FanPost

The Incredible Mr. Trout

Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

I'm sure that everyone on this site already believes that Trout can/should be MVP, but I wanted to put together a little something to show a few of my friends that Trout is the real MVP and thought that I might as well post it here too.

Mike Trout is having himself a season. It has been well documented that this year is the first time in his career that he has been placed on the DL. Despite missing 40+ games Mr. Trout is still very much deserving of MVP consideration, if not winning the award outright. He may not get to the 502 PA necessary to qualify for the league leads in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging, but he has produced the counting stats to make up for it.

Consider this: Trout ranks fourth out of the entire MLB in Fangraph WAR, behind only Jose Altuve, Aaron Judge and Paul Goldschmidt. That means Trout, despite playing in about 45 fewer games than the other league leaders, is third in the AL. Altuve and Judge sit tied at 6.2 WAR while Trout has a remarkable 5.3, well ahead of Andrelton Simmons who sits in fourth with 4.4 in the AL.

Trout has put up that 5.3 WAR in 76 games, Altuve in 116 and Judge in 115. This means that Trout averages .0697 WAR per game. Had he not missed time to the DL and played in 115 games like Judge, Trout would be looking at an incredible 8.01 WAR right now.

To prove the point as to how masterful Trout has been this year, let us take a look at how Altuve and Judge would rank if they had only played 76 games. Altuve, if he only played in 76 games, would be at 4.06 WAR while Judge would be at a slightly better 4.09 WAR.

You don’t think WAR is a reliable or viable statistic, ok. How about wOBA (weighted on-base average). This stats aims to look at a player’s overall offensive contributions per plate appearance and can be looked at on the same scale that on-base percentage is viewed. Of players with at least 300 PA in the AL, Trout ranks first in wOBA at .463. Judge follows with .425 and Altuve with a .419.

Is wOBA not your cup of tea? Let’s try wRC+ (weighted runs created plus). This rate stat attempts to credit the hitter for the value of each outcome while controlling for park factors (sorry Nolan Arenado) and the current MLB run environment. wRC+ is scaled so that 100 is league average. So a player that has a wRC+ of 110 is 10% better than league average offensively. Similarly, a player that has a wRC+ of 90 is 10% worse than league average offensively.

Again, looking at players in the AL with at least 300 PA, Judge and Altuve score 170 and 168, respectively, for wRC+. That’s pretty impressive, right? They are both about 70% better than the average MLB player offensively. Mike Trout, however dethrones both of them with a videogame like 200 wRC+.

Since 1920, there have been only 30 times that a player has finished the season with at least a 200 wRC+ and they belonged to guys that you don’t even need to write the first name of (Ruth, Bonds, Williams, Hornsby, Mantle etc.).

Trout is walking at the highest rate of his career, 18.4%, and striking out at a rate lower than both of his MVP seasons, at 19.3% which has led to the best BB/K rate of his career at .95 BB/K. As far as his counting stats go: .340/.466/.679 23 HR, 55 RBI, 58 R, 13 SB. He has 43 extra base hits of his 91 totals hits and has only be caught stealing twice. His OPS is 1.145 and has a .340 ISO average.

Want more proof? Since Trout returned from the DL on July 14 the Angels are 17-12 and currently hold the second wild card spot, without Trout this year, the Angels are 21-24.

All this is to say that Mike Trout is having himself a Mike Trout season and he should probably win the MVP, or at the very absolute worst finish 3rd in voting, despite missing 45 games this year.

*All of my statistics were gathered from Fangraphs

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