TroutBaseball

After all the things that have happened to the Angels over the last 10 years, how did this story land on the Dodgers? This is an Angels scandal! Give it back!

After all the things that have happened to the Angels over the last 10 years, how did this story land on the Dodgers? This is an Angels scandal! Give it back!

After all the things that have happened to the Angels over the last 10 years, how did this story land on the Dodgers? This is an Angels scandal! Give it back!

I only feel better that everyone is having the same debate.

I was messing around drawing pictures of Ohtani in AI and it flipped out an interesting logo. I took the concept and refined it. One thing I think the Angels need to change in the red logo on the red hat, so I included to simplified alternative versions.  Also included are the pre-exisiting logos that I think are evoked (and probably inspired the original AI).

Just a fun little project. No copyrights or designers were harmed in the creation of this post.

Translation: "We gave the Angels the opportunity to drive the Dodgers' price up even further."

Typography wise it is nothing like the Alabama logo. Just adding a serif doesn't make it, all A's look alike. You are being a font racist.  

Everything Is Awesome 

The halo firmly around the center of the A, reminds me of how I feel tied up by this team... for better or worse.

This will happen AFTER they announce two expansion teams

This will happen AFTER they announce two expansion teams

Ron Washington was on the Starkville podcast.  It's clear he wants to teach Trout and "Rondon" to be leaders.  He also seems to have found a way to better dialogue with analytics guys.
https://theathletic.com/podcast/243-the-athletic-baseball-show/?episode=632https://theathletic.com/podcast/243-the-athletic-baseball-show/?episode=632

That's 42 in all. 18 on the 60 Day

The Braves had 50. 14 on the 60-day (so the argument applies to other teams)

https://www.fangraphs.com/roster-resource/injury-report?&timeframe=all
 

Introduction: A Fallen Angel (Sort of)
Remember way back after the 2019 season, when Trout just finished his age 27 season with 71.4 fWAR, the highest total through age 27 of any position player in baseball history? It was reasonable to dream big: Trout had been, through 2019, the best player through age 27 in baseball history, and a top 5 WAR finish (say, 140 WAR) was reasonable to consider. Some even pondered the possibility of how he might get to #1 of all time.
Since then, well, the fit hit the shan. In the last four seasons, Trout has produced just 13.7 WAR, about the equivalent of 1.5 peak Trout seasons over four. Where after his age 27 season he was #1 ahead of Ty Cobb and Mickey Mantle, now he's #8 through age 31 with 85.1 fWAR, between Mel Ott and Lou Gehrig, and far behind #1 Ty Cobb at 104.4 fWAR.
Even so, that puts him in good company, with the caveat that Ott and Gehrig--and most players above him--remained healthy and productive into their mid-30s (though Gehrig retired at 36 due to his illness). But Trout's 85.1 WAR through 2023 puts him at #30 all-time, still quite an accomplishment for a guy who has only played two seasons in his 30s. With just +6.2 WAR, he'll be in the top 25; with +16.4 more, he'll enter the top 20. In other words, even in a worst-case scenario where Trout trickles out another 16.4 WAR over his remaining seven years, he's going to be among the top 20 players all-time in WAR.
But let's go a bit further and look at possible paths forward.
Projections: High, Moderate, Low
First of all, a basic assumption for the chart below: Trout's decline will be linear; meaning, he'll be better in 2024 than 2025, better in 2025 than 2026, etc. This will almost certainly not be the case, with year-to-year ups and down and various injuries, but for the sake of simplicity, I'm assuming a linear decline. But you can just as easily swap years around, if with a similar overall trajectory.
For instance, in the following chart, the High projection has him at 8.0, 7.5, and 7.0 WAR over the next three years. That could just as easily be 8.5, 6.0, and 8.0. 

Again, these are estimates. I would say a Low would be anything below about 110 WAR; moderate would be 110 to about 130, high 130+. My mid-range would be around 115-120, meaning I think Trout is most likely to produce 30-35 more WAR over the course of his career.
What is required for each? For the High Projection, he needs to bounce back and avoid major injuries, at least for the most part. It assumes his skill set is intact, or at least very close to his peak. It doesn't require a true return to peak level, just a return to form for a year or two, and a smooth decline after. Meaning, a "reasonable renaissance" - but not a Maysian or Aaronian (let alone Bondsian, ahem) late career peak.
The Mid projection assumes his skills are still elite, if not quite what they were. It accounts for some injuries, even significant ones, but better luck overall than the last three years. 
The Low projection assumes he's not only significantly declined, but will struggle with injuries: major and minor, preventable and freak. It is basically what we can expect if 2021-23 is the new norm.
What Do You Think, Angelsjunky?
Well, I have no idea. I feel reasonably certain that Trout will finish in the broad range of 100-130 WAR, and would put his likeliest 10-WAR range as 110-120 or so. But all of this can change quickly, depending upon what happens even in just one year, 2024. If Trout bounces back with a healthy 8 WAR season, then I feel more confident about the moderate projection, at the least, and will have glimmers of hope that he could surpass that. But if he has yet another injury-plagued season and plays less than 100 games again and <5 WAR, then the low projection starts looking more likely. 
So a reasonable projection for his career WAR total is an ever-moving target. Four years ago it was reasonable--if optimistic--to dream of 140 WAR. Now surpassing 120 looks optimistic.
All of this means that a high projection puts Trout at around #7 all-time, a moderate #12, and a low #19. Not bad, whatever way he finally lands. But...not the top 5 projection (~140 WAR) that seemed reasonable after 2019.
Or we can see this here:

Addendum: JAWS
For those not familiar with it, JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score system) is a stat created by Jay Jaffe that you can find on Baseball Reference, which averages out career WAR (the B-R version) and their best seven seasons (B7), to give a balance of career and peak. Jaffe uses this as a barometer for Hall of Fame eligibility, but one could argue that it is also a more accurate measurement of greatness as it emphasizes career peak.
Right now Trout's JAWS is 75.1, which is 5th best among center fielders and 25th best among all position players. He can improve that in two ways: One, continue to accrue career WAR; his JAWs will go up by half of whatever his further career WAR will be; two, having a season (or two) better than one of his top 7. Right now his 7th best season, according to rWAR, is 7.7, so anything above that improves his JAWS.
He's 12.4 behind the #4 centerfielder Mickey Mantle, which means that even if he doesn't have a season above 7.7, he only needs 25 more career rWAR to pass Mantle. He's unlikely to catch Mays (114.8), Cobb (110.2), although has a very slim chance of catching Speaker (98.8) if he has a true career renaissance and adds another 48 WAR or so and/or another peak season or two.
Among all position players, his low-range projection gets him to #15 or 16 all-time; his mid-range gets him to #12; and his high-range gets him to #7...so similar to WAR totals.
He has a very outside chance of joining the "100 JAWS Club," which includes only six position players: Ruth (123.5), Bonds (117.7), Mays (114.8), Cobb (109.9), Aaron (101.7), and Hornsby (100.3).
Chances are, though, he finishes in the "90 JAWS Club," which is still rather exclusive, with only 13 players.
As a final gift, here's a chart of the 70+ JAWS Club (position players only), color-coded by primary position:

And if you're wondering, the top active players--position and pitcher--by JAWs (40 or higher):
Mike Trout 75.1 Justin Verlander 65.5 Clayton Kershaw 64.8 Zack Greinke 62.7 Max Scherzer 61.2 Mookie Betts 59.4 Miguel Cabrera 55.9 Joey Votto 55.6 Paul Goldschmidt 53.4 Evan Longoria 50.2 Nolan Arenado 49.4 Manny Machado 48.7 Freddie Freeman 47.1 Jose Altuve 44.6 JOsh Donaldson 44.3 Andrew McCutchen 43.5 Jose Ramirez 42.9 Chris Sale 42.9 Jacob DeGrom 42.3 Bryce Harper 41.5 Aaron Judge 41.3 Adam Wainwright 40.5 Francisco Lindor 40.0 Marcus Semien 39.9 While it depends on position, as a general rule 40 JAWS gets you in the conversation for the Hall of Fame; most players above 50 are in the Hall but there are quite a few who aren't, and 60 is a virtual lock, barring extenuating circumstances. Most of the players above 50 WAR and not in the Hall are either controversial (steroids, betting, off-field antics), older 19th century players, or a lot of second and third basemen, who are particularly snubbed for some reason. I believe that Bobby Grich (58.7) has the highest JAWS of non-controversial 20th-21st century players. 
 
 

Introduction
In a recent post, I re-assessed Mike Trout's career trajectory via WAR and comparable players, pointing out that as things stand, his 85.1 fWAR ranks him 30th all-time, and he's likely going to end up somewhere in the latter half of the top 20, depending upon to what degree his career revives. Of especial note, his 71.4 through his age 27 season (2019) was the best in major league history; now, through his age 31 season (2023), his career fWAR of 85.1 ranks him 8th among his age cohort. So if you don't want to read that other post, the takeaway is that he's slipping down the all-time rankings, and while he was arguably the greatest player in baseball history through age 27, he's fallen to the back half of the top 10 because of his sub-par age 28-31 seasons. Or to put it more starkly:
Through Age 27: 71.4 fWAR (1st all-time)
Age 28-31: 13.8 fWAR (395th all-time)
Through Age 31: 85.1 fWAR (8th all-time)
I want to go a bit further with this and make an argument that Trout has a good chance of having a career bounce-back over the next few years. So this is a bit more positive than the last!
There are two facets of it: One, observations of Trout as a player and his penchant for adjusting over the last 13 seasons and two, which I'll focus on in a sequel post, an analysis of historical comps and how they fared in their 30s.
PART 1: Mike Trout - The Great Adjuster
It was often remarked of Trout earlier in his career that a major component of his greatness was his ability to adjust. Laypeople who follow baseball casually, and don't think much about deeper technical elements, tend to think that there is a direct, one-to-one relationship between a player's stats and their improvement. While there is obvious, logical truth to this, it discounts the dynamic nature of baseball: hitters and pitchers adjust to each other, and if a hitter maintains a certain level of performance over long periods of time, it likely means that he's actually improved in terms of refinement of skills due to the necessary adjustments that are made to maintain a statistical threshold. In other words, staying at the same level of time actually might mean continual improvement, even if only in small ways (aka, adjustments).
There is also normal fluctuation. A player hitting .302, .293, .287, and .312 over a four-year period isn't necessarily getting better or worse - it is just normal fluctuation; trends are key here. If the same player hits .312, .302, .293, and .287, it may imply some degree of decline (in terms of contact, at least). And of course some statistics, like batting average, are more subject to oscillation than others are (e.g. walk rate).
But in terms of the initial point, if a player averages a .300 BA over, say, a five-year span, it actually probably means he's improved his skills as a hitter.
When hitters first show up in the big leagues, they have to adjust to major league pitching. Imagine making the jump from AA to the majors. Whereas in AA, as a hitter you might face several guys within the entire league that have blazing, elite stuff, but most pitchers are still in the process of refining their skills, and some won't even ever have real major league careers; in the majors, you'll face dozens of pitchers with elite stuff, and the baseline level is, well, a major league pitcher. After a hitter becomes more comfortable and gets in a groove, pitchers get to know them and how to pitch to them, what is proverbially called "the book" on said player. Hitters adjust, and then pitchers try to find and exploit more weaknesses. So it is an ongoing back-and-forth of adjustments and counter adjustments. Now I would argue that it becomes less pronounced over time; that there's a big adjustment period early on--the hitter to major league pitching, then the pitchers to the maturing hitter, and any further back-and-forth diminishes in impact over time as after a few years in the big leagues, hitters stabilize at a certain "plateau" level.
Inevitably hitters age. Usually starting around the age of 30 or 31, and then increasing at age 33-34, the skills of hitters decline. It may show up in reduced bat speed, diminishing eyesight and hand-eye coordination, but more importantly, the aging body's inability to bounce back as quickly as it did in one's 20s. Anyone who is in their 30s or older knows this first-hand; from hangovers to hard physical work, to lack of sleep, etc, the older you get, the longer and harder recovery is. This can be somewhat counter-acted by more stringent health regimes, but eventually Father Time catches us all. This factor is probably far more important than skill decline, at least in the first half of a player's 30s. I can't remember where I saw it, but I read somewhere that hand-eye coordination doesn't really start declining until around 40. This is why you find the occasional hitter who is just as good in their late 30s as they were in their 20s: from Barry Bonds (ignoring other factors) to Hank Aaron to Ted Williams, and other players who had peak hitting seasons in the latter half of their 30s.
This is exemplified by Ted Williams who, in 1957 at the age of 38 had his career best wRC+ of 223 (!). But he was starting to slip in other ways - he played in 132 games, and it was between two relatively pedestrian (for him) 174 and 179 seasons, the latter of which was followed by an 111 season at age 40, by far his career worst. But Williams finished out his career with a 184 wRC+ in 1960 at age 41, which was very close to his career average of 187. Meaning, the skills were there to the end, but he fluctuated more, presumably due to age.
Mike Trout was always a great adjuster early on: pitchers would find a weakness and exploit it, and then for a month or so, Trout would struggle. But then he'd adjust, and he'd figure out how to hit what was being thrown at him. Like all great hitters, he receives fewer good pitches to hit than, say, a David Fletcher, which in turn illustrates how great hitters--when maintaining the same stats year to year--are actually improving. Trout in 2012 (167 wRC+) was receiving a lot more good pitches to hit then he was after, yet he actually continued to improve as a hitter, peaking in 2018 with a 188 wRC+.
What is also quite notable about Trout's career, even through 2022, was how he didn't vary that far from his career hitting line. Through 2023, his career wRC+ is 170; from 2012 to 2022--discounting the Covid-shortened shortened 2020 season and his mostly-lost-to-injury 2021 season--his seasonal wRC+ ranged from 167 to 188, a very tight band of 21 points. Even in 2020 he wasn't far out of that range, with a 160 wRC+.
That is an absurd degree of consistency. Among a sampling of great hitters, here are the ranges of their wRC+ in full seasons from age 20-30 (so again, discounting Trout's 2020-21 seasons):
Mike Trout: 167-188 
Hank Aaron: 103-178 (or after his rookie year, 144-178)
Willie Mays: 120-173
Ken Griffey Jr: 106-164 (after his rookie year, 132-164)
And so on. Or we can look at a few contemporary stars:
Mookie Betts: 107-185
Bryce Harper: 111-197
Aaron Judge: 141-209
This can be further illustrated in this chart, which depicts season WAR for Trout and his three contemporaries:
 

(Ccolumn width is relative to plate appearances)
What is notable about Trout from the above are two things: One, his consistency, and the fact that unlike most players, great or not, he doesn't have any huge outlier seasons, either good or bad - at least through 2022. Meaning, he doesn't have an equivalent season to Aaron Judge's 2022 (209 wRC+ vs 165 for his career), which is the 15th highest wRC+ in major league history; or Betts 185 in 2018, or Harper's 193 in 2015 -- or really any of their down seasons.
Now to be honest, this year he did seem on pace to have, by far, the worst season of his career, with a 3.0 WAR and 134 wRC+ in 82 games. He was turning things around with the bat, so if he had stayed healthy and played 130+ games, chances are he would have come close to 7 WAR and surpassed 150 wRC+. But even then they would have been career lows for him.
Two, Trout entered the league in a Venusian manner: a fully formed superstar performing at a Hall of Fame level, almost from day one (that is, after his cup-o-coffee in 2011). Betts and Harper took several years to find an elite level. Judge, however, like Trout had a great rookie year, but was already 25 years old - the same age as Trout in 2017.
The big question is: Can Trout make the biggest adjustment of his career, that is to an aging and injury-prone body? An optimistic view would hold that just as the Dude abides, so too does Trout adjust. I worry less about this year's 134 wRC+--especially when you consider that he's just a year removed from 176, and also that his performance this year was greatly marred by a terrible slump which was bookended by periods of relatively vintage Trout--than I am his inability to stay healthy. In other words, if he stays healthy, I fully expect something at least close to vintage Trout. I believe that the days are gone when Trout regularly puts up 8-10 WAR seasons, but certainly he has to be better than what we've seen the last three, injury-ridden seasons, when he average 4.1 WAR and 79 games per year. Right?
It is also worth noting that some of Trout's myriad injuries going back to 2017 were rather flukey: book-ended by two flukey hand injuries, one in 2017 due to a bad slide and the other his hamate bone earlier this season. While we can try to feel optimistic about the flukey nature of these injuries and consider a similar injury in 2024 to be unlikely, it does seem to be that Trout--perhaps due to the big-muscled bulkiness of his body--is, like other similarly built players of the past, truly "injury prone." Meaning, even if we consider that such flukey injuries are exceptions and not the rule, we cannot discount the possibility that they're far more likely for a guy like Trout than they are for "differently-bodied" (smaller and lighter) players like Mookie Betts.
But we can hope, and even with the injury-prone label, there's no reason to think that Mike Trout doesn't at least have several more almost-full seasons (e.g. 120-140 games) left in him. If I were to hazard I guess, we could see game totals over the next seven years like so: 130, 135, 107, 128, 111, 104, 58. Or something like that. Am I being optimistic? Pessimistic? Only time will tell.
 
To be continued...
 

You can't make a Circus without breaking a few Clowns.

I don’t claim to be privy to all the details of their personal relationships with each other. 
 
I will say that no one would care about any of this if Rendon was healthy and productive. 

Victor made reference to some locker room quotes from Rendon.  Tell me more! What was said?
 
Edit: the answer is in this thread
 

Great info about the sale of the team and the failed Beltre deal

Great info about the sale of the team and the failed Beltre deal