The Joe Sheehan Newsletter
Vol. V, No. 91
September 13, 2013
Mike Trout is playing out the string in Orange County as the best player in baseball. Last night in Toronto, he doubled in the tiebreaking run, the final run in a 4-3 Angels win. The night before, he walked and scored twice, including a game-tying run in the fourth and the game-winning run in the eighth. Every day, Trout does something to make the Angels better, does something to help them win, and he does it better than anyone else in the game. It's a shame that the Angels' poor pitching and $50 million worth of free-agent money has relegated Trout's work to the back end of nightly highlight shows, where some games get a single clip and others just get the H/R/E full-screen that reminds you that, yes, the Mariners are still playing out their schedule.
The numbers are astounding. Trout is batting .335/.437/.567. He leads the AL in hits and walks -- a combination done just four times before, just once in 50 years. (The players are Rogers Hornsby in 1924, Richie Ashburn in 1958, Carl Yastzemski in 1963 and Lenny Dykstra in 1993.) He leads MLB in wins above replacement for the second straight season. I was one of the people who looked at Trout's 2012 performance and saw ways in which he would have to be worse in 2013. Trout batted .383 on balls in play in '12; that had to come down. He's batting .391 on balls in play this year. Sure, he's dipped from 49/5 SB/CS to 32/7, but that still makes him a plus basestealer. His defensive numbers aren't quite as impressive, which serves as a reminder that single-season defensive numbers have the year-to-year variance of statistics like batting average -- a number that can bounce around a lot.
What excites me, as a plate-discipline honk, is that Trout has improved both his contact rate and his walk rate at 21. He's learning to hone in on the pitches he can drive, willing to take a walk when that pitch doesn't show up. In a season where everything else went wrong for the Angels, Trout might have gone the other way, pressed harder at the plate in an effort to make up for the loss of Albert Pujols and the poor performance of Josh Hamilton. That he didn't shows the kind of special talent and skill we're dealing with here.
By following up his 2012 season with another monster year, Trout has elevated himself into a very small group. Just ten position players have accumulated 20 bWAR through the age of 22. The list includes Trout, six Hall of Famers, two who would be there on merit (Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr.) and Vada Pinson. The low end on the Hall of Famer list is Mel Ott. Acknowledging the presence of Pinson -- who has his Hall supporters -- the start to Trout's career marks him as a potential all-time great, and he's giving up a full season to that group. You have to give the other guys a head start, because Mike Trout is the greatest young player in baseball history. Here's the list of position players to produce 15 bWAR through age 21:
Mike Trout 20.0
Mel Ott 17.9
Ty Cobb 15.7
Al Kaline 15.5
Ken Griffey 15.5
Mike Trout has a four-win head start on Ty Cobb through age 21. The mind boggles.
Take the age element out of it, and Trout keeps his great company. Trout has 19.3 bWAR in 2012 and 2013, edging him into the 40 best two-year stretches ever. A two-year bWAR of 20 has been reached just 30 times by 13 players, most recently by Barry Bonds in both 2001-02 and 2002-03. Babe Ruth did it seven times. Every single player with a better two-year stretch than Trout is in the Hall of Fame or is Barry Bonds, and the Hall of Famers aren't Tommy McCarthy and Jim Rice. Go down the list, and the company doesn't change much. Twenty-five players have produced 18 bWAR over two years. The only ones not in the Hall of Fame are Bonds, Rodriguez and Joe Jackson. The worst players in that group are guys like Ernie Banks and Robin Yount. Lower the bar to something like "consecutive seasons of at least 8 bWAR" and you have a bunch of Hall of Famers, the three exceptions above, Albert Pujols, Chase Utley and Snuffy Stirnweiss -- and Stirnweiss' big years came in the war-depleted '44 and '45 campaigns.
No position player has ever been as good as Mike Trout has been in 2012 and 2013 and not gone on to be fully qualified for the Hall of Fame. Most of the players to perform as well as Trout over two years have been baseball legends. Here's a slice of the two-year bWAR list centered on Trout's 2012-13:
Willie Mays 1954-55 19.6
Jimmie Foxx 1932-33 19.6
Barry Bonds 2000-01 19.6
Honus Wagner 1905-06 19.4
Ty Cobb 1916-17 19.4
Mike Trout 2012-13 19.3
Babe Ruth 1921-22 19.2
Willie Mays 1961-62 19.2
Rogers Hornsby 1928-29 19.2
Lou Gehrig 1934-35 19.1
Cal Ripken 1990-91 19.0
That's Mike Trout's peer group.
In thinking about Mike Trout, picture him going over the wall to rob a homer or driving a fastball into the left-field grandstand. See him going first to third, first to home. Heck, think about these numbers I've presented, and the names in this article, the greatest players in baseball history.
Think about any of that, but don't think of three letters that have consumed far too much of the conversation during Trout's career. They don't matter. Mike Trout's greatness is about baseball, not ballots