Trout and Ohtani, month by month (WAR)

[Angelsjunky]

Talking with @Taylor about Ohtani's ridiculous 3.4 WAR for the month of June got me curious about Trout's career through the lens of WAR. So I did some research and made a chart.

Or two charts, rather. Here's Othani:

And here's them together:

NOTE: I combined March into April and October into September as there were never more than a few games in March or October, and it felt more accurate, visually speaking, to combine them.

Alright, some things stand out. First, Trout. There's a clear pattern of gradual decline - his overall peaks aren't as high or as frequent (I've color coded them from dark to light by monthly rank #1, top 10, #11-20, #21-50, #51-100, #101+).

But the time missed in 2021 and, to a lesser extent, 2022 obfuscates that somewhat. As you can see, he was still top 5 in the monthly rankings in his last month of 2022 and first month of 2023.

This chart is also interesting to see how each season unfolded in terms of his performance. Look at how consistent he was in 2019 - no real bad months, but none are among his twenty best career months.

Finally, looking at that Trout chart and it contextualizes his time missed - which he's lost some time to injury, especially in 2017 and 2021-22, it isn't as much as we might think. Really, 2021 is the only year in which he missed a huge chunk of time - the majority of a season. In 2017, he missed all of June and part of July; last year he missed about half of July and a bit more than half of August.

Anyhow, for Trout he's had dips before, but we really want to see that July performance go up.

As for Ohtani, it is quite striking how it all came together in 2021 and he became ridiculously good. As you know, he keeps getting better: 8.0 WAR in 2021, 9.5 last year, and on pace for almost 12 WAR this year (though I expect he ends up in the 10-11 range).

 

Edited July 3, 2023 by Angelsjunky

[Chuck]

Solid work, @Angelsjunky!! 

[Chuck]