By Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-biggest-trout-in-baseballs-pond.html
We presume weather bug Mike Trout isn't
pointing to precipitation, even if he might
just have punched a hole in the sky with
a home run . . .Learning is presumed ongoing from birth until death but we humans deceive ourselves into thinking we've learned all we can or need to learn about certain phenomena, whether sociopolitical, scientific, spiritual, or sporting. In the latter category comes Mike Trout, who seems to thrive on serving up heaping helpings of you-ain't-seen-nothing-yet as his already off the charts career progresses.
At just about every moment we think we know whatever can be known about the young man from New Jersey, who practises his profession from a base adjacent to Disneyland and threatens to conquer the World of Tomorrow, he produces a satchel full of ways to disabuse us.
He makes Felix the Cat's magic bag of tricks and Mary Poppins's carpetbag each resemble a recycled vacuum cleaner bag. It comes forth now that Trout has reached base 182 times this season, but if you ask how often he's been thrown out trying to advance when he gets there, the answer may take more than a spoonful of sugar to swallow for the opposition.
The answer is once.
Add to that his 2018 on-base percentage (.455), his OPS (on base plus slugging: 1.082), his walk rate (19 percent), his stolen base rate (93 percent), and his home run rate, considering that at this writing he's on the track to hit 45 for the season, which would be his career high thus far. In his eighth year of major league play, at age 26, during which he is also on the track to pass the highest-known single season total of wins above a replacement-level player, Babe Ruth's 14.1 for 1923.
Not very many people beside sportswriters, baseball broadcasters, statisticians, and Angel fans seem to realise what they're watching and with whom they're dealing. Trout doesn't play in an impossibly small market, and he's arguably the biggest thing in southern California sports not named LeBron James (a freshly-minted Los Angeles Laker) or any known Los Angeles Dodger. But baseball stills seems clueless for promoting a player doing everything right at the plate and on the field that the game's gawdsakers (from H.G. Wells:
For gawdsakes let's so something!) say has gone into a coma.
If you're looking for a player today who can hit 'em where they ain't, Trout has that in hand and in pocket, with 45 of his 102 hits so far this season going for extra bases and with a .321 batting average when he hits with men on base this year, twelve points above his lifetime average in those situations. For his career, Trout hits .354 up the middle and the other way (right field, in his case) with more hits up the middle (606) than pulled (361) or hit the other way. (174.)
Let the opposition think they can spot his lone weakness at the plate and Trout will give himself and them an advanced re-education on the spot, as Mariners manager Scott Servais, a former Angels coach, learned the hard way on 11 June. Since Trout is thought to be at his most vulnerable on pitches up and away, Servais and his relief pitcher Ryan Cook thought they could feed and starve him on such a diet.
Foul back, swing and miss, ball one, ball two, and a drive so far over the center field fence that finding the ball required a search party with bloodhounds. (It was the longest homer hit to date in 2018.) That the Mariners held on to win that game anyway was almost beside the point after Trout wrecked perhaps the one tactical advantage any pitcher still had when facing him, which reminds me further that he led the American League in intentional walks last year with 15 but has two more than that this year, so far.
Would it have mattered which particular pitches Cook offered?
Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci unearths the remarkable statistics showing that, when you throw Trout the kind of pitches that normally deprive hitters of their balance, they become part of his wheelhouse. He slugs .968 when thrown changeups, .667 when thrown split-finger fastballs, and .526 when thrown curve balls.
Men blessed with greatness this profound often prove to be the kind of personalities that evoke regret for such a blessing's waste, but Trout doesn't seem to be one of those men. His reputation in the Angels' clubhouse and around southern California is that he's the same bright, sunny, friendly creature after the occasional only-too-human game as he is on days he goes 4-for-4 with a couple of runs batted in and maybe a launch over the fence while he's at it.
He's the Angels' undisputed clubhouse tone-setter who's also renowned around the league for leading his team and maybe most others in signing autographs or posing for pictures with fans, particularly children, remembering his New Jersey boyhood when it made his day to land autographs from assorted Phillies.
And if he catches himself or is confronted with any shortfall in any part of his game, he will call for the analytics, yank the appropriate coach to one side, ask to be shown his competitors' approaches, and get to work retooling himself accordingly to make it work for Mike Trout's approach.
Trout is where Willie Mays meets Ernie Banks, a transdimensional talent with the patience of Job and more sense of humour, though it should be recorded that neither of them proposed to their wives by hiring a skywriting airplane to write the proposal in the skies.
Twenty-four teams have won postseason games since Trout emerged with the Angels, but the Angels aren't one of those teams. The one time they reached a postseason with him, they were swept by the Royals in round one, with Trout possibly overwhelmed by the circumstance and setting for the only time in his still-young career.
The Angels' postseason absence otherwise is hardly Trout's fault, but even Hall of Famers need a little postseason exposure to become more than their home port's stars, which is too often missed by those lamenting baseball's actual or alleged marketing weaknesses. And the Angels' window for getting to a postseason to show their all-time greatest position player isn't as big or wide as you might think.
Trout has two more years to go on the $144 million extension he signed after 2014. When that deal expires he's likely to be a fully-qualified Hall of Famer in waiting. He already scores 108 on the Bill James Hall of Fame hitting monitor where the average Hall of Famer meets 100; he meets 39 of the James Hall of Fame batting standards; he's going to pass Mickey Mantle for third place on the list of most WAR for eight-year players, behind only Ted Williams and Albert Pujols.
And he'll be a mere 28 years old in 2014. The four most similar hitters to him through this age are, in ascending order, Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Frank Robinson. This is like being a songwriter with your top four ascending comparisons being Robert Johnson, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Duke Ellington.
There's nothing to indicate Trout won't keep the foregoing up outside the injuries he incurs now and then, though one such probably cost him a third Most Valuable Player award last year. You almost don't want to know what the speculation will be on his first free agency should he continue playing as he has and does.
It may be enough to make the season-opening speculation on Bryce Harper and Manny Machado resemble penny-ante poker with an extra joker in the deck. This earnest young man whose surname is that of a freshwater food fish and who plays baseball like a smiling hybrid between a barracuda and a tigerfish has never indicated any desire to leave the Angels, but the seven card stud game liable to greet him after 2014 is just as liable to have stakes producing temptations Satan himself couldn't formulate.
A player who hits changeups and curveballs to a combined .747 batting average on those pitches would leave Ol' Splitfoot even more badly overmatched than Trout leaves the pitchers he uses, misuses, and abuses. So far as anyone knows, there are only two things Trout can't do. He can't resist the opportunity to analyse and predict the weather (his hobby); and, he can't pitch.
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