The New Mickey Mantle

This isn’t intended to be another puff piece on Mike Trout, because frankly the internet baseball community has seen enough of those. His FanGraphs profile alone is enough evidence to know that he’s the best player in baseball. However, when writing about a case as special as Trout’s, it’s hard to stray from superlatives when describing a player with his kind of once-in-a-generation talent. Instead, the goal here is to frame Trout’s young career in a way to understand just how good he is. The Los Angeles outfielder is still almost 7 months shy of his 26th birthday, and has already compiled a lofty 47.7 fWAR (FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement). For reference, the only players in baseball history to compile a greater WAR total by the time they reached that age were Ty Cobb (who played in 210 more games than Trout by that point) and Mickey Mantle (141 more games himself). After Trout’s rookie year, many compared him to the former outfield prodigy/boy scout hero Mantle, when in actuality that may be underselling Trout’s precociously talented early career.

Not a believer yet? Take into account what we’ve seen from Trout thus far. If you throw out Trout’s 2011 rookie season, in which he only played 40 games and looked like your average rookie sensation, Trout’s 5-year stretch from 2012 through 2016 has put him head and shoulders above the rest of baseball. This is how Trout ranks among his peers in that timespan across various statistical categories:

• fWAR — 1st
• Off (Offensive Runs Above Average) — 1st
• BsR (Base Running Runs Above Average — 1st
• wRC+ (Weighted Runs Created Plus) — 1st
• wOBA (Weighted On Base Average) — 1st
• ISO (Isolated Power) — 6th

Now, if you find yourself confused by the offensive metrics used here, feel free to explore them yourself, or write this article off as just another stats nerd arguing his case for his golden boy over more deserving MVP candidates such as Miguel Cabrera and Josh Donaldson. But before you decide on the latter, perhaps take into account where Trout ranks in more traditional offensive categories:

• Batting Average — 5th
• Home Runs — 5th
• RBI — 7th
• Runs — 1st
• Stolen Bases — 10th
• On Base Percentage — 2nd
• Slugging Percentage — 3rd

So while Trout’s traditional stats may not quite be as impressive as the advanced metrics, one has to keep in mind what some of those stats are heavily affected by: the success of Trout’s own team, the Angels, and his teammates. Not to cast any shade to the former World Series winning Angels, but the franchise hasn’t exactly been in great shape the last decade. Beset by shaky ownership, poor pitching, and position players quite a few skill levels below him, Trout has still managed to make the Angels’ outfield the most productive in baseball, buoyed almost entirely by the prodigious former MVP.

Speaking of MVPs, here’s a fact almost lost in the endless shuffle of Mike Trout accolades: he has never finished any worse than 2nd in MVP voting. He questionably lost twice to Miguel Cabrera (though Cabrera did win the Triple Crown in 2012 when Trout was a rookie on a losing team), and again in 2015 to Josh Donaldson, perhaps mostly because of the Blue Jays’ inclusion in the postseason while Trout’s Angels watched from the comfort of their living rooms. 2016 proved to hopefully be the end of these voting decisions however, as Trout won the MVP Award despite his Angels once again missing the playoffs. These victories in and of themselves are impressive, without even taking into account that Trout has also been inducted into every All Star Game he’s been eligible for, won the Silver Slugger Award every season, and also took home the Rookie of the Year Award in 2012.

So where does Trout go from here? The obvious answer is a whole lot more All Star Games, more regular season hardware, and hopefully at least one World Series championship. If Trout were to retire tomorrow, he would finish with a WAR just slightly below Andre Dawson, Richie Ashburn, and (the first) Billy Hamilton, whom are all Hall of Fame center fielders. Barring a catastrophic injury, it should only take Trout five or so more seasons at his current level of production to reach the heights of legendary center fielders like Ken Griffey Jr., Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle. The scariest thought is the possibility that we’ve yet to see Trout’s peak, and could soon see him reach a level in his late 20s unlike something we’ve ever seen before. Perhaps an unnaturally talented hybrid of Carlos Beltran, Andruw Jones, and Jim Edmonds? Until we finally see that though, we’ll have to remain content watching our real life version of The Natural.