kind of numbers that would make him the GOAT without PED’s, and you didn’t differentiate. That’s a separate conversation.
I’ve felt this way for a while, but unless you want to limit it to post-integration players there’s just no way anyone is beating Ruth. His fWAR is something like 181, and he has something like 4 of the top 5 single seasons of all time (and #6 and #10). That’s means he had the highest peak and the most value over a career.
When I tried thinking hard about where Trout ends up, he wound up better than Mantle for career WAR but short of Mays. Which would still make him a Top 20 position player of all time, very likely in the Top 10, but not the greatest of all time (even if you limit it to the Mays era and later).
Here are the assumptions I made:
1) Trout puts up 9 WAR seasons for the next 7 seasons including this one (since that’s what he did in his last 2 and his seasons before that weren’t that different). That takes him through age 32.
2) Trout puts up 5 WAR seasons for the five seasons after that, which takes him to age 37.
3) That I would use fWAR instead of bWAR (this matters)
Under this scenario, he’d reach Mantle right around age 32 (113.5 fWAR) and get to Ted Williams-level around 37 (129.5 fWAR).
John Autin and I went back and forth whether he could realistically catch Mays, with him thinking he could do it and me being somewhat more pessimistic. Under bWAR you can make a better case for it than under fWAR. In fWAR Mays is over 35 WAR ahead of Mantle and Trout still falls about 20 fWAR short.
If you use bWAR it’s a different story, but if you are going with fWAR and you want to talk about Trout catching Mays then you need to assume this year’s breakout is for real. If you give Trout 12 fWAR for the next 7 years instead of 9 then you’ve put him just ahead of Mays. I don’t really like assuming anyone is going to put up double-digit WAR for 7 consecutive seasons, but that’s realistically the sort of assumption you need to assume in order for him to get there. Or that he puts up 9 fWAR seasons until he’s 37. I don’t like assuming that either. I just don’t believe it.
It’s crazy that we’ve moved beyond the “is Mike Trout going to be a Hall of Famer” debate into the “where will Mike Trout rank among the Top 25 position players of all time” debate…
I think that giving him 5 WAR seasons for ages 33-37 may be a bit conservative. I’d go 7 WAR. Is it LIKELY that Trout ends up with 160+ WAR. No. But is it a significant possibility? I don’t see why not. He’s been the career leader in WAR through every season so far, and this year doesn’t look to be any different.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mike-trout-is-the-mvp-and-still-on-track-for-the-g-o-a-t/
The contract tool gives him 5-7
http://i.imgur.com/5XskUjl.png
The contract tool is a model, and like all models, they break at extremes. Trout is the definition of an extreme. Looking at what you said above, an average of 9 war per season over the next 7 doesn’t seem outrageous, but to drop him to 5 after that is a pretty big drop off, looking at some of the greatest players of all time, it looks like in order to see a 4 fWAR drop from one season to the next, usually takes an injury that takes out a player for a good chunk of the season.
If you’re going with an average of 9 over the next 7, then you should probably go with no less than an average of 6 over the next 5. That would put him at 144 fWAR and bump Honus Wagner from the fifth highest fWAR total. But, if we’re assuming a healthy Trout for almost all of that, then why stop at 37? Who says he can’t play for another 4 or 5 years after that? The second through tenth best careers over 37 (because Bonds) averaged 22.2 fWAR until they left the game. So if we assume that he can play until 42, earn another 63 fWAR between now and his age 32 season, earn another 30 fWAR from 32-37, and another 20 fWAR from 37-42 we arrive at 164 fWAR. Basically tying him for second with Bonds, putting him only about 4 fWAR shy of Ruth, and exceeding Mays by 14 fWAR.
Trout has a shot to not just be a GOAT, but being in the conversation for THE GOAT.
This is a fair point. Along with Shauncore’s screenshot up above, I think there’s a reasonable shot of a more gradual and modest decline. But I do not think that it is reasonable to consider any player going until 42. Part of the reason we get so hyped for the Derek Jeters of the world and doing “retirement tours” is because no one really sticks around that long…and with the exception of a couple of players, they’re not very good at that age. But maybe I’m being too rigid here and he’ll be one of those players, but I wouldn’t bank on it given the value his speed gives him.
(btw, this is a fun argument)
I don’t know, 163 position players have played past 37, of those 163, 29 have gone on to play past 40. Many of them are HoF’ers. Now, without going into their profiles, there is a question of whether they were inducted because of longevity or they just happened to play a long time and would have been inducted if they quit years earlier. Nine of the top ten players on that age 40+ list are HoF’ers or Bonds. Continuing down, the remainning 19 had 11 HoF’ers plus Ichiro, Pete Rose, and Edgar Martinez.
Now, this could be survival bias, but we’re looking at 20/29 HoF’ers in that list, plus four who should be in there by the numbers. We could argue that guys who make the HoF tend to last longer, and not just assume that Trout couldn’t play longer, especially with the new 10 DL and better medical treatments and conditioning for players.
The scariest part about Ruth is how low his games played is compared to his nearest competition. Bonds, Mays, Cobb are all about 500 more games played.
Ruth’s career pace is about 14.9 games to earn 1 WAR, Trout’s is 16.7. In Ruth’s games played, Trout is on pace for 150.
Which is still enough to edge out Ty Cobb for fourth all time.
Ruth may never be surpassed for his rate of production, wRC+ or whatever metric. I’m actually very impressed that Trout is even in the ballpark, only about 10% off.
Um, I’m an Angels homer and I would never even fathom a given 7-year peak of 12 WAR PER YEAR. If you assume that level of production, he would be top 3-5 all time REGARDLESS OF HOW HIS CAREER ENDS AFTERWARD.
84 WAR as a peak would be just disgusting, especially in this modern era, post-steroids.
Honestly, you could just assume more years with less WAR like Fagerstrom did in his article on Getting Trout up to Ruth’s WAR.
This is actually my point. I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that. But that’s what you would need to do.
Or as I said, you could bump him up into the 42 year old range. That’s 5 years of potential. Would it be like Bonds? No. But that could generate 7-12 more WAR if decent. Assume 1 or 2 years of 12 WAR at his peak. It can still work out.
7-12 more WAR isn’t enough. You’d need about 20. And that’s to age 42. That would assume Trout even wants to stick around.
Yeah, but he’s on pace for a career high in WAR. I guess you’re expecting this to be a deviation from his norm and not the start of a higher (maybe not this high) norm. He could just have one career year and then the rest is hohum average goat production, but that’s not that typical of people entering their prime.
If you assumed the 12 total WAR over the last 5 years, make this year 12, the next two years 12 and 11. This would cover a 3-year prime, ages 25-27, and get him right to the 20. It’s not as far off as it is made to sound. It’s not by any means close, easy, or likely, but it’s still possible.
Remember, he only needs to average that until 42 in this scenario. He could post an age 38 5+ fWAR season, a 39 5 fWAR season, 40 4.5, 41 3, 42 2 and then hang up his cleats. Considering that above, we have him averaging 6 from 32-37, this doesn’t seem unreasonable if he can make it this long and not drop off a cliff and never recover.
It’s not that outlandish to get him there. FG already mapped it out (http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/getting-mike-trout-to-168-4-war/) and he’s currently beating that forecast.
That’s the article I was referring to.
We really shouldn’t take that article seriously. August said, “It’s absurd, I know. Never gonna happen! Like, no way. But, be honest. For a brief second, you considered it, didn’t you?”
That article has him putting up 8+ WAR seasons in age 33 and 34, 6+ in 35-37, 5 WAR at 38, and still putting up 3+ WAR seasons in his early 40s. This even assumes he’s going to play past 37. I just don’t buy that Mike Trout is going to suddenly going to be Mike Schmidt at 37–that’s a totally different player.
Also, I miss August.
Sure, getting him past Ruth is a gigantic stretch, but given that each of those seasons really happened, and that Trout is outpacing that article’s projection, it’s not unreasonable to think he could pass Mays.
Guys, if you straight line Williams’ years missed to wars, his fWAR beats Ruth’s. Given him 11.7 each for ’43, ’44, and ’45, then 7.1 for ’52 and ’53 instead of the 0.3 and 2.3 he put up, and he gets to ~170. I know that’s some game of “what if” but Ruth isn’t surmountable and Trout ain’t plane fightin’ no commies.
At the same age, Bonds wasn’t even close to as good a hitter as Trout is. If you go by OPS+, after his age 25 season, Bonds was at 133. Trout is at 172. The counting stats aren’t even close, WAR is a bloodbath, and wRC+ is a landslide for Trout. Now, it’s unlikely that Trout will cheat as blatantly as Bonds did starting with his age 35 season, and thus may not put up the same ridiculous totals, but it’s hard to imagine that any one will look at pre-steroid Barry Bonds as a better hitter than Mike Trout.
“If Trout is reaching his physical peak, maybe that explains his .411 ISO, which is well above that even of the behemoth Judge.”
It seems unfair to compare Judge to Trout given Judge’s relative inexperience, and then you realize Trout is only 8 months Judge’s senior.
Even if Trout retires at the end of this year at age 25 for instance, he still has to be a hall of famer right? He’s been clearly the best player in the entire game for half a decade already
There would be a huge debate about service time first
It might depend somewhat on the reason for the retirement, but I think generally he’d be in based on being the best player in the league for six years straight.
In general, you need 10 years to get on the HOF ballot. Addie Joss died after his 9th season due to meningitis, and it took a special resolution from the HOF Board to get him in.
If, god forbid, something catastrophic happened to Trout and he was *incapable* of playing any more, I believe they’d give special clearance for him to be on the ballot (maybe not after 5 years but after 10 or such). I think if he retired voluntarily after, say, his 7th year, he would be ineligible no matter what.
I think he would get the Koufax treatment and the voters would recognize that he was so incredible that he deserves enshrinement even with a short career.
I think it’s time we revisit the article where someone figured out if it was possible for anyone to trade for Mike Trout. It would have to be a team with an insanely strong farm system and they’d have to trade basically the whole thing, and maybe a top-flight replacement in CF too. And a team that has a window that they think is closing. I’m having a hard time thinking of anyone too.
You’d have to offer up all the prospects, plus a marketable MLB star, plus at least one more legit above average MLB regular to even get a callback from LAA.
Judge + Sanchez + Torres would probably get the Angels to listen, but that’s the sort of move that’s more likely to happen in a video game than in real life.
If the Padres called up the Angels and offered their entire team for Mike Trout, Billy Eppler would hang up the phone. And permanently block A.J. Preller’s number.
To be fair, many teams would do that with their best player if the Pads offered them that deal.
The Cubs could definitely put a package together for him that would return fair value, but they obviously would have no reason to do it, considering a package would start with Bryant, Jimenez, and Cease… and, well, they’re just fine without him.
I think the Dodgers would be the only team that fits your specific criteria, since when you have an ace as dominant as Kershaw who could lose his arm at any time, the window is always close to closing. I’m pretty sure if they offered Seager, Bellinger, and Urias for Trout, the Angels would say yes.
Yeah, I don’t see the Dodgers doing that. They want to be permanently competitive. A package headlined by Joc Pederson and Urias and a good chunk of their farm system would probably be what they’d offer. I don’t see the Angels biting on that.
I was wondering about the Pirates. Cole is going to be a free agent in 2.5 years, and they could offer Starling Marte, Glasnow, and a lot of top-end prospects. But I just don’t see a deal there either. Marte isn’t marketable like Trout is.
The Cubs would probably trade Schwarber and Baez (or Happ) plus Jimenez/Cease/Candelario/de la Cruz/etc but the Angels only would have bitten on that before Schwarber’s struggles this year. And maybe not even then. And the Cubs might want Garrett Richards too if they’re giving up that much. I wouldn’t see them giving up Bryant, since he’s the big deadline for them.
This is hard, but I really want Trout to get to the playoffs.
The only way Trout will be traded is as a rental if Eppler or whoever the GM is at that point in time decides with Arte to trade him in his last season as an Angel. That would garner a top prospect or two for one insane player to play half a season. It doesn’t make sense for another team, but it would probably get him to the playoffs, get the Angels into contention in the future, and get the team who takes him on a QO and maybe a WS. Everybody wins in that situation.
Examine the context. The biggest bummer in Angels history was Bavasi trading Nolan Ryan. He was a generational player that Buzz thought had equal value to two or three high end players. It came back to bite the Angels in the ass for what? A decade? A decade and a half?
Now you’re probably thinking, “So what? Not every trade becomes as lopsided as that or the Ruth trade or (insert trade that was ridiculous in hindsight).”
That is true. Just becomes something doesn’t work out doesn’t mean that you should never try again. A GM is savvy enough to know this. Eppler is.
BUT!
The backlash would be so great, especially among those who remember Ryan pitching for both the Rangers and Astros and THEN GOING INTO THE HALL OF FAME AS ANYTHING BUT AN ANGEL, that Billy Eppler’s head would be called for on a platter. His young career might not survive that. Would you really risk your hard-fought position as General Manager over that trade?
Ryan left the Angels as a free agent, not in a trade. If memory serves, he was the 1st $1M per year player with that free agent deal.
I’m sorry, you’re right. But the reason they didn’t sign him is still the same. The front office elected not to retain him when they definitely could have, and it did not end well.
As I recall, Buzzie was asked about replacing the 16-14 Ryan for the next year and he said it’d be easy, they’d just pick up two guys who would each go 8-7.
Maybe if Pujols (and his salary) were included in the deal, it would be possible…lol
This jumped out at me as a reference for how absolutely incredibly great Babe Ruth was. “He’s among that extremely small percentage of players who shouldn’t be discounted from being able to carry a 200 (or larger) wRC+ for a whole season.”
Ruth did it TEN times, and nearly did that for his entire career. Mike Trout is an absolutely fantastic baseball player, but when it comes to hitting, there’s Ruth, and there’s everybody else. Plus, he once said this – “Sometimes when I reflect on all the beer I drink, I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn’t drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. I think, ‘It is better to drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver.’”
I’m not about to dispute the fact Ruth remains the Titan of the sport against which all other hitters continue to be measured. But I find a player consistently posting a 173 wRC+ in today’s version of the game, (which employs specialized relievers and pitchers routinely hitting the upper 90’s with their fastball) far more impressive then posting a 200+ wRC+ during Ruth’s Era.
That’s fair, but keep in mind that during Ruth’s career, only 2 other players posted a wRC+ of 200 or better. Trout has also only had a wRC+ of 173 or higher once in his career so far, so you can’t say it’s something he’s consistently posting. Semantics aside, I do get your point – but I think it’s hard to do these things across eras. It’s almost like saying that Sidney Crosby is more impressive than Gretzky.
Babe, I love you too.
I know this is a Trout piece, but no mention that Freddie Freeman is also at 204 wRC+ this year? Not even an aside?
As to Trout and where he’ll finish, he’s not going to catch Mays or Ruth in large part because of his defense. He looked like a near GG caliber defender that 1st year but as a number of pieces have pointed out, he benefited immensely from 3 or 4 HR robberies that year which just isn’t repeatable year after year. His defensive numbers have been so-so since then. Still OK but unless he truly does keep hitting like this, it’s not good enough to keep him at 10 WAR for the foreseeable future given that his defense will likely decline. Unless he pulls a Jeter and insists on staying in CF to the detriment of his team, he will have to move off CF and probably sooner than most here would want to admit.
Using b-ref’s PLay INdex, there have been only 9 qualified seasons where a CF (min 80% games in CF) weighing more than 225 lbs posted positive defensive value (per b-ref’s dWAR). Assuming I’ve done the search right, Marlon Byrd is the only guy to have done it past age 28. Trout weighs 235. He’ll either be a poor defensive CF in a few years or will have moved to a corner where the positional adjustment won’t be as favorable. Either way, it’s going to be tough to keep that WAR up around 10 (again, unless his bat truly remains this awesome).
Mays was nearly Trout’s equal with the bat and remained an amazing defender into his mid-30’s. Ruth just came along at the right time and simply changed the game with his power. It took everyone a few years to start playing the game the way he played it. His numbers were like he was the big kid in Little League. Trout isn’t likely to catch either of them. But who knows, the future is unpredictable and all you can do is sit back and watch it unfold 🙂
Well, it’s partially one of those monthly Trout updates. But anyway, Freeman will probably be unlikely to qualify for a batting title which means that however great his production is returning from injury, he will still have that tainted “not enough PAs.” Is it unfair? Yes. Sorry.
If he manages to come back after 8 weeks, and doesn’t get hurt again, I think he can make it to 502 plate appearances. Based on his current rate of plate appearances per game, he could miss 49 games and still get to 502 plate appearances. I don’t think he missed any games before his injury. Coming back right after the All Star break would be 8 weeks, and that would be 50 games missed. Hell, the Braves would probably bat him lead-off late in the season to get him there, and of course if he is just short, he could benefit from the rule that just gives you an zero-for-X to get up to 502 plate appearances.
Long story short, Braves fans need some hope for something good to happen.
I think there are plenty of reasons why Trout compares favorably to Ruth, Bonds, Mays, and Williams.
Start with the old guys … Ruth is listed at -18 for his career defense. Mays is at +170. The reality is that we simply have no idea how good or bad these older players were with the glove. It could very well turn out that Mays is actually worth +250 or maybe he’s only at +25. And Ruth, I mean – really. -18 for his career. Would anyone be surprised if he was really -150 or worse? And even with Bonds, I’m going to go ahead and call bull crap on even his late career fielding numbers. In his last few years, he posted seasons of +5.6, -0.9, and -2. Those were years when the guy could barely move and yet he scores better than Trout does today?
It’s certainly not the fault of Ruth, Mays, Williams, and Bonds that defensive numbers from their eras are nothing more than a SWAG. However, I take them all with a grain of salt. No doubt some players are much better than their numbers indicate while others are far, far worse. When comparing players pre-DRS/UZR I’d argue for either throwing out their defensive numbers altogether or coming up with broad buckets that are based on reputation. Those broad buckets could be used as a rough stand-in for approximate defensive value.
I just wonder how his build/body will age.
Seems likely that he will be moved off center soon and with how big he is he could probably benefit from a move to 1B/DH by his mid-thirties. The defense and base running is just a little plus at this point. Without it, he is still easily the best hitter in baseball. This year he is just making us ask the question of by how much.
I hear what everyone is saying about Trout’s ability to play centerfield not being something you can count on long-term, and that he’ll lose a lot of the value due to positional adjustment when the day comes where he moves to a corner outfield spot.
But, since his time in the league, Trout has been, overall, middle of the pack in terms of defensive value in centerfield. If that’s the case, doesn’t it also stand to reason that when he moves to a corner outfield spot, there’s a good chance he’ll be a plus defender out there, and offset some of the value lost due a lesser positional adjustment?
When he does have to move to a corner, he will no longer be middle of the pack in center.
He’s played 141 games in LF and RF during his career, mostly early on.
Yes, that should be how it works. The positional adjustment is supposed to compensate for the fact that a player’s defense is compared to the average at his position, and at SS and CF that average is higher than at the other infield or outfield positions respectively.
Trout loses the positional adjustment when he leaves CF, and gains the comparison to a lower average baseline.
Switching spots in the outfield should be largely WAR neutral assuming that the adjustments are correct and that the player has the correct tools for his new position (range for center, arm for right, ext). When Trout’s speed starts to decline his WAR should be BOOSTED by the likely move to right. His defensive value will decline over time (duh), but that’s not because he’ll be moved out of CF, that’s WHY he’ll be moved out of CF.
He’d be moved to left. The only thing Trout doesn’t have is a strong throwing arm, and the positional adjustment to left is really severe. That said, he was really impressive as a left fielder and less so at center so it should even out.
This is nit-picking, because your logic is correct (his defensive value will decline, but not because of the move. that gets the causality backwards).
Everybody is comparing him to Mantle. Why aren’t we comparing him to Bonds and his early years? Good not great defender, above average speed but great ability to steal bases, above average power, elite plate discipline. The biggest difference in the skill sets I see is Trout hits for average better.
For one, Bonds at age 25 wasn’t even close to the hitter Trout is, while Mantle’s numbers at the same age are remarkably similar to Trout, both in traditional counting stats (based on projections for ROY for Trout’s age 25 season) and in WAR, wRC+, and OPS+. Second, both played CF, while Bonds played most of his time in LF.
People seem to be forgetting that Bonds was a “late bloomer” and didn’t really hit his stride until his age 25 season.
This is a really good point. They’re both top-notch power-speed guys with high OBPs. And we’ll see Trout back in left at some point anyway. I think the real reason we won’t see the comparisons are because no one remembers the early Bonds, only the hulking thing he became at the end of the career.
In the context of being compared to his peers (the guys who played while he played)….Bonds didn’t receive MVP votes until he won it in his 5th season. A Black Ink test shows zero black ink during those 4 seasons. Never scored 100 runs (close)…never more than 25 homers….never more than 59 RBI….never more than .283 BA or .859 OPS. While Bonds’ upside was always apparent, Trout hit his stride almost immediately. It took Bonds some time. He exploded during his 5th season, by which time Trout had long established himself as the best hitter in baseball, easily.
To say that Trout has above average speed is a massive understatement.
If Trout can manage 5 more fWAR in the next three months, he’ll top Ty Cobb for the most fWAR through age 25. I’m betting he can do it.
Jim Edmonds and Kenny Lofton were both very good center fielders. Through their age 24 seasons, Edmonds was worth 0.8 fWAR and Lofton -0.1 fWAR. Trout was worth 47.7. Even if Trout “only” matches the 63 WAR that Edmonds and Lofton each put up from 25 on, that would basically tie him with Mickey Mantle. What does it say about him that 110 WAR/Mickey-Mantle-level/better-than-Rickey-Henderson feels almost like a worst-case scenario outcome?