Mike Trout’s Strikeout Problem
- Updated: March 30, 2015
(Image via Twitter)
There’s an interesting post on the Angels’ official website about Mike Trout’s two-strike approach this spring after a season in which he struck out a league-leading 184 times last year. Trout unanimously won the MVP, of course, but he also struck out more than any MVP in history at a 26.1% rate, fanning more than once every four trips to the plate.
Angels hitting coach Don Baylor pontificated in the piece about Trout cutting his strikeouts down to 80 (as opposed to 180) this year.
“Boy, I tell you what,” Baylor told Alden Gonzalez, “if he did 80, he’d lead the league in hitting, as a right-handed hitter.”
Sure, he might lead the league as a right-handed hitter (not sure why his handedness matters here?), but he’s also not going to cut his strikeouts by more than 100 in a year’s time. Just 80 whiffs would give him a paltry 10% strikeout rate, which is insanely good for any player in this day and age of the strikeout, let alone a power hitter.
Let’s not count on Trout striking out 80 times; it will certainly be far more than that. But 184 strikeouts, even in an age where pitchers are striking out an unprecedented number of hitters, is far too many for an everyday player, let alone one of Trout’s quality.
Baylor’s comment about cutting down on strikeouts and leading the league in hitting does underscore an interesting aspect of Trout’s career moving forward. Sure, Trout won the MVP last year, but he did it with a batting average 50 points lower than his previous two seasons and a full 20 points lower than his four-year career average.
Clearly, the strikeouts affected his productivity; he won the MVP despite having the lowest batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage of any of his three full seasons in the big leagues.
In fact, in 2012 and 2013, he struck out 139 and 136 times, respectively, while slashing .326/.399/.564 and .323/.432/.557. He finished second in MVP voting in both of those seasons, and finally broke through last year despite (by his standards) having a down year across his slash lines.
Simply having won an MVP award does not make your game beyond reproach, of course, and Trout (like everyone else) constantly has tendencies to correct, mechanics to work on and aspects of his game to improve. In this case, strikeouts are a glaring negative to an otherwise almost flawless player.
Will Trout cut his strikeouts by 100, as Baylor hoped? Absolutely not. But if he can cut them by 50 – and return to the 130-140 strikeout range of his first two full seasons, it would stand to hold that his average and on-base percentages would increase simply by putting the ball in play more frequently.
Remember: Mike Trout has stolen 102 bases in his career (including 49 to lead the league in 2012), so he has enough quickness to make trouble for a defense once he puts the ball in play. Now it’s his job to put the ball in play enough with an abbreviated two-strike approach to actually get the benefits from doing that.
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