Mike Trout: Historically One of the Worst in Baseball

[Docwaukee]

Eric, I just wanted to write "Emily Ratajkowski" and "farty" in the same sentence, although I was being half serious in trying to make a point.

 

Trout had the offense on his shoulders and might have felt that during high leverage situations. Plus there's the simple issue of sample size. Check it out:

 

2013:

low leverage (372 PA):.350/.357/.637

medium leverage (263 PA): .296/.399/.519

high leverage (81 PA): .274/.420/.290

 

2012:

low (291 PA): .319/.412/.594

medium (300 PA): .333/.393/.547

high (48 PA): .317/.354/.488

 

Let's see how he does in 2014. I don't think there's anything to worry about at this point.

those numbers are very interesting and perhaps lend some insight as to how teams approached trout in different situations in 2012 vs. 2013.

 

Notice a flip in avg vs. obp in high to low leverage?  It tells me that they took a significantly different approach in how they pitched him and uncovers a very particular flaw in the system of linear weights in high and low leverage situations. 

 

In high leverage situations, teams are unlikely to give the best players something to hit, and therefore it's that much more difficult to accumulate WPA for those guys in those situations. 

 

In addition, Trout's 'clutch' number was only -0.61 in the second half of the season compared to -1.8 in the first half.  Which tells me that he started to recognize that they just weren't giving him stuff to hit and he just laid off and took the walk.  His obp in high leverage last year was great.  They just pitched around him.  What will boost this for him going forward is taking the walk and stealing a base. 

[Angelsjunky]

I types his OBP wrong for low leverage in 2013 - it is .457, not .357 (I edited it).

[YouthofToday]

130 PAs and suddenly Trout has a weakness has a game?

I don't care how well written the article was. The claim is absolutely ludicrous and has massive size issues.

[Hubs]

Not all of "being clutch" is in the players control. That's why it is a bad stat or at least an unpredictable one. It's also very obscure. 

This was definitely a small sample size stat that led to big conclusions article.

 

Trout's average with runners in scoring position, in 2013, was .324, he had a .457 OBP and a .993 OPS. How much better can he be? I guess when the game was close and late, 

 

Clutch score referenced one stat, high leverage situations, which I don't understand how they come up with that stat. I think it relies on when games are close and late, Trout only had 49 plate appearances in the 9th inning last year, plus pitchers were definitely not giving him anything to hit. He had a .701 OPS with 9 walks.

 

It should also be pointed out that in these "high leverage" situations, Trout was better than league average. He was much worse than other situations, when he very nearly doubled the league average OPS in low and medium leverage situations.

 

So this article should say, while he wasn't nearly as mind-blowingly awesome as usual, he still beat the league average in these situations.

 

It's still a fluke, and cherry picking one stat to try to force a conclusion onto an article, which is awful writing…still…at least understand what you are writing about.

 

I looked at a few other players who have had MVP caliber seasons and couldn't see this big of a swing, so I do see it, excepting of course, that Trout had better seasons than all of these guys, and it's not a pattern in his career, seeing as in 2012 he produced 1.5 times the league average in those spots. 

 

Still, I do understand the problem this article says Trout has, and if it became a recurring one, I'd understand it. As it is, it can entirely be traced to a few bad games -- probably the ones when they went Extras or when the Angels Pen gave up the lead, so Trout was swinging for the fences, knowing that if he didn't drive in runs, the Angels were likely to lose the game.

 

I'm not concerned. I bet you'd see a significant correlation between the clutch score of the best hitters in the game and their bullpen's performance in those types of situations.

[Blarg]

Now that would be an obscure and small sample sized stat.