Los Angeles Angels Center Fielder Mike Trout made his major league debut at age 19 in 2011, and by 2012 he was already declared the best all-around player in baseball.
As the 2010’s progressed Trout continued to post gaudy numbers. Yet the soft-spoken Toms River, NJ product never really caught on with fans or the general public. Throughout much of this time, names like Alex Rodriguez, Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder dominated the headlines.
Why did Trout never really turn into the superstar his numbers would indicate? Part of it is personality, of course, as the quiet and clean-cut Trout didn’t offers fans much fun to hold onto.
But a major part is the nature of his greatness.
Because, you see, Trout is an analytics darling. This means he excels at the baseball statistics that the current crop of young, mathematically-inclined general managers that dominate baseball today favor.
Specifically, Trout has put up unbelievable numbers in three key analytics that general managers value. The first is “on-base-percentage” (OBP). This is the total percentage of at-bats a batter has divided by how many times he actually gets on base, either through a hit or a walk or a hit-by-pitch.
So an OBP of .350 to .400 is considered very good to excellent. And Trout has consistently posted OBP’s of .400 to .450., which is stratospherically good. So when Mike Trout comes to the plate to hit, there’s a very good chance he’s going to get on base.
The second key analytics statistics Trout excels at is slugging percentage (SLG). SLG measures the productivity of a hitter. It’s calculated as total bases divided by at bats. So unlike batting average, slugging percentage puts more import on extra-base hits. Doubles, triples, and home runs are worth more than singles. The typical range of SLG is .400 to .600, with anything above .500 considered good to excellent. Since 2012, Trout has averaged an SLG of .550 to .650, which is astronomically good.
Essentially what this tells us is that Trout has power.
The third key analytics statistic that Trout is great at is “on-base-plus-slugging,” or OPS. OPS calculates the sum of a player’s on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Basically it measures if a player can get on base (OBP) and also hit for power (SLG). OPS among major leaguers typically ranges from .700 to .900. Since 2012, Trout has averaged a .950 to .1100 OPS. These are once again incredible numbers.
So this tells us that Trout has both a good eye at the plate, and power when he makes contact.
Any way you look at these three key analytics, it’s hard not to say that Trout is one of the game’s great, if not greatest, players.
But I’m from Generation X, and I grew up in the 1980’s. Trout, by contrast, and many of the media who cover him, are millennials.
In my day, we didn’t have all these fancy analytics like OPS. And even when we did, very little attention was paid to them.
What we had were the hard-core, concrete statistics of home runs (HR), runs-batted-in (RBI), and batting-average (BA). Those statistics were what was on the back of a player’s baseball card. Period.
By those measures, which I believe are still the most important ones, Trout falls way short as far as being the best player in baseball.
Let’s start with batting average (BA).
Traditionally, a BA above .300 is considered good to excellent. Trout has batted over .300 five times in his career. But his career average is only .306. What it comes down to is that he’s barely cleared .300 several times, and that’s it.
In 1977, the great Rod Carew hit .388. Wade Boggs hit .368 in 1985, and Boggs routinely hit over .350. The beloved and dearly missed Tony Gwynn hit .372 in 1997. In general in the 80’s and 90’s players routinely hit .330 to .370.
By contrast, Trout’s highest average ever was .326 in 2012, and he typically hovers around .305 to .310 in any given year.
So is Trout anywhere near the titans of the 80’s and 90’s when it comes to batting average, which is what really matters?
This Gen-X’er says no f-in way.
The next major statistic of Generation X, as opposed to millennial and the analytics crowd, is home runs (HR). We all know what those are. It’s those towering shots that clear the outfield wall.
Home Runs also famously provided the fodder for the 90’s Nike commercial where Hall of Fame Atlanta Braves pitchers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine complain that St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire is getting all the attention for hitting home runs in an exhibition workout.
Finally, after the pitchers lift weights heavily and begin hitting home runs, they gain the attention of some beautiful women. Glavine smiles and says to Maddux: “Chicks dig the long ball.”
So how has Trout done with those iconic long balls? The answer is not so great. When I was 13 and a die-hard Mets fan in 1987, one of my heroes, Darryl Strawberry, hit 39 HR. In the same year, Mark McGwire and Andre Dawson both hit 49.Cecil Fielder hit 51 in 1990, the first to hit over 50 since George Foster in 1977.
Then came the 1994 labor strike, followed by a revival as Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire battled it out in 1998 to break Roger Maris’s 1961 record of 61 home runs. Sosa finished with 66, and McGwire finished with a whopping 70.
This record was soon broken by the great Barry Bonds, who hit 73 home runs in 2001.
McGwire, Sosa and Bonds have all been linked to steroids in one way or another, but their accomplishments stand for themselves.
What about Mike Trout’s home run numbers? He has 42 HR this season. His previous high is 41. And he averages in the low 30’s, with a career total of 282 in 9 years, on pace for roughly 400 in 15 years.
Considering Barry Bonds’ all-time HR record is 762, Trout’s numbers pale in comparison. In fact they pale in comparison with all the great home run hitters of the 80’s and 90’s, and indeed of all eras.
So this is a fail for Trout as well.
The last key statistic of Generation X is runs-batted-in, or RBI. This is when a hitter gets a hit of any kind, be it single, double, triple or home run, that causes one of his teammates already on base to score.
Because the traditional statistics matter just as much, if not more.
So in general, anything over 100 RBI is considered a good number. Juan Gonzalez of the Texas Rangers hit 157 RBI in 1998. Sammy Sosa hit 160 RBI in 2001. The great Alex Rodriguez — steroids or not — hit 156 RBI in 2007.
What about Mike Trout? His highest RBI total was 111, in 2014. Apart from that, he’s reached 100 RBI only one other time, in 2016. He’s also had a bunch of RBI seasons in the 70’s and 80’s.
Do these numbers lool like those of a player who can measure up to great run-producing hitters such as Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Mark McGwire?
Once again, this Gen X’er says no f-in way, analytics be damned.
So now you might ask what we’ve learned from this brief study in analytics versus traditional hard statistics when it comes to the relative greatness of Mike Trout?
What it tells us is that Trout is a good-to-very-good player, but nowhere near the greats of the 80’s and 90’s, or even his great contemporaries such as Christian Yelich, Pete Alonso, Cody Bellinger and Miguel Cabrera.
So take that Mike Trout! Either step up your game and put up real numbers, or admit to being a pretender.
As for the sports media and baseball general managers out there, let’s exercise a little caution before anointing the next “all-around best player” based solely on analytics.
That’s it. I said what I wanted to say.
See you at the ballpark.
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