How Mike Trout fights his way out of a slump
For the first time in his career, Mike Trout is struggling at the plate. Struggling takes on different forms for different hitters and Trout’s season line of .272/.359/.524 is good enough for a 146 wRC+. (100 is league average and this figure is corrected for ballpark.) That’s top 20 in baseball, if you’re keeping score.
The problem is Mike Trout is not a top 20 hitter in baseball, he’s in the top three. And his overall line looks fine but his recent run tells a different story.
Scratch that. His last 50 plate appearances tell no story. The 1600 plate appearances at the big league level (across which Trout hits .310/.399./542) and the 1300 plate appearances in the minor leagues (when he hit .342/.425/.516) tell the real story. Those 3000 odd plate appearances tell us much more about Mike Trout than 50 ABs at the beginning of May do.
The last 50 plate appearances are important to watch as we attempt to discern how Trout responds. Not when, but how. At one point or another, be it this week or next month, the two-time MVP runner up and Angels’ $144 million man will resume his Trouting. There will be walks and home runs and laser beams a plenty.
For now, there are strikeouts. Strikeouts swinging and strikeouts looking. Trout himself wisely brushes any worry aside, saying he feels good but he’s “just missing some pitches. Nothing too crazy.”
His recent line is a little crazy, even if it is all smoke and no fire. The honorary mayor of Millville has just eight hits in his last 59 PAs, dating back to the Angels return from a late-April road trip. That’s a grim .170 batting average, if such things move you.
Raw hits and small sample batting average tell a very simplistic story. Trout has 10 walks in that stretch and six of those eight hits went for extra bases - two doubles, a triple, and two home runs. But the 16 strikeouts look bad and likely feel worse when they build up so Trout is digging in and working his way out of this funk.
Monday afternoon in Toronto, Trout took his regular turn in the batting cage before the game. Routine driven as all players tend to be, Trout tells me he hasn’t changed the nature of his pre-game work in the cage (held away from prying eyes) but his batting practice sessions look much different.
While teammates Chris Iannetta and C.J. Chron warmed their muscles before sending majestic shots into the far reaches of the Rogers Centre, Trout gets to work. Every single ball he hit in his BP rounds (save two) went to the right side of the field. Line drives to right-center and a few ropes right down the center of the diamond.
It was a concerted effort, he told me post-game. A set plan of attack designed to keep him thinking about the middle of the diamond. His goal, both in the game and BP, is to let his hands do the work and “just react to it.”
In between the strikeouts, Trout’s “middle/away” approach showed up over and again during the Angels four game stay in Toronto.
His home run Friday night off Dustin McGowan:
Sunday afternoon against Marcus Stroman
And again on Monday, Trout hit a carbon copy double directly over the head of Blue Jays center fielder Colby Rasmus. Even last week, before the worst of the struggles settled in, Trout stayed back on a breaking ball and hit it high off the wall in right field for a triple.
Despite cutting his strikeouts in 2013 compared to his rookie campaign, Trout’s figures to be a strikeout guy for much of his career. While he swears up and down that he “looks fastballs and adjusts offspeed”, he’s a guess hitter.
The term might be out of favor among big league hitters, but watching Trout it’s hard to shake the notion that he gets one pitch in mind and doesn’t want to swing if he doesn’t get it.
It would explain some of the more perplexing two strike takes Trout’s shown this year, en route to leading baseball in strikeouts. Total Ks, that is. He plays every day and hits at the top of the order so he gets a ton of at bats. By strikeout rate he’s 22nd among qualified hitters, much higher than other high average batters.
Swings per pitch with two strikes, from Brooks Baseball
Perception isn’t always reality, but watching a hitter with so much talent take presumably hittable pitches, can be tough to watch. The track record of the man in the box makes us believe any pitch can end up in the seats or the gap.
As stated above, Mike Trout will be fine. He’s Mike Trout, “fine” is coded into his DNA. Hitting is something he does with ease and uncommon confidence, a confidence that allows him to spit on close pitches because of his ability to control the strike zone and punish pitches at will.
Going away and to the middle of the diamond is part of the process, a 162 game process that lets even the best hitters slump and get too long in search of pull power.
One of his most worn cliches -- Trout swears time and again he’s not “trying to do too much” -- has a grain of truth here. His attempts to stay in the middle of the diamond and not do too much already show up in game results. The rest of the equation, and another 10 homer month, can’t be far behind.