What Would a Peak Year From Mike Trout Look Like?
Every full season Mike Trout has put together as a Major League Baseball player has been great. Through his age-24 season, Mike Trout has been worth roughly 48 Wins Above Replacement, averaging around +9.5 wins per season. Through age-24, that is more than any other player, with Ty Cobb a close second, and Mickey Mantle, Mel Ott, Jimmie Foxx, and Ted Williams a bit further behind. Trout is already in third place through age-25, 10th place through age-26, and 23rd place through age-27 with three seasons to be played before he gets there. Mike Trout is great. Everybody knows that.
But what would happen if Mike Trout had a good year in comparison to, well, Mike Trout?
Steamer and ZiPS have weighed in on Mike Trout’s 2017 season and they see a player worth +8.5 to +9 wins next year. That is sort of the midpoint of what should be expected given his track record. Over the past five years his WAR has been +10.3, +10.5, +7.9, +9.0, and +9.4, but much of the variation has had to do with defensive fluctuations. Trout’s wRC+ has been remarkably consistent, in between 167 and 176 every season. While Trout has few historical comps, it is interesting to look at how the players he is closest to have accumulated their WAR through a similar age. Unlike Trout, players like Mantle and Cobb saw big increases in their performance that we have not seen from Trout.
Trout’s route to greatness has come with an incredible consistency that has literally never happened before. With many players who are maybe one-fourth the player Mike Trout is, we often wonder what would happen if they put all together. Maybe the player had patience one year, power the next, a good strikeout rate in another year–we wonder what would happen if they put it all together. That player goes from being average or slightly above average to an all-star, maybe even an MVP candidate.
We can’t make the same leaps with Mike Trout. There simply isn’t enough inconsistency in his performance to allow for a great leap. He is Mike Trout and already an all-time great. However, there is some room to imagine that if a few things broke his way there might be a slightly higher ceiling than what we have seen thus far. If his projections see him as a 9-win player, certainly there are some fluctuations that could put him higher than that. It really isn’t even that hard.
Here’s Mike Trout’s stat line from each of the past five seasons with a few career highs highlighted:
| Season | PA | HR | SB | BB% | K% | ISO | BABIP | AVG | OBP | SLG | wRC+ | BsR | Off | Def | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 639 | 30 | 49 | 10.5 % | 21.8 % | 0.238 | 0.383 | 0.326 | 0.399 | 0.564 | 167 | 14.1 | 64.2 | 13 | 10.3 |
| 2013 | 716 | 27 | 33 | 15.4 % | 19.0 % | 0.234 | 0.376 | 0.323 | 0.432 | 0.557 | 176 | 7.8 | 70.1 | 3.3 | 10.5 |
| 2014 | 705 | 36 | 16 | 11.8 % | 26.1 % | 0.274 | 0.349 | 0.287 | 0.377 | 0.561 | 167 | 6.5 | 58.1 | -8.4 | 7.9 |
| 2015 | 682 | 41 | 11 | 13.5 % | 23.2 % | 0.290 | 0.344 | 0.299 | 0.402 | 0.590 | 172 | 3.3 | 59.9 | 2.1 | 9.0 |
| 2016 | 681 | 29 | 30 | 17.0 % | 20.1 % | 0.235 | 0.371 | 0.315 | 0.441 | 0.550 | 171 | 9.3 | 67.7 | 0.7 | 9.4 |
We could just go through and give him his career highs in counting statistics and see how things come out, but it is probably more prudent to take some of his rate stats and adjust them in a full, healthy season. So we are going to give him 716 plate appearances. We will give him the 17% walk rate that he got last year and the 19% strikeout rate that he got in 2012. While a 19% strikeout rate does seem rather low, remember that his career strikeout rate is around 22% and he has lowered it each of the past two seasons, down to 20% last year. These numbers aren’t too far off from what he did in 2016.
So out of 716 plate appearances, we just made 122 walks and 136 strikeouts. He’s averaged nine intentional walks per season, and while it is fair to think he might get a few more than that like he has the past couple years, we will stick with that number this year. We’ll do the same with his seven sacrifice flies. He hit 41 homers in 2015, but that was in sightly fewer plate appearances than we’re giving him, so that will up things to 43 homers. Last season, Trout’s BABIP was .371 — his career average is .360 — but in his first full season it was .383, so we’ll go with that number.
Given that knowledge, we have his batting average at .343 and his on-base percentage at .461. Both would be career highs but within 20 points of past figures. In 2015, Trout’s ISO was .290, so let’s run with that figure. We already know he has 43 homers and 198 hits. His career average for triples is seven so let’s go ahead and give him that. Leaving just the singles and the doubles, we can give Trout 25 doubles and 123 singles. We might be selling the doubles short here a bit, and we could probably turn some of the singles into outs and doubles, but we aren’t too far off base here.
Given those components, and assuming the constants from 2016 stay the same, Trout ends up with a .343/.461/.633 stat line and a .455 wOBA on the season, about 30 points higher than his current career high from the 2012 season. Using the formula for wRC, we can convert Trout’s wOBA to runs, which gives us 81 offensive runs above average. We’ll add three runs for his park. Last season, Trout was worth 9 runs above average on the base paths, and his career high is just above 14, so let’s give him 12 runs in a good Trout season. On defense, Trout has averaged around 2 runs above average with a high of 13 in his first full season, so let’s give him six runs above average on defense. Then we’ll add 2.5 runs for being in the American League, 20.5 for replacement and end up with 125 runs above replacement.
Last season 9.778 runs was worth one win, so we take 125 runs above replacement, divide by 9.778 and come up with the greatest non-Babe Ruth season of all time.
| Season | Name | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | BsR | Off | Def | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1923 | Babe Ruth | 699 | 0.393 | 0.545 | 0.764 | 0.571 | -3.2 | 117 | 13 | 15.0 |
| 1921 | Babe Ruth | 693 | 0.378 | 0.512 | 0.846 | 0.575 | 0.2 | 119 | 0 | 13.9 |
| 1920 | Babe Ruth | 615 | 0.376 | 0.533 | 0.849 | 0.598 | -0.3 | 111 | -5 | 13.3 |
| 1927 | Babe Ruth | 691 | 0.356 | 0.486 | 0.772 | 0.545 | -1.8 | 103 | 6 | 13.0 |
| Peak Mike Trout | 716 | 0.343 | 0.461 | 0.633 | 0.455 | 12 | 96 | 6 | 12.8 | |
| 2002 | Barry Bonds | 612 | 0.370 | 0.582 | 0.799 | 0.544 | -1.2 | 109 | -2 | 12.7 |
| 1924 | Babe Ruth | 681 | 0.378 | 0.513 | 0.739 | 0.549 | -1.5 | 101 | 3 | 12.5 |
| 1927 | Lou Gehrig | 717 | 0.373 | 0.474 | 0.765 | 0.540 | -2 | 103 | -2 | 12.5 |
| 2001 | Barry Bonds | 664 | 0.328 | 0.515 | 0.863 | 0.537 | 1.3 | 118 | -12 | 12.5 |
| 1924 | Rogers Hornsby | 640 | 0.424 | 0.507 | 0.696 | 0.537 | -2 | 94 | 11 | 12.5 |
| 1926 | Babe Ruth | 652 | 0.372 | 0.516 | 0.737 | 0.551 | -2 | 99 | -2 | 12.0 |
| 2004 | Barry Bonds | 617 | 0.362 | 0.609 | 0.812 | 0.537 | -0.3 | 106 | -4 | 11.9 |
| 1908 | Honus Wagner | 641 | 0.354 | 0.415 | 0.542 | 0.459 | 5.9 | 67 | 10 | 11.8 |
A normal Mike Trout season is already great. We’ve now seen enough seasons to know what a normal Mike Trout season looks like. It is highly likely that we will never see anything above a normal Mike Trout season, given that the bar is already incredibly high. However, the possibility exists that Mike Trout might have a few things go his way where he equals his best power year, replicates his walk and strikeout numbers from last year, has a good year running the bases, and puts up good numbers on defense. If those things happen, we are going to see one of the very greatest statistical seasons of all-time, better even than any season Barry Bonds has ever produced. It’s probably unfair to everyone to dream of a more amazing version of Mike Trout, but Mike Trout is already a little unfair.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
This is my favorite kind of Mike Trout article: the kind that sneakily turns into a Babe Ruth article.
If you’re a younger reader and don’t visit Babe Ruth’s page 3-4 times a year to let your jaw hang open in sheer disbelief and amazement, now’s the time to start.
Just looking at 1923, the greatest season ever played:
– Babe had a 24.3% walk rate. Second place guy Lu Blue was at 15.6%.
– (sidebar: Lu Blue is an amazing name)
– Babe led the majors in SLG by .132, OBP by .064, ISO by .090, and total runs scored by 18.
– He had 13 triples and 17 steals to go with 41 homers.
Compare that to 2016:
– Zero players reached 13 triples. (asterisk for ballpark size changes over time)
– Only one player (Dozier) reached 41 homers and 17 steals.
– The league leader in SLG (Ortiz) led by only .025.
– The leader in OBP (Trout) led by only .007
– The leader in BB% (Harper) was at only 17.2%, leading Trout by 0.2%.
When there are millions of dollars reward for being good at baseball and the lowest barriers to entry of the baseball labor pool in history, competition will in fact be better.
There weren’t millions available in the 20’s. Baseball was the primary sport in America. There were only 16 teams. 40 man rosters didn’t exist. Less talent pool yes, but less spots and no loss of elite athletes to other sports. There are two sides of that competition coin…
There were half as many teams, but the US population was roughly 1/3 what it is now. And there were no foreign players, so a much shallower talent pool for baseball in general.
And while there was no loss of elite athletes to other sports, there were many elite baseball players who were not allowed to play against Babe Ruth (outside of the occasional exhibition) because of their race.
There is no doubt that the variance in talent from player to player in 1920 was much higher than it is now.
You’ll have a pretty tough time arguing the other side – the number of MLB roster spots has not increased to the same rate as the population of the US. We weren’t pulling international talent to the MLB. Most potential athletes were probably working their family farms. Nutrition (especially for children) was terrible and probably prevented many athletes from realizing their potential. Polio. Training was relatively stone-age compared to present day. WW1 had just gutted an entire generation of young men which would have turned into some great ballplayers.
But really none of those arguments even matter, because a much simpler argument exists:
Baseball wasn’t integrated until 1947.
@bananas – that was the first one I thought of! Barrier to entry? How about skin color
It should be noted that Latin Americans had played in the major leagues not only during but also before Babe Ruth’s time. Lou Castro is believed to have been the first in 1902, while Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida became the first Cubans to reach the majors in 1911. Racism definitely kept out many more, so that’s a fair criticism of the player pool, but dodgerbleu is correct to note that MLB was the only professional sports league of any significance back then. Players were also compensated pretty lavishly for the time period, as Babe Ruth famously made more than President Hoover and justified it by noting that he had a better year than Hoover. There are a lot of variables here to consider, some that have strengthened the quality of the player pool and some that have watered it down. The biggest difference isn’t one of demographics but rather nutrition and training. Athletes are simply in much, much better shape now than they were in those days. They are bigger, stronger, and faster now.
Ruth wasn’t wrong about having a better year than Hoover. Hoover had like a -12.5 million JARP that year (jobs above replacement president).
Babe Ruth famously made $80,000 in 1930 as President Hoover made $75,000. Kershaw makes $32m, Obama makes $400k. The relative valuation of baseball skills compared to alternatives in the economy has risen substantially. 24 CEO’s of publicly traded companies made more money than Kershaw in 2015. Out of thousands of CEO’s.
80k is “only” 1.1m in todays dollars. So Ruth in reality made far less than an average major league player does now.
Baseball salaries changed dramatically when they gained the right free agency. Prior to that they were fairly steady when adjusted for inflation. Regardless, the point is that the top baseball players made more than the top employees in most industries, so there was plenty of incentive to pursue that career if you had the talent.
There’s also the development of the bullpen that goes into this. Strong bullpens negate offense. Early 20th century games were all too often complete games and featured a tiring pitcher holding on to a one run lead for dear life in the 8th and 9th innings against another tired pitcher working on a complete game loss.
He did gain about 200 points of OPS(1.220 vs 1.034) against SP the 3rd & 4th times through, in the 1800 PA of said data that bbref has. But he also hit 1.187 vs RP the 1st time, so if you replace all his SP3&4 ABs with RP1s, he only loses 14 points of OPS. meh.
Until recently all pitchers who required tommy john would have been finished. Now they’re either starting again or they’re bullpen specialists. The only pitchers who lasted back in the day were physical freaks and that doesn’t mean they had a lot of break on their curve.
Maybe there was no loss of elite athletes to other sports, but there was a loss of elite athletes to entirely different industries that paid better… like farming or railroad construction.
Also with virtually no youth development programs, it’s fair to wonder how many kids born in 1900 hit the “genetic lottery” but lived their whole life on a ranch in Texas without ever picking up a baseball.
Can’t we ever just appreciate great players without turning into a race thing?
If the discussion is regarding Babe Ruth vs post-integration MLB players, there is very much a “race thing”‘ that differentiates their accomplishments.
tl:dr Mike Trout is way better than Babe Ruth.
Ruth’s career .690 SLG may be the most unbreakable career mark in baseball, if not sports (with a nod to Jerry Rice’s and Wayne Gretzky’s various records). There have only been 36 SEASONS by players other than Ruth with a SLG higher than that and none by anybody active. Even Pujols’ best in his prime was .671. Luis Gonzalez in 2001 hit .325 with 57 HR, 100 XBH and 419 TB and still came up short at .688
Something that crazy indicates that he really must have played against some garbage teams.
It’s an amazing SLG, but I wouldn’t say unbreakable. A guy retired less than 10 years ago with a career SLG of .607 .
If you are talking all of sports unbreakable records/statistics (and from a similar time as Ruth) Don Bradmans career cricket batting average (Test cricket – i.e. international level) was 99.94
Next on the list are around the low 60s. Elite current players are around the 50 mark.
Don’t know anything about cricket but I’ve read that some guy has completely absurd career numbers – I’m assuming that’s the guy you mentioned.
Nobody is getting to Ruth’s SLG though. Just not going to happen.
I’m pretty sure it’s either Cy’s wins total or Gretzky’s Points total. Gretzky has more assists than any other player has points! Sidney Crosby’s career high in points is 120- he’d have to play nearly 24 full seasons hitting that mark to break Gretzky’s record!
I actually think CY’s win total will be broken as pitching schemes change. It just won’t be by a starter. Eventually we’re going to see starters not go 5 and some middle relievers are going to start winning 30 games a year.
Agree on Gretzky – that’s why I put him and also Jerry RIce’s receiving records. I just don’t see anyone getting to his numbers either
With stem cells coming into play you’ll be surprised how long some pitchers could last. UCL’s are healing miraculously for some pitchers to the point where they could eventually be used as preventative maintenance.
They will change, or eliminate the Wins stat long before RP start getting credit for 30 Wins per season pitching 1-2 innings at a time
Hank Aaron’s career total bases mark is an under the radar contender for toughest to break. If Trout can keep hitting like he does until his early 40s, he might have a chance.
Some folks forget that Ruth broke into MLB as a pitcher, and was awesome. His world series record: 33 innings 3 earned runs… he held the lowest world series era record up only until recently. His pitching stats age 20-24: 84-45 with a 2.16 ERA 1.140 whip. The guy would have been a hall of famer as a pitcher before he started hitting full time IN HIS 6TH SEASON.
Incredible athlete and a transcendent talent.
He was worth 2 war per 200 innings based on a career HR/9 rate of 0.07. “Dead ball era”. That’s not hall of fame.
Regular Season: K-BB% of 0.6% & a FIP- of 100
Postseason: K-BB% of -1.7%(as in negative) and a FIP- of 120
That = a HoF pitcher?
“younger reader” – implying that anyone here was actually alive to watch Ruth play
Mindboggling that Bonds had multiple actual seasons that a hypothetical peak Trout would have.
And Bonds was in a greater offensive environment that discounts his WAR. I would say though that “juiced” Mike Trout may even beat “peak” Mike Trout. So there is that factor.
WAR is adjusted for run environment. The offensive parts of WAR from season to season are directly comparable.
Your first sentence is nonsense, though, since WAR adjusts for that.
To paraphrase Rick James, a steroid is a hell of a drug.
Why didn’t other players use steroids and become 13 WAR player themselves, one wonders.
They were all on roids, just just weren’t as good as Bonds.
GiantsFan14: Do not taint the entirety of the player pool simply because you in your fandom want to make excuses for Bonds by pretending that “everyone was doing it.” Everyone was not doing it. There were many players who played clean. Bonds cheated, and the absurdity of his offensive explosion in his late thirties definitively proved just how massively steroids can improve performance for major league players.
Do people like you really still minimize the impact of steroids? *facepalm* By FanGraphs’ calculations, Bonds’ pre-steroid offensive value peaked at 78.4 in 1993 as a 28 year old. From there, as Bonds entered his early thirties he declined to offensive values in the 61-62 range. As a 36 year old, Bonds recorded an offensive value of 118.0. As a 37 year old, Bonds recorded an offensive value of 108.9. As a 39 year old, Bonds recorded an offensive value 105.7. Steroids increased Bonds’ offensive value by ~80%.
“He declined to offensive values in the 61-62 range”
That statement, alone, is entirely mind-blowing.
Obviously, Babe Ruth was the best player of all time. But…I wonder when I see stuff like this. Like, the rest of the league must have sucked way harder than the rest of the league during, say, 2016.
I remember “Baseball Behind The Numbers” doing some tweaks which brought Bonds and Ruth closer together, relating to quality of opposition, and so on, but I still wonder if they missed something. Or if we ought to invent some new stats that give people born in the last century a chance to break some all-time records. Or change something major about the game and just reset all the stats.
I’m rambling. Which is a byproduct of realising just how good Ruth and Bonds and Trout were and are.
Facing only white ballplayers certainly helped.
People rightfully fawn over Otani coming to the state and maybe he’s a 4 war player when he gets over. Jackie Robinson was a readily available 6 war player. Ernie Banks averaged 6.5 war in his first 7 seasons. Minoso ran at 5 war for a decade.
When Hall of Famers are forced on the sidelines, it’s going to make that talent pool quite a bit worse.
Certainly, although it should be noted that white players have never made up less than 60% of the major leagues and non-Hispanic blacks have never made up more than 18.7%. Meanwhile the number of roster spots has expanded by 87.5%, which means that there are actually more white major league players now than in Babe Ruth’s time. Baseball was the only prominent professional sports league back then so it had little competition for the best athletes. Demographics really shouldn’t be used to minimize Babe Ruth’s accomplishments. Two much more statistically significant effects would be changes in pitch type frequencies along with the employment of specialized bullpens.
More players doesn’t matter if some non-trivial portion of the best players are excluded. Demographics can absolutely be used to diminish Ruth’s accomplishments if the demographics was a deterministic variable of who could and could not compete.
Of course more players matters regardless, as the exclusion of worse players affects the level of competition in a similar yet opposite way as the exclusion of better players.
The whole idea of “replacement level” goes against that. There are a limited number of 6 war talents, there are a functionally unlimited number of replacement players.
Actually “the whole idea of ‘replacement level’ goes against” what you are saying and supports my argument. “Replacement level” is the theoretical best player not currently in the player pool. Basically, it’s measuring the difference between a player within the player pool and someone who would replace that individual in the player pool were they to be removed from it. Let’s indulge a hypothetical to help you understand this. We’re going to take out three 1 WAR players from the 2016 player pool, and in this hypothetical the best three available replacements are steroids-peak Barry Bonds, you, and me. According to you that would raise the replacement level when in actuality it would lower the replacement level because the three players removed were all above the previous replacement level whereas you and I would be well below it. Replacement level is defined by the very bottom of the player pool. The top actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the replacement level, just the amount of value created above replacement.
That’s true but we can still be impressed by how much better Ruth was than everybody else. He was still just way better than everybody else that was allowed to play.
I’m not trying to take anything away from Babe Ruth. But, I honestly feel that Trout putting up a 9.4 WAR season in 2016 is far more impressive than Babe Ruth putting up a 15 WAR season in 1923.
That is why everything has to be based on the time period. Is Mike Trout likely the best actual player of all time based on talent level? Yes. But relative to the time period he still cannot compare to Babe Ruth. Its like peak Wilt Chamberlin. He was probably a far worse player than Demarcus Cousins, but that is why you base everything on the time period.
Well, when I think about the Wilt vs Demarcus debate I do however feel I might have slighted Wilt a tiny bit. Wilt could run a 10.5 100m barefoot and hold up 2 different 200lb man by the neck at the same time. So maybe I was doing him a disservice.
Plus he slept with 20,000 women, so imagine his stats if he wasn’t sapping his stamina by constantly bumping fuzz?
You don’t need to wonder. “Average” and “Replacement” were definitely worse in the 20s than they are now. No way to know for sure how good Ruth would be if you just dropped him into the league today, of course, but 15 WAR seems pretty unlikely.
I also think he got away with that huge heavy bat of his precisely because he was strong enough to do so while still being able to catch up to what passed for fastballs back then. It also led to all those tape measure shots (as described in that book).
He tries swinging lumber like that today, and he’s Dave Kingman-in an off year.
Right. Walter Johnson supposedly threw 91 MPH, and that was considered some serious heat. That’s basically Kyle Hendricks if he didn’t have a changeup. Batting practice.
Well yeah, players have better access to nutrition and training. But this goes for the hitters, too.
Pitchers also threw a bazilion pitches a game back then. Ruth would see a tonne of left-handed relievers (and closers) if he played today.
Of course, Babe Ruth was also a very good pitcher. I believe he also stole home 10 times in his career.
According to the film/documentary “Fastball”, Walter Johnson was a “flame thrower” who threw 83.1818 mph. (122 ft per sec.)
In his first time facing Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb is quoted as saying, “He threw the ball so fast it hissed like a train as it went by”. Hence the nickname “Big Train”.
What would he have said about 105 mph coming at him?
That was one estimate, whereas other estimates such as the motorcycle test and the ballistic pendulum estimated that his fastball reached 99.7 miles per hour. Because there were no accurate means of measuring pitch velocity back then, there’s no way to know for sure but I imagine that the average fastball velocity was only a little lower than it was a decade ago, as once reliable measures were developed that figure remained pretty steady for a long period of time before jumping up in the last ten years.
Very true, JD. After researching a bit more, I dug this up, regarding my original comment above-
“A special chronograph was used for this purpose, one that was used by army to measure the speed of bullets at that time. This cronograph was a 2 x 2 feet large and 15 feet long tunnel of copper wires ending at a steel plate. It measured the speed of the ball as it passed the front end of the tunnel until it smashed into a steel plate at the end of the tunnel. The first-ever measured pitching velocities were 83 mph (Walter Johnson) and 77 mph (Nap Rucker). As the device measured the pitches at the end of their flight, after they’d lost several miles per hour of initial speed, one could hardly say the measurements were accurate or comparable to the later measurement efforts”.
That came from: “The Historic Quest For Speed In Baseball”
Scoutee.com
I stand corrected.
Documentary on Netflix (Fastball) dealt with this by accounting for something like 1mph lost every ten feet, and recalculated Nolan Ryan’s dastest pitch at 108 mph.
So would that mean that Walter Johnson’s recorded speed of 83mph is still only around 89mph, after this adjustment?
Johnson (and pretty much everyone up until the 60’s) had thier pitch speed clocked at the plate. Today all speeds are clocked a 50′ (if memory serves). Which is a pretty significant difference as a pitch will lose as much as 10 mph by the time it hits the plate.
By modern measurments Johnson’s 91 mph would have likely clocked in the upper 90’s and maybe even triple digits.
I think if Babe Ruth played today with modern training and competition, he would be be somewhere between Adam Dunn and Jim Thome in terms of value and playing style.
jered weaver has nightmares about this scenario
I like that to think that God, who loves his children, will provide for just such hypothetical scenarios in the sweet hereafter. In fact, my idea of heaven, is viewing and playing hypothetical contests, baseball and otherwise, forever and ever. Thank you.
This article proves the league has learned that the IBB is a really dumb strategic play.
Barry Bonds 5 year peak: 306 IBB
Mike Trout 5 year peak: 46 IBB
But but…. that one time Buck Showalter did it with the bases loaded and it worked!
Peak Trout isn’t real.
“Mike Trout 5 year peak” = 2012-2016.
“Barry Bonds 5 year peak” = 2000-2004
Yes, a significantly worse hitter was intentionally walked fewer times than Bonds. Explain once again how that’s a conclusion you can draw from this article and also how that proves IBB is a really dumb strategic play.
Nah, it just shows when you hit a HR in >11% of your ABs, the league gets really sick of giving up HR to you. Especially when you still hit .330 and the rest of your team sucks. It’s a testament how bad the hitting SF put around Bonds was. Look at the 04 roster: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2004&month=0&season1=2004&ind=0&team=30&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0
Last year Trumbo HRd in 7.7% of his ABs. Bonds from 01-04 was 15.3%,11.4%,11.5%,12.1%
This is also just a testament to bonds. Give him an extra 250 chances to swing the bat and by his peak numbers that’s another 25-35 HRs. He’s the one batter where it might actually make sense to walk him.
Any insight to what a peak joey votto season could look like? After two straight seasons where he was practically inhuman in the second half, what if he pulled it together earlier in the season? What if WBC is the trick? Could he be the first hitter since Gwynn generate excitement towards a run at ,400?
37 errors. I kid!
“first hitter since Gwynn”
Ichiro once batted .372 over a full season.
For the record, Tony Gwynn hit .394 in 1994. Ichiro was a heck of a hitter (as evidence by the single season hit record), but .372 is not exactly a run at .400. I am talking relevant in September run at Williams. If it weren’t for the strike, what could have been. When the season ended, he was 3 hits short.
Well, if he put together 2nd half 2015 and 2nd half 2016, he’d have close to the best offensive season ever, I think. 1B defensive adjustments and no base running value would probably cap him at like 9 WAR, maybe. Votto’s peak may be less than Trout’s most likely outcome. Astounding.
I’m with adlenon–I want to read peak Votto
Just ran the numbers like was done above (using Votto’s 2015/2016 2nd halves, then adjusting to the same 716 PA)… I get about 96 RAA for Votto, which includes not-so-great defense and not-so-great base running, and which comes with a slash line of .384/.513/.642 with 33 HR and a wOBA of .481 and a wRC+ of 207. So 96/9.778 is 9.8 WAR. But, if he had bad defense and bad base running, like last year, you’re right back down to around 9.0 WAR theoretical max for an on-fire Votto.
I think the first .500 OBP season since Bonds is more realistic.
Yeah, I think he’d be a shoe-in to OBP .500 if he’d been a Rockie. Take a lifetime .359 BABIP guy who walks 18% of the time and toss him in Coors? Game over.
I like the attempt to peg peak Mike Trout. Thing is I could see him hitting a bit better than what’s projected. Something to the tune of .365/.490/.680 But that’s just another tricky part of baseball. Trying to predict how much better a player can be. Just another reason the game is the best. I bet no one expected Murphy to hit what he did this past season.
This. While I thoroughly enjoyed this article, should’t the idea to find “Peak Year” be based on other players who enjoyed peak years? If you take a sampling of players with clear peak years (Ellsbury, Upton, Murphy, etc) and then try to figure out how much they improved their rate stats over their career to that point, then applied the same improvements to Trout, wouldn’t that be a better way to find “Peak Trout”?
I think he addressed this by saying Trout has less upward mobility since his baseline is so much higher. There’s a theoretical cap, for example, on BABIP. The closer you already are to that cap, the less room for improvement.
It’s kind of a different question. In those seasons, the players had results they’d never shown hints of before. That might happen, and Trout might hit 60 homers out of nowhere, but there’s no reason to expect it. This exercise doesn’t require him to do anything he hasn’t already proven he can. This is like a scouting report overall future potential, looking at what a player might be if he consistently got to all the tools he’s only flashed so far.
I was thinking the same thing – the article makes a reasoned attempt to determine if Trout played to the best of his abilities. But what if he had a FLUKE year. Those happen all the time – Luis Gonzalez in 2001, Norm Cash in 1961, Davey Johnson in 1973, etc. Guy has the year where a few extra flares fall in, a few extra wall-scrapers go over, he gets a few extra ball/strike calls go his way and on top of all that pays really, really well. Imagine him putting up the slash line you mentioned – 365/490/680 – in a bad hitter’s park. Scary.
ACtually Trout has already had a fluke year in one respect. I remember one article here at Fangraphs about how his outstanding defensive numbers in his rookie year were bouyed by like 4 HR robberies. Those rate very highly in the advanced stats and dragged his numbers way up. However those plays just aren’t sustainable year-in, year-out.
Brady Anderson was not the first guy who came to mind when you thought of a fluke year?
Dbacks fan so I’ll always remember Gonzo’s 2001. Anderson was definitely one. Rich Aurilia is another great example – he’s right in the middle of a perfectly fine but far from great 15 year career and wham! .324 with 37 bombs in 2001. Then of course there is 1987 when half of baseball had their career year.
I’ve always been fascinated by fluke years. I’d have to dig it up but baseball prospectus did a great piece on fluke years and noted that half the 1970 All-Star teams were guys having fluke years.
Can someone do a “Peak Eric Davis”? a what could have been…
One of my favorite “what ifs?” 27HR 80SB in 86 and 37HR 50SB in 87.
Fun article. But I’m not sold that Trout’s 5-year consistency makes a great leap implausible.
The consistency of his wRC+ or OPS+ hides significant variation in the underlying rates. You touch on that while building his “dream” season from incremental upgrades in his peak-to-date rates. But why should we think that someone who hit 41 HRs at age 23 isn’t quite capable of 50+? Or that someone who hit .326 at age 20 couldn’t hit .360? And why couldn’t he do both in the same year?
I just don’t think we can fit Trout in a box yet. There was a poem in the Spalding Guide the year after Ruth first shattered the HR record, which ended thusly:
“To beat that “29”
Will take some breadth of shoulder,
And when they put a “30” up
Well–we’ll most likely be some older.”
Ruth was going on 25 at the time.
Traded for Trout in my OOTP game, put him in Coors… Peak Trout
.374/.489/.761 64 HR 169 RBI. 227 OPS + and 15.6 WAR
I think this outcome from trout would be extremely unlikely, if only due to having to sacrifice certain elements of his game to make improvements in others. To increase his ISO its most likely he would have to swing at borderline fastballs more often which increases his SO rate and reducing Obp. A decrease in singles would also lead to less opportunities to steal and reduce his impact on bsr.
This is why harpers 2015 was so good, he hit for mammoth obp, walked almost 20% and slugged 42 homers. Even with these stats it makes it hard for Harper to hit doubles so there’s always a tradeoff
What is fascinating about Trout is that at 24, he got smarter, which made him better. When he was young (!), teams figured out that they could get him out on high hard stuff, which is why he had so many KO’s. He’s learned how to lay off some of those pitches and hit the others. Reason his walks have increased. So the gist of the article is really – what happens if he keeps on working to improve? Why can’t he put up better numbers?