Has Mike Trout somehow gotten better?
In appreciation of Mike Trout's consistent greatness, Mike Trout Mondayis For The Win's weekly roundup of stuff Mike Trout did.
NEW YORK - This weekend, Mike Trout made his first regular-season visit to Citi Field and his first appearance at the Mets' home park since the 2013 All-Star Game. On Friday afternoon, Trout spent some time in the visitors' dugout facing a horde of New York media and cheerfully but uninterestingly answering their questions: He hadn't seen Kevin Pillar's homophobic incident in Toronto and had no take on the topic, he rooted for the Phillies growing up but did not especially hate any player on the Mets, he played some baseball in the New York Metro area as a teenager and met other players from the region like Marcus Stroman and Stephen Matz, but did not share any specific memories of the city or games played nearby.
Mike Trout Monday is most concerned with Trout's sensational on-field performance, but the outfielder offered only small hints of insight on that front: He is not expressly trying to hit for more power this year and his early-season homer uptick is just the byproduct of barreling more balls up, and he wanted to play through his recent hamstring injury but felt confident and comfortable abiding the decisions of the Angels' training staff.
Instead of churning up whatever controversy might have come with the identification of a single, hated member of the 2006 Mets - "I rue the day Paul Lo Duca was born!" - Trout this week continued his career-long streak of drawing more attention with his play than with his mouth. And Trout, of course, played like the best player in the world yet again.
Mike Trout (PHOTO: Anthony Gruppuso/Paste BN Sports)
In the six games he played since last Mike Trout Monday, Trout went 6-for-18 with three homers, a double, ten walks and two stolen bases. That amounts to a .333/.552/.889 line which, if you're trying to keep track, is good.
Trout's 1.441 OPS over the week - his best mark in a full week's worth of games this season - raised his season rate to a Major League-best 1.223 mark.
There's video of Trout's homers below. But first, please take a look at this simple chart showing Mike Trout's OPS by week this season, for this simple chart is a wonder to behold. The games played tab represents the number of games Trout played each week (through each Sunday's games), obviously, not the number of games he has played all season.
In Mike Trout's worst week this year, he posted a .988 OPS. The average American League OPS to date this season is .733. Trout is astonishing. Here are some dingers:
For Friday's episode of the For The Win podcast, Hemal Jhaveri and I responded to a listener's question about whether a team would be better off having one Mike Trout or three guys half as good as Trout. I spent a couple hours Friday morning considering it, and came to a conclusion that surprised even me. The Trout discussion starts at around the 5:30 mark in the above audio.
And since I'm on the topic of self-promotion, I'll wrap up this week's Mike Trout Monday with a fact I found and tweeted while watching Trout play the Mets over the weekend. This blew my mind:
It's true: By baseball-reference.com's version of WAR, Trout has been worth 51.7 wins, Machado's at 25.5 and Harper's at 23.8. By Fangraphs' version of the same stat, Trout has been worth 50.9 wins, Harper's at 25.5, and Machado's at 23.9.
That's not aimed as a knock at Machado or Harper, either: Both are exceptional players and potential future Hall of Famers. They'd be generational talents if they played in just about any other generation.