Anatomy of a Slump

[Angelsjunky]

Note: This will likely be posted in several parts, as I have a bunch of charts in the works. So if you're interested, keep checking back. WARNING: It is very long and requires the reading of words and the thinking of thoughts; if neither of those two activities interests you, feel free to check out the Game Day thread, coming shortly to you.

Introduction: What is a Slump?

A "slump" is well-used in baseball parlance, but only vaguely defined. It can be anything a few bad games or an extended period in which a player performs below his usual level. We hear and use such phrases as, "He's really slumping hard right now," or "He's been slumping for the last month."

Part of the problem with defining more clearly is that most players don't really have a "usual level." No player, even when playing consistently, has the same game, day after day, but instead varies from the norm. The usual level is really just the sum total of a season or career, and both have good and bad periods. In a season, we call a good period a "hot streak," while in a career it is a player's prime. And even then, every player is different, although most are at their best somewhere in the age 24 to 32 range.

More granually, players might alternate great and bad games. For instance, early this year on April 22, Mookie Betts hit two HR with 2 walks and a SB -- one of his best games in a season that includes many great games; but then, the next day, he went 0-5 with 4 strikeouts, probably his worst day the plate this year.

And let's be clear: Every player slumps, even if for only a couple days, and every player has different patterns of hot and cold. For instance, players like Bryce Harper are notorious for being feast or famine: When he's on, he's Babe Ruth; when he's not, he's Chris Davis (the later version). We'll look at Harper later, to see if there is truth to this reputation.

If you haven't guessed already, we're going to be looking at the performance patterns of our currently slumping superstar, Mike Trout, to see if we can ascertain any patterns. We'll compare his current season to past seasons, and then also other players.

I examined Trout's last five years, game by game. Why five years? Well, the current one is what is relevant; 2020-21 are recent, but don't give enough data because neither was a full season. 2019 was his last full season, but I went back to 2018 because it was his best overall offensive season by wRC+ (188).

Part One: A Detour into wRC+

Before I get to the charts, let me detour into stats, for a moment.  Feel free to skip to Part 2. The charts are relatively self-explanatory, but I thought I'd give some context for what wRC+ means.

While I played around with formulas to use to score each game, I found that the best balance between simplicity and accuracy was simply to look at his wRC+ in each game. This has downsides, because it ignores such things as Runs and RBI, and also weighs OBP more heavily than SLG, so a guy who walks five times will have a higher wRC+ than a guy who goes 2-5 with 2 HR. And more so, it doesn't account for how many times a player bats, so a player who goes 1-1 with a pinch-hit HR has a higher wRC+ than a guy who goes 3-4 with 3 HR. But it is easier than coming up with a formula, and works well enough to assess the quality of a game.

If you aren't familiar with wRC+, it is--like Baseball-Reference's OPS+--a way to include everything a player does with the bat in one number, contextualized for league, park, and other factors. 100 is average; 50 would be about the wRC+ equivalent of the Mendoza Line (a .200 BA); and 150 a superstar hitter. In any given season, there are about ten hitters who have a wRC+ of 150 or better, and in all of baseball history only thirty players have a career wRC+ of 150 or better. Trout is 6th all-time with 172, behind only Ruth (197), Williams (188), Gehrig (173), Hornsby (173), and Bonds (173), and just ahead of Mantle (170).

A 200 wRC+ season is also very rare, what I would call the "Ruthian Line," given his career wRC+ that is just shy of 200. From 1901-2022, there have been only thirty player seasons of a 200 wRC+ or higher, and in the 21st century, only Bonds has reached that mark - and he did so four straight years, from 2001-04, including the all-time record of 244 in 2002. Those thirty seasons were performed by 10 by Ruth; 6 by Williams; 4 by Bonds; 2 each by Cobb, Mantle and Hornsby; and 1 each by Gehrig, Musial, Thomas, and McGwire.

As you can see, the vast majority of those came before the last 60 years; the only recent ones were done during the high offense and altered 90s-00s.

Among active players, the best is by Harper in 2015 (197), Cabrera in 2013 (193), Trout in 2018 (188), Mookie Betts in 2018 (185), and Pujols in 2003 and 2008 (184). Only Trout (twice) and Pujols (three times) have surpassed 180 more than once.

In other words, given the compressing nature of stats over time--probably largely due to deeper competition and the rise of relief pitching--a 180 wRC+ in today's era is equivalent to 200 in past eras.

But here's an important point: wRC+ means something rather different when assessing a career, a season, and a game. Performance averages out over time, so while a 150 wRC+ for a whole season is superstar performance, one of the ten or so best hitters that year, and for a career means a player is one of the thirty best hitters of all time, a 150 wRC+ for a game is a bit underwhelming; it is a solid to good game, but doesn't stand out as extraordinary.

Really to get to "wow factor" games, you have to surpass about 500 wRC+. Trout has had 77 such games in his entire career. Here's a selection of players and how many 500 wRC+ games they've had in their career:

Bonds 207, Pujols 128, Trout 77, Harper 62, Betts 40, Ward 14, Fletcher 4

(The above includes a few pinch hit games)

By way of a key, here are some examples of different types of games that Trout has had this year, and what they translate to in terms of wRC+:

704: 3-4, 2 HR, 1 BB (May 10)

587: 3-4, 1 2B, 1 HR, 1 BB, 1 K (May 17)

459: 2-3, 1 HR, 1 BB (April 27)

357: 1-3, 1 HR (April 17) 

233: 1-3, 1 2B, 1 BB (April 10)

171: 1-4, 1 3B, 1 K (April 25)

110: 1-4, 1 2B, 2 K (May 27) 

42: 1-4, 1 1B, 1 K (May 7)

10: 1-5, 1 1B, 2 K (April 16)

-100: 0-5, 1 K (May 31)

There are tons of variations, and no wRC+ score tells the whole story. But for the purposes of this study--assessing Trout's slump patterns--it works just fine.

Part Two: The Charts 

The first chart looks at Trout over the last three partial seasons, 2020-22. The second chart looks at his last two full seasons, 2018-19. The third chart looks at the quality of his games as percentages, in each of the five years.

KEY: For the first two charts, green is league average or above performance; purple is below average; and gray is a day off and/or injured (but the team played; team off-days aren't included). Note that I rounded to the nearest 50 wRC+, so 75 to 124 counts as 100 wRC+, 26-74 counts as 50, etc. Also, I clearly marked the months with a dotted orange line.

Chart 1: Trout, 2020-22

Right away, you can see Trout's rough spell, which goes back a bit before mid-May -- and definitely the worst slump he's been in over the last three seasons. In year's past, he's had rough spots, but broke out of them relatively quickly, or had a higher percentage of good games sprinkled in with an overall slump.

What is rather striking, also, is how amidst his rough spell over the last 19 games, he's actually had three great games. This also illustrates the vague nature of the slump, because you could argue that he had one five-game slump, then was mostly good for ten games, then has slumped again over the last four games.

Or to break those up, by game spans:

May 13-16 (5 games): .167/.211/.222, 4 wRC+, 5.3 BB%, 26.3 K%

May 17-28 (10 games): .350/.409/.750, 233 wRC+, 6.8 BB%, 34.1 K%

May 29 - June (4 games): .000/.118/.000, -57 wRC+, 5.9 BB%, 29.4 K%

May 13 - June 2 (19 games): .233/.300/.466, 118 wRC+, 6.3 BB%, 31.3 K%

So overall he has been slumping for the last 19 games  - the worst such span over the last three years - but it has really been two 4-5 game slumps with a hot 10 games in-between.

Chart 2: Mike Trout, 2018-19

This is a lot to take in, but you can see a variety of patterns, but no slumps like the last 19 games. In fact, over the last 19 games of 2022 he's had two spans of 4-5 games with negative wRC+; he had only two such spans in all of 2019, and none in 2018.

Conclusions from Charts 1 & 2

What conclusions can we make? Well, probably nothing we didn't already know before looking at these charts: Trout has been unusually streaky this year.

There is a bit of good news, though. In 47 games played, Trout has already had 8 "great games"--which I'm using 500 wRC+ to define (or 475+ rounded up). Last year, in 36 games, he had just 2; in 2020, he had 4 in 53 games; in 2019, he had 6 in 134 games; and in 2018, 14 in 140 games.

So he's actually producing a higher percentage of great games - but also a higher percentage of bad games. 

Chart 3: Trout Seasons By Percentage of Game Caliber

I went a little deeper, and looked at the raw total of games in various wRC+ ranges, and then figured out what percentage of his total for that year was in a given category. Here is the result:

So as you can see, Trout is having both more great and terrible games this year. Last year he had far fewer great games, but much more excellent and very good games, and far fewer terrible ones; he was more consistent, in other words. And you can see how he looks in the other years - 2018 is noteworthy, because it was still his best overall offensive season, but he had more terrible games than any year other than 2022--and also more great ones. 

Conclusion

To some extent, there's no rhyme or reason to Trout's consistency. What we can see, though, is that 2022 has been a year of extremes: more great games, but also more really bad ones. Some of this may smooth out over the course of the year; he'll probably have a fewer percentage of both great and terrible games, and more merely excellent ones.

All of this points to a basic fact of baseball: If you look at a small sample, it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. While Trout has been consistent than usual, that is mostly due to his recent spell. Chances are that, come season's end, those extremes will be softened somewhat.

 

Edited June 3, 2022 by Angelsjunky

[Blarg]

Yup, they suck. 

[fan_since79]

I hope the Angels analytics people can read and digest this before tonight's game and produce a damn win! Getting sick and tired of this losing!

[Angelsjunky]

5 minutes ago, fan_since79 said:

I hope the Angels analytics people can read and digest this before tonight's game and produce a damn win! Getting sick and tired of this losing!

It doesn't actually give them any useful information, except to illustrate what everyone knows: Trout is very streaky this year (thus far).

If I were to write up something for the Angels analytic part, it would probably center on Trout's great reduction in walks over the last few weeks or month. Not sure what is up with that - but he's not taking nearly as many walks. I haven't looked into it, but it is possible that he's swinging at more pitches; whether that is more outside of the zone, or he's just swinging and missing or, likely, both, I am not sure. 

[Jason]

The word slump sounds like it would be a good description of a limp penis 

Edited June 3, 2022 by Jason

[daygloman]

The Philthies shitcanned Giradi today.

This can be a blessing, or a curse?

The game starts in 20 minutes.....

Go Halos!

[AngelsLakersFan]

I think it’s the aging curve.

Trout has his worst strikeout and walk numbers since 2014. He’s probably a ‘better’ hitter in some sense, doing more damage when he gets his pitch, but he’s regressing somewhat in his dominance of the strike zone. A few more walks and a handful of bloop singles will do a lot to minimize ‘bad games.’

[failos]

4 hours ago, Blarg said:

Yup, they suck. 

That’s pretty much all there is to it

[fan_since79]

If we don't right this sinking ship soon we'll be slumping our way right out of playoff contention. A reminder: we still have 12 games left against the Astros.

I suppose with the third wild card we might still be in the hunt for a while, but we've got to start winning some games!