Doc-san: Unlike the lucky souls at SSI, it's very unlikely Reiter wrote his own headline. In more heavily populated reporting rooms, writers very seldom do. Seldom here meaning almost never. I for one never had the pleasure. You frequently don't even get to title your own books.
In any event, the most common comp for Trout that I've seen is Mantle, who actually was signed as a shortstop and not expected to have eye-popping power. They have the same thick, muscular body, same blazing speed. I think Trout's a lock to hit 30-plus homers a year. (I'm more amazed that Mays did. Have you ever seen photos of the young Mays? He made Ichiro look bulked up.) Here's something that tells you about the difficulty of projecting baseball players. Trout will hit more homers in a year than Brandon Woods will in a career and Woods was the can't miss power hitter.
This is, obviously, bad news for Mariner fans. I'm thinking of a snatch job. We could take him out this winter in Jersey. It's Jersey - they won't even know he's gone.
Watcher sez,
How 'bout a POTD for Trout? If he's as you suggest, the best player in the game, etc., how was he not drafted higher like A-Roid or Jr? Imagine if the Yankees had not signed Teixiera. They would have been able to draft Trout, and which would you rather have right now? Yeah, me too. And Trout vs Ackley? Even easier answer.
I don't know much about Trout's pre-draft situation as such, but Terry McDermott hooks us up with the pitch-perfect sorry Freudian slip there interview on it: Link Man, Billy Beane lights Reiter UP on that baby. HEH! By the way, Terry ... how did you like the headline Reiter went with, after Beane schooled him?
Mike Trout was drafted #25 overall, which is a high compliment, not a criticism. But why wasn't he 1-1? The short version is,
(1) Trout plays better than his body, which is nothing unusual.
(2) Everybody did have Trout as a 1st-round quality player.
(3) You can't visualize 18-year-olds as 23-year-olds with such a level of accuracy that you can discern between a normal MLB player - who is a miracle of reflexes - and a star MLB player.
(4) Trout wasn't playing against top competition, which scouts don't necessarily grade down for that too much, but how can you compare players then? But read the Beane interview. It is epic, every word totally accurate and every word right to the point.
For the sofistikated SSI reader, the crux of the matter is this: Why didn't Trout, at 18, physically look like ARod and Junior and Josh Hamilton looked at 18? (Those three guys did not play better than their bodies.) The simple answer is that some MLB stars are "thoroughbreds," with freakazoid bodies that mirror their freakazoid talent, while other stars have relatively more mainstream physical profiles and yet have freakazoid hand-eye coordination and ... well, muscle fibers.
It just isn't possible, not POSSIBLE, to watch an 18-year-old Trout play in a weaker high school league and say "he'll hit .340 in the bigs, not .290." The Angels got a little bit lucky, which is fine, like we got a little bit lucky that Taijuan Walker has more pitching talent than it seemed like he would.
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A POTD on Trout? We'll, you've heard of 60-second manager... how 'bout a 60-second POTD. No use thinking about this subject any more than we have to :- )
SWING - The compactness is the big thing here. Reminds you of a golf pitch shot, in which you take the club back to 10 o'clock and make sure you don't follow through past 2 o'clock. He's very quick to the ball, can wait on it so that he's not jumping at the fastball and therefore can just see curve, hit curve. He can hit it where it's pitched, making him a hitter first, yet with enough power to clear the fence. Swing reminds some of Mike Piazza's. There's a reason he didn't need to learn pitch sequences.
The one tiny nit-pick is that the swing is SO hit-first that his HR's might stay in the 20's. Maybe! He's slugging .595 now, but it's possible that he'll pull a Fred Lynn, have his best season early, and drop back to (say) a .500 SLG later. M's fans can hope, anyway.
OVERALL GAME - He's in the mold of Willie Mays or Fred Lynn. Mays would hit 47, 49, 52 homers right in the middle of the hitting drought in the NL in the 1960's, so you can't compare anybody to Mays. Willie had the unique ability to post a 175 OPS+ every year, year after year, 12 straight years - and that OPS+ doesn't even consider that he was a great center fielder. You can definitely argue Mays' 12-year run, starting with his rookie year, as the greatest ever accomplished. Do you know what the hitting norm was during Koufax' heyday?
But take away a few homers from Willie and you've still got one whale of a baseball player. It's also not certain that Trout won't hit 47 homers.
The most thrilling thing to me about Trout: I've never seen an ARod, Hamilton type who packed this kind of blazing speed. Imagine what it would have been like, watching Junior run like Ichiro? ... Mays, and by the way Mickey Mantle, had those reps when they came up.
FUTURE - James once said of the teenaged Junior, "He could be anything. He could be the greatest player who ever lived, or he could be Cesar Cedeno." Trout's superstardom is not yet quite certain. But if I'm an Angels fan, I'm enjoyin' the ride, man.
BABVA,
Dr D
Comments
Imagine begin so good at 20 that your downside was Cesar Cedeno. Holy snot. Junior and Trout.
For you young 'uns, Cedeno was a terrific player.
In '72 and '73, he basically had back to back .320-.380-.537 seasons.......in the Astrodome......as a 21 and 22 year old.
Sheeesh. Oh....he played CF.....and, Oh, he won GG's in both seasons. Double sheeeeesh. 69 and 62 extra-base hits. 55 and 56 steals.
And get this, he finished 6th and 11th in the MVP voting those years. What does a guy have to do?
He then followed that up with being a consistent 130 OPS+ player for the next 8 seasons.
Cedeno was something. B-R has him as the 140th greatest hitter ever. Trailing Dale Murphy by one and Dick Allen by three. He's two spots ahead of Mattingly and three ahead of Olerud.
So assuming that we can apply the James' Junior comment to Trout, his worst-case career is the equivalent of Allen, Murphy, Cedeno, Mattingly and Olerud.
Uh....that's pretty good.
You youngsters check out Cedeno, a guy that Doc and G and I cut our baseball teeth on.
It's hard to remember when you watch Trout that he is only 20 years old. Junior, Mantle, Mays......that's rarefied air. Mays came up at 20 and was real good (not as good as Trout)....but missed all of his age 22 season and most of the previous to military service. Then he hit the 12 year run that Doc spoke of. His worst BA, worst OBP, and 2nd worst Slg% during that streak came during his "slump" year of '56. His slump? .296-.369-.557!
Is that Trout? Will be way fun to watch.
And every good steelhead fly fisherman, like me, has got to love a guy with that surname.
moe
"Mike Trout's BABIP is finally normalizing and his August OPS is only hey wait a second what do you mean .875 with awesome defense"
Heh, true. But all the talking heads declaring him the best player in baseball? I dunno, man. The luckiest player in baseball, sure... check out that string of .390-.438-.412 BABIPs in May, June, and July. Sheesh. You probably want to tone down the predictions for his power, too: the >30% HR/FB ratios in the LAA ballpark these last two months have been helping more than a little. Like, I understand it's possible to sustain an unusually high BABIP (hi, Ichiro), but no one runs .400. No doubt the kid's a special talent, probably ROY and MVP this year. But Ackley was performing at about Trout's current level those first two months last year, with the same BABIP and just a third the ridiculous HR/FB. Call me back with the "best player in baseball" when Trout does it again next year, once the BABIP's dropped below .350, the home runs aren't all soaring out, and the league's started to catch on.
Will cheerfully admit that I hadn't looked at Trout's luck stats in our 60-second POTD. Was simply a matter of watching a young (near-)Willie Mays on the field. Hmmmm, let's see...
HR/F for Trout: 21.4%. Well .... Hamilton sustains that, if you take away 2009. Dunn sustains 22, 24%. Cabrera's at 19% ...
Certainly you could dock Trout back to (say) 17% if you were so inclined, taking away what... 5 of his 22 homers. Turn 3 of those into warning-track outs and 2 into doubles and there go 12 of his 230 total bases, up in smoke. His SLG plummets from .593 to .562.
His BABIP is .389, definitely unsustainable, but as we know you're talking about functionally the fastest player in baseball, so ZIPS has him at .374 ... the leadoff hitters can sustain .350, .360 and guys who mash the ball are also high; Thome sustained .360 in his 20's ... I'd be kind of surprised if Trout didn't post .350 and .360 BABIP's the next several years... combining Thpome with Ichiro could land you at .380 rather than .350, though ...
Still and all, let's stipulate that .340/.400/.600 have seen some balls drop in, and that he's actually only been "worth" .300/.360/.525 ... which, as it happens, has been his 'floundering' month of August, a .366 OBP and .508 SLG which is his worst month ... judge Junior's 1990 by the worst month and what do you get...
.300/.360/.525, at the age of 20, playing CF and stealing 50-60 bases, scoring 120 runs ... how does that compare to Junior at 20?
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Like we said originally, there's a downside scenario for Trout. He hasn't established himself as a HOF'er. He could turn out to be Fred Lynn.
Well drats, that ruins the whole thing. Here I posted that his downside was a Cedeno or Olerud, maybe the 142nd (or so) best hitter ever. Now the guy may fall all the way to Lynn, who was historically toast compared to those guys...he was only the 171st best hitter ever.
Angels should trade him now.
moe