Mike Trout needs his own thread

75mph changeup = line-drive HR to left

four hits today

Noticed that he's almost exactly where he was last year in terms of basic slash stats:

2012 -- .326/.399/.564
2013 -- .320/.399/.560

His HR and SB are down a little, 2B and 3B way up.

why is there no youtube compilation of mike trout triples?

4-4 with 2 walks last night, up to .331/.412/.568 and leads fWAR by 0.4 wins

18 walks in his last 10 games

David Cameron @DCameronFG
Through age-21 season, by wRC+, Mike Trout is the best hitter of all time, edging out Foxx and Williams.

David Cameron @DCameronFG
That's just hitting. No baserunning, no fielding, just hitting. Trout has been better than Ted Williams at hitting.

seeing him play next week

I saw him before his rookie year! Batting ninth!

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ANA/ANA201107090.shtml

...

Two-run homer first time up tonight. If it weren't for that (still weird) -1.4 defensive number, he'd probably be on his way to about a 12.0 WAR for the year.

Angels have to be trying to lock him up for like decade.

Two-run homer first time up tonight. If it weren't for that (still weird) -1.4 defensive number, he'd probably be on his way to about a 12.0 WAR for the year.

― clemenza, Wednesday, August 7, 2013 10:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fangraphs is much kinder, but even they have him as a neutral defender rather than a huge minus.

anyway OPS above 1.000 now - .333/.424/.580

just turned 22 yesterday btw

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/happy-22nd-birthday-mike-trout-2/

re: mookie's post. look at that list. nothing but inner-circle guys

I wonder if the guy mistakenly left A-Rod off the list. Baseball Reference has him at 14.3 through age 21, which would safely put him on there. Is there that much difference between the two methods?

Just to be annoyingly nitpicky, I'm not sure I'd call Arky Vaughan inner-circle. On the merits, maybe, although his numbers were mostly compiled in the '30s. In the popular imagination, no. He's just not that famous.

he was one of Nixon's all-time shortstops!

"Goddamit, Bob, I don't care about the Negro in Chicago or those two guys from Jew York City--give me Arky Vaughan."

the list is sorted by wRC+ - i'm not sure how to calculate that but a-rod's might not have been above vaughn's 131 if you count his first two full seasons plus his assorted call-ups prior to that

this was a really great read:
http://thelinedrive.com/2012/09/19/the-day-i-pegged-mike-trout/

Not the best time for A-Rod testimonials, but when I was checking his numbers, I'd forgotten he only played 146 games in his sort-of-rookie season. Not nearly as abbreviated as Trout's 2012, but if you give back even 10 of those 16 missing games, he almost surely would have had 400 total bases (379 for the year).

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/70717/mike-trouts-ridiculous-encore-performance

Similar to the Fangraphs piece above, but ranked by WAR, so A-Rod's high. The inner-circleness holds until #12, where Vada Pinson shows up. (Pinson's prolonged drift into retirement at age 36 has always fascinated me.)

http://mlb.si.com/2013/08/08/mike-trout-birthday-angels/

trout somehow just leapfrogged everyone else and now leads the league in bWAR?

hm, looks like he's gone from -1.5 dWAR to -1.1 over the past week. robbing that home run a couple nights ago probably helped

Is there a good explanation for the over 3 dWAR swing between last year and this year? Is Trout really not making that many plays this year that your replacement level player would (and that he did last year)?

I think the 2.1 dWAR from last year is actually wackier than the minus 1.1 from this year.

there have been a few articles about it - it basically boils down to the fact that he had like 4 incredible home run robs in like 5 months last year and, until yesterday, had none so far this year. it is pretty suspect that his dWAR numbers are so bad (at least on b-r) given his speed. fangraphs had him as a neutral defender up until a couple days ago

So robbing a home run = a 1/4 of a win? That seems more suspect to me than his dWAR #s this year since I thought one win basically boiled down to 10 runs above replacement.

Actually even more than a 1/4 since that was an explanation for a nearly 4 dWAR swing.

I love the idea of defensive metrics like WAR but swings like this are a lot harder to understand than their offensive counterparts.

I've been following Trout and Cabrera on Baseball Reference, and here's something I don't quite understand. I knew, once Trout got hot (and especially with Cabrera missing games), it was only a matter of time before Trout moved to the top of the list. Today seems like an odd day for it to happen, though Yesterday, Cabrera was up 6.2 to 6.1; this morning, it's Trout 6.4, Cabrera 6.2.

Trout had an okay game yesterday: 0-2, but he drew two walks and stole two bases. Cabrera was 2-5 with (as you may have read) a home run--no extra credit for the who and when of the latter, but still. Neither guy made an error. Putouts, assists, or great plays, I don't know.

I know it's all context-driven, but based on that, how did Trout move up three-tenths of a game, and Cabrera only one-tenth? Maybe Baseball Reference is a day behind on their WAR calculations, but I don't think so.

yeah it's puzzling. like i said it looks like trout's gain was on the defensive side, where he went from -1.4 to -1.1 (i think overnight) - but that must be from the robbed home run, i'd have thought

trout's defensive numbers this year are also lower because he's been playing more LF than he did in 2012 so he's working against stricter positional adjustments

WAR's positional, right? You're x number of games above the current replacement level at your position, as measured against everybody else playing the same spot? I sometimes wonder if a hidden contributing factor might be--in the case of these two guys--that, as a group, third basemen had a better night last night than center fielders. Sounds bizarre, I know, but I'm trying to understand how Trout makes up ground on Cabrera last night. (If Trout's great catch was the night before, presumably that had already been figured in prior to today's calculations.)

i think that the positional baselines for WAR are fixed and not based on how other players at the same position do on a night-to-night basis

i could be wrong tho

the catch wasn't even all that great tbh, but that's all i can think of that would cause that swing

sarge what do you mean by that? he played some LF early in the year, but aren't LFers theoretically less skilled than CFers? if anything on the defensive side that should have helped him?

xp

Okay. I would think they'd adjust the baseline periodically, though--the replacement level for first basemen during the McGwire-Bagwell-Thomas-Palmeiro-McGriff era must have been historically high.

If anybody else can explain how 0-2 with two walks and two stolen bases makes up two-tenths of a game on 2-5 with a home run, please do. (Would the fact that Cabrera's home run tied the game in the 9th inning be worth anything--does WPA figure into WAR?)

"trout's defensive numbers this year are also lower because he's been playing more LF than he did in 2012 so he's working against stricter positional adjustments"

Yeah this makes no sense to me either. If he was 2 wins better than replacement at CF then in theory he'd be way better than a replacement LF not way worse.

xp I don't think any WPA stuff is used. I think this is a question you'd have to ask the B-R guy to get an answer.

his fielding runs above average hasn't moved on fangraphs for at least a week

"trout's defensive numbers this year are also lower because he's been playing more LF than he did in 2012 so he's working against stricter positional adjustments"

Yeah this makes no sense to me either. If he was 2 wins better than replacement at CF then in theory he'd be way better than a replacement LF not way worse.

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Saturday, August 10, 2013 11:52 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

defensively yeah but offensively you'd think corner outfielders are more replaceable than center fielders?

And even WPA was used I wouldn't think that Trout would get a bump from it.

Okay. I would think they'd adjust the baseline periodically

they do, probably during each offseason. it's not like "oh, every other third baseman in mlb went 0-4 last night so now miguel cabrera's war has shot up"

xp yeah I'm talking about just in terms of the defense relative to a replacement LF.

I notice also that, after months of Gomez (mostly) and Kershaw leading the NL, McCutchen is tied this morning--first time, I think.

LF is the easiest OF position so the positional adjustment is more severe i.e. a good LF is gonna have a lower defensive rating than a good CF because a much higher number of players can play LF well than can play CF well. so even if we assume (for the sake of the example) that trout is playing the exact same quality defense in 2013 as he did in 2012 but his playing time is more slanted towards LF than that good defense in LF in 2013 is gonna count for less than all the good defense in CF in 2012.

A cast of characters that includes Raul Ibanez and Chris Carter for example.

I think that difference is counted into the ACTUAL positional adjustment for LF (at least in Fangraphs). Either way according to B-R Trout is basically as bad a fielder this year as Raul Ibanez. I just don't see how that's possible.

how ~old~ is Mike Trout anyways...

iirc that's a hat trick, not a golden sombrero

(can't imagine a golden sombrero has happened too often against a pitcher that only went four innings, but three Ks is still impressive)

Trout's slash line is so depressing

he came into tonight with a .240/.367/.458 line! which is a 127 OPS+!

he's 11th in fWAR for all 33+ players

i mean he's not going to win a fourth MVP but any team would be totally happy to employ him (if not at his current salary)

^^ true. i took a look at his lines just now, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he could put together one more (healthy) miraculous year, even now. you could never fully count it out.

but also, he’s stolen 14 bases in 2020-now, total. his defense is now (heavily?) minus, not plus. his ISO is the lowest it’s ever been. his strikeout% is the highest it’s ever been. the OBP is still high because he’s walking 16% of the time (elite!), but so much of that is reputation and can quickly shift

anyway not being disagreeable, i would love to watch trout every day, even in decay mode

He has been getting a LOT of fastballs lately. I have a feeling that he can make the adjustment and, if they keep challenging him, people are going to get burned.

He hasn't played in the field since he came back end of May. If he has negative defense this year, that was also him playing RF regularly for the first time.

oh…gotcha! yeah, i shouldn’t say anything at all about him. you can tell a lot from a stat line but even more just from watching on a daily basis, of course. but yeah, i guess what i’m reading as ‘negative’ defense via fangraphs is just the penalty for being the DH and/or playing RF instead of CF

he's 18th in the majors with a .367 OBP and 32nd with an .825 OPS

i didn't mean to imply i think he's bad now, any team would be lucky to have him, it just really did feel we were watching a potential greatest player of all time there for a while

Sat out the last 2 games due to... *checks notes* ...a skin infection.

he just hit his first home run in ~5 weeks.

400th home run was 485 feet, 114.9 exit velo. Coors Field, but yeah.