Are We Taking Mike Trout For Granted?
An analytical approach at Mike Trout’s 2019 MVP season
Purpose
I decided to take a deeper dive into Mike Trout’s 2019 season. Trout’s 2019 season resulted in his 3rd MVP. I was curious and thought, “are we taking Mike Trout for granted?” Most baseball fans already think of Mike Trout as an elite baseball player and one of the all-time greats, but I decided to take a further look into the statistics and data of Trout’s 2019 season.
I wanted to compare Trout’s 2019 season to some of the all-time great seasons in MLB history. I compared it to Miguel Cabrera’s 2013 Triple Crown year and Bryce Harper’s 2015 MVP year. Both Cabrera and Harper’s years are relatively recent and out of the steroid era.
Methodology
I wanted to look closely at more of the advanced statistics of Trout’s season. I chose to look at wRC+, wOBA, WAR, OPS and Hard% from the given data. I chose these statistical measures because I believe it fully represents how well a player performed at the plate. Although, WAR takes into account defensive metrics, as well, it is still a strong indicator of a player’s overall impact.
Via Fangraphs definition, wRC+(https://library.fangraphs.com/offense/wrc/) measures how a player’s wRC compares with league average after controlling for park effects. League average for position players is 100, and every point above 100 is a percentage point above league average. wOBA (https://library.fangraphs.com/offense/woba/) is similar to wRC+ as it shows a hitter’s overall value at the plate. It is based on the relative values of each distinct offensive event. WAR (https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/) stands for wins above replacement. It is a statistical measure that denotes how valuable a player is to his team based on a league average player. OPS (https://library.fangraphs.com/offense/ops/) is a player’s on-base plus slugging percentage. Finally, Hard% (https://library.fangraphs.com/offense/quality-of-contact-stats/) is the percentage of how hard a player hits the ball per at-bat. The definition of Hard% varies, but usually it is around 90 miles per hour of exit velocity off the bat of a hitter. (Fangraphs)
Findings
Taking a look into the data we find that Trout’s numbers are comparable to some of the more recent historic years from Cabrera and Harper.
We see here that although Trout played in less games than Harper and Cabrera, he still put up similar statistics. Trout’s wRC+ and wOBA were less than Harper and Cabrera, but he had a higher OPS than Cabrera and a higher Hard% than Harper. Overall, Trout had a very comparable year to these two well thought of seasons from Cabrera and Harper.
I wanted to also compare how Trout’s 2019 season stacked up compared to seasons from 2013–2019. I gathered the data from PyBaseball and compared wRC+ seasons from there based on qualified batters (having at least 3.1 plate appearances per team game. Comes out to roughly 500 plate appearances).
As we can see, the average wRC+ from 2013–2019 lies roughly around 100–120. Trout is far above that and continues to put his name in the record books.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe we are taking Trout’s recent seasons for granted. Trout is on his way to becoming the greatest player the game of baseball has ever seen.
Trout won his third MVP at age 27 and nobody thought twice about it. We took it for granted and I don’t believe we should.
Trout is already an all-time great and I believe he could go down as the greatest player we have ever seen when it’s all said and done.
Sources
Google Colab Notebook
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1ZkaNm3akkViOaeUxZogztBF3USf81oMw
