Mike Trout is Hitting Below .250

Recently I wrote about the 2023 struggles of Trea Turner and a night or two later he went out 4-for-5 and hit two home runs. While the Trea Turner batting average has climbed back above .250 Mike Trout is headed in the opposite direction. As we go to press, Trout has slumped to a batting average of .248 but to be honest, most of his offensive game looks fine and he even stole his first base of the season the other night. Trout has hit 14 home runs and his OPS stands at a rock solid .814. Now some of you will point out that Trout build up a standard of putting up OPS figures closer to 1.00, but yes, we are also not used to his batting average being down to .248. So what gives with Mike Trout?

I went straight to some of the advanced batting metric to see what Trout was doing in 2023 and it struck me that Trout’s BABIP was down to .305 and Trout has had a career mark of .345 for his BABIP. BABIP is an acronym standing for Batting Average on Balls in Play. But I also took a peek at Trout’s sprint speed as measured by STATCAST. There is no slippage in Trout’s sprint speed. So, when a player does age and experiences slippage in his sprint speed, it often does follow that players do experience a lower BABIP as they age and get slower on the basepaths. That is not the case here though.

Mike Trout, center fielder for the Los Angeles Angels File Photo

We do sometimes see players go through stretches of bad luck in their BABIP figures. And that is all that may be going on here with Mike Trout. With a 40 point drop on his batting average on balls that he puts in play, it is natural to see his batting average drop in kind. I am going to watch Trout more closely as the season progresses. At this time, I don’t see anything in Trout’s STATCAST data that he is not hitting the ball as hard as he always has. I see nothing in his STATCAST sprint speeds to tell me he has slowed down on the basepaths. I expect to see a rebound in his BABIP, and with that will come a rebound in his overall batting average. There will be owners who get skittish about Trout’s batting average taking a tumble. Perfect buy low opportunity for me. I would target Trout owners in my league. Winning seasons are made by exploiting misperceptions in the true values of all players.

An interesting opportunity presents itself in a minor league call up for the Dodgers on Friday night June 16th. The young man’s name is Emmett Sheehan and by all counts he is the best pitching prospect in the Dodgers’ minor league system. Sheehan has pitched at Double-AA all season, and this is not a trademark of the Dodgers’ development program to skip development levels. But while Sheehan was notified by the Dodgers that he was going to be promoted to their Triple AAA team, they changed those plans and promoted him to make this Friday night start against San Francisco. In 53 innings of work at Double-AA, Sheehan has struck out 88 batters, a rather gaudy 14.94 batters per 9 innings pitched. His 1.86 ERA is a dominant figure. For re-draft leagues, it might just turn out that this is a spot start, and that the Dodgers want him to put in the development time at Triple-AAA Albuquerque. But in dynasty leagues, this is a must add, because this flamethrower looks like the second coming of Walker Buehler.

While we are discussing dynasty leagues, I am often asked to give out prospect tips on players dominating at the High A-level who might get on to the Top 100 prospect lists for winter 2023/2024. Look no further than Pittsburgh shortstop, Tsung Che-Cheng. He has 34 walks alongside 39 strikeouts. His OPS is above 1.00 and he is hitting .322 year to date. I can’t get enough guys like this on to my dynasty rosters. The Padres also have a young SS who might not get an opportunity for playing time in 2023 but Jackson Merrill is turning heads at High-A as well. Merrill had a very slow start in April, but he has all 5 tools and he will be a major league SS. He is also not a hot target yet. YET.