Mike Trout and the Fragile Pursuit of GOATdom
The Angels' star was once on track to be the best position player ever. That will probably never happen now.
Very early this season, I wrote about the tragedy of Mike Trout’s career — the way Trout’s prime never synced up with Shohei Ohtani’s best years, how Trout was all alone again on a post-Ohtani L.A. Angels team, and the way none of it really ever mattered toward winning anyway, given how weak the duo’s teammates were throughout their time together.
But at least then, Trout himself was healthy and playing well.
Now, even that is no longer the case. Tuesday brought the depressing news that Trout tore the meniscus in his left knee and will require surgery, without an official timeline for his return. Trout was running among the Top 50 players in MLB by Wins Above Replacement1 at the time of the announcement, with his best rates of power, contact and baserunning value in years. Estimates are that the injury could keep him out 4-6 weeks at a minimum, meaning there’s a good chance he misses 40+ games for the fourth consecutive season.
Once upon a time, Trout was the crown jewel in baseball’s collection of stars. (Such as it was.) After his spectacular 10.3-WAR debut full season at age 20 in 2012, only Mel Ott had more career WAR at the same age. Then, Trout began his streak of being the best batter in MLB history (by career WAR) through each given age-season of his career.
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 hurt his pace by virtue of reducing the season to a 60-game schedule. Trout had tracked for No. 1 in career WAR after six of the previous seven seasons, only briefly being surpassed by Ty Cobb at age 25 in 2017. After the pandemic season at age 28, Trout’s pace dipped to No. 4, and he has never gotten back to No. 1 since.
However, we can’t blame 2020 for most of Trout’s slowdown in the GOAT chase. After missing 126 games in 2021, Trout fell to No. 7 all-time through age 29, out of view on our table above. And though a somewhat more durable 2022 campaign propelled Trout back into the Top 5 through age 30, he fell to 10th all-time through age 31 last year, and is currently 15th all-time through age 32.
His knee injury is not considered season-ending, so Trout should get a chance to improve on that ranking before 2024 is over. If he comes back after missing, say, 35 games and produces at his normal rate from early this season, he could surpass his former teammate Albert Pujols and reclaim No. 14 on the all-time WAR list through age 32. But that would still leave him 2.4 wins shy of Ott’s pace for 10th all-time through age 32, 9.5 wins shy of Alex Rodriguez at 5th, and 20.8 wins shy of Rogers Hornsby at No. 1.
In other words, the early-career dream of Trout becoming the statistical GOAT — the most valuable player in baseball history by WAR — is, for all intents and purposes, dead. This week’s injury didn’t kill it, though it might have been the final nail in the coffin.
When the news broke, I thought back to this old FiveThirtyEight story by my colleague Ben Morris, which speculated that Trout had actually already peaked by the age of 21 because his initial seasons were so outstanding. It sounded so harsh at the time — What do you mean? He still has plenty of time to improve along the aging curve! — but it ended up being correct. At age 32 and carrying a lengthy injury history now, Trout likely will never reclaim his form of those early seasons, the same way he is now miles away from No. 1 on the age-based WAR ranking.
Some players flash so much potential at such a young age that we consider their future limitless, and for a while it looked like Trout was going to rewrite the book of MLB’s all-time greats. But chasing GOATs is a fragile exercise. Their accomplishments are already set in stone, and it doesn’t take much to forever fall off the pace necessary to keep up.
Filed under: Baseball
According to my JEFFBAGWELL version of WAR — aka the Joint Estimate Featuring FanGraphs and B-R Aggregated to Generate WAR, Equally Leveling Lists.
Lately I have been thinking that something like Wins Above Replacement per Game would be a better judge of pure baseball talent. Think about a guy like Ichiro who has 60.0 career WAR (per Baseball Reference), but he came into the league from Japan when he was 27; the middle of many players' prime. He could have easily garnered another 25-30 WAR had he come into the league 5 or 6 years earlier. Had that been the case, 85 WAR would rank him 33rd all time, alongside guys like Ken Griffey Jr, George Brett, and Wade Boggs. Currently he is 126th, 0.2 WAR behind Bobby Abreu! I think he definitely is closer to being one of the 30-35 best players of all time than the126th best. It would also account for anomalies like 2020 and strike-shortened seasons. Granted, those would likely have a very small effect over the long term, but little things like that can add up and skew perception.
I believe if Trout misses 40 games this year, it will be five years in row. It is a testament to his greatness that he has been essentially absent for 5 years and is still discussed as one of the greats.
One observation on your comment regarding aging curves and Ben Morris. The often believed baseball peak age of 27/28 is a function of how baseball has traditionally developed players and not an existential truth in my view. It has always struck me from observations over the years that the peak in baseball is a function of 2 simultaneous curves - a physiological curve (believed to peak in the early 20s, which slowly declines thereafter) and an experiential curve that peaks when a player gains the experience of roughly 1,000 plate appearances or so (it can vary between 800 and 1,300 or so) and flattens thereafter. The key, is to get through roughly 1,000 plate appearances at the youngest age possible for truly exceptional talents. Teams seem to realize this today and are pushing players into the Bigs earlier to capture that higher/younger peak value from those curves.
The age 27/28 peak belief comes from the historical reality that baseball delivered players to the majors from the minors at a later age when that play accumulated 1,000 PAs or so at around 27 or 28. It's an effect - not a cause. In fact, much value was lost in the minors for great talents.
That speaks to Trout's peak as Ben noted. Bryce Harper is another example, accumulating around 1,000 PAs in 2015 at age 22 - his MVP year. At the time I said, like Ben, that it was his peak - and everyone disagreed. Recall that during his free agency, the media told everyone that he was "still 2-3 years from his peak."
Not so.
Harper - like Trout - has suffered injuries, but injuries are a part of aging - not always some bad luck phenomena that just happens to strike out of the blue. They increase over time as you age and wear down. Trout in particular, has always struck me as having a compact but violent swing that would not be sustainable as he and his body aged.
Chasing peak years - like GOATs - is fragile exercise as well.