Question Trout? Is that even legal? Apparently it is because that is exactly what I am going to do. Or at least that is what I am going to attempt to do because there is a pretty good chance that the baseball gods will smite me with a lightning bolt before I finish writing this artic-
What’s with all the strikeouts?
Ah, yes, how brave of me to ask the question which was asked of Trout roughly 10,000 times throughout the season. His whiff rate went through the roof this season, as we all heard ad nauseam. Sometimes these things happen, but what was so concerning about it to me was that things only got worse as the season progressed.
Trout was renowned for his ability to make adjustments at the plate, so for the strikeout issue to get worse as the season went on was actually quite surprising. I don’t know if it is worrisome though.
He struck out a ton this season, but he still was the best offensive player in baseball. His numbers came down a bit from his first two years, but that may have been an inevitable regression anyway. Trout is still too young for us to be worried that his body is breaking down or that he’s losing bat speed. The real issue appears to simply be that teams finally scouted Trout into the ground and identified a way he could be attacked. That would be pitching him up in the zone.
In the second half, in particular, teams really started to pound Trout up in the zone. It caused his strikeouts to escalate and his overall production to diminish. It was pretty clear what pitchers were trying to do, but Trout couldn’t do much about it other than hope they missed down. One would think that he’d figure it out and adjust before long, but so far he hasn’t. He obviously can still succeed in spite of this, but it sure would make everyone feel better if he worked to close this hole in his swing this offseason.
Where’d all his stolen bases go?
That depends on who you believe. According to Scioscia, Trout eased off on the steals because pitchers were paying especially close attention to him. They probably were, but Trout is so fast and such a high percentage base stealer, that it shouldn’t have shut his running game down so much. Teams pay an inordinate amount of attention to all the top base stealers, yet they are all able to continue stealing at a high frequency and doing so successfully.
If you believe Jerry Dipoto, and I do, it appears to be a conscious choice by Trout and/or the organization for him to steal less in order to preserve his body. We tend to forget that Mike Trout is not your typical burner. He’s 6’2″ and 230+ pounds, not 5’9″ and 165 pounds. That’s a lot of additional wear and tear he puts on his legs. As he morphs into an elite slugger, he’s going to sacrifice his steals so that he can maintain his health and ability to slug. As we saw a few times this year, Trout’s superhuman abilities do not make him immune to nagging injuries as he dealt with back and hamstring issues at various points of the season.
Really though, the stolen base thing is pretty overblown. He still grades out quite highly as a baserunner in terms of taking the extra base, but because stolen bases are one of the few accessible stats for baserunning, it scares us into thinking that he’s slowing down or not being as valuable on the bases. While he’s definitely leaving some value on the field by not attempting more steals, it isn’t as if he’s suddenly turned into a Molina brother on the basepaths.
Why are his splits better against right-handed pitching?
For the third straight year, Mike Trout had better numbers against right-handed pitching (168 wRC+) than left-handed pitching (164 wRC+). Granted it was very close, just like it was in 2013, but it remains a statistical oddity. I don’t know that it is anything other than randomness, but for some reason Trout has more power against righties and strikes out less against them, by a marginal amount.
My best guess, and it is only a guess, is that lefties appear to be more capable of exploiting Trout’s weakness up in the zone. The also seem to do a better job of staying out of the bottom half of the zone, where Trout is most dangerous. Lefties still aren’t good against him, but he isn’t destroying them anymore than righties, as you’d expect. Or maybe he is destroying lefties, but he’s just so dang good that he’s destroying righties just as much.
Is the “Mike Trout can’t hit in the clutch” narrative dead yet?
This was a thing coming into the season, for some reason. He’s always had good numbers with runners in scoring position, but in 2013, he only had a .710 OPS in high leverage situations. I’m honestly not sure how many people who trumpeted the “unclutch” tag were aware of that so much as aware of the fact that he didn’t have a big late-inning moment on his resume.
Well, that’s over now. Trout had a walk-off dinger early in the year and that memorable homer off of Chris Sale. He did some other “clutch” stuff too, but those were just the first ones that came to mind for me. Overall, he was a terror in high leverage with a 1.240 OPS. That looks pretty clutch to me, and I don’t even think that “clutch” is a real thing.
So, yeah, the narrative is dead. OK, maybe it is only mostly dead because his poor postseason is sure to be mentioned a few times until Trout next reaches the playoffs.
Why am I being so damn critical of the greatest player on the planet?
You’re right. This may not have been his best year, but Trout is still going to runaway with the MVP. I’ll go back to shamelessly stroking Trout now, just like the rest of the internet.
Final Answer
Mike Trout is incredibly good, but he isn’t perfect. I think that we are just now learning this, which is why his flaws seem so dramatic even though they really aren’t.
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