Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout is king of the solitary shot
Mike Trout smashed his 29th home run of the 2015 season July 24 off Colby Lewis of the Texas Rangers. The Los Angeles Angels ultimately lost the contest 4-2 versus their division rival, but in that game, the 23-year-old Trout hit the 127th home run of his career. It was a solo shot and the 87th of any such long ball produced by the phenom.
Teammate Albert Pujols is tied with Trout for the American League lead in homers, with Detroit’s J.D. Martinez trailing them two back of the lead. Trout has done a number of outstanding things early on in his life as a professional baseball player, but he is yet to be named a home run champion. With a real chance of finally accomplishing the feat this season, 22 (or 76%) of his fence clearing drives have been with no one on base.
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Pujols, a two-time home run champion from his time in the National League with the St. Louis Cardinals, has had 18 of his 29 (62%) clear the fence with no runners on base. The late-blooming Martinez has hit 14 of his 27 dingers with runners in scoring position or on-base, good for almost a 50 percent success rate.
Despite presently leading the AL in home runs, Trout ranks 7th in RBI with 59. In his career, the outfielder has hit a stunning 69 percent of his career home runs with no bases being occupied. While the physical comparisons and assessment of talent continue to link Trout with Mickey Mantle, is Trout anywhere near as clutch with runners on-base as The Mick was? After his age 23 season, Mantle had 121 home runs, the seventh most amount before an age 24 season since 1950. Trout currently ranks ahead of Mantle at fifth on that same list with nearly half a season left to be played still.
Moreover, is Trout’s knack for going yard as a soloist mostly a condition of his game, or more a result of the players who have hit ahead of him early on in his career?
Trout has hit mostly in the No. 2 hole this year for the Angels. So he’s not seeing the same RBI opportunities as someone like Pujols would be. The Angels have worked mostly with Kole Calhoun, Erick Aybar and Johnny Giavotella in the lead off spot this year. Calhoun leads the way with a .327 OBP. The No. 9 hitter in the lineup has collectively gotten on-base at a .286 clip in 2015, fifth highest in the AL. Back in Trout’s 2012 rookie campaign when he primarily hit leadoff, the Angels’ No. 9 hitter was even better with a .292 OBP. Yet, 21 of his 30 home runs (70%) still occurred with no one on base.
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As recently as June 16 though, manager Mike Scioscia moved Trout to the No. 3 spot permanently within the lineup. He has homered 11 times in that slot, with only two of them accounting for more than one RBI.
A sensical comparison in present times would be Bryce Harper. Even though he was not the most clutch hitter in his previous three seasons, even Harper has less issues with going yard with a base(s) occupied. Of his 82 career homers, 51 (or 62%) have been solo shots.
In Mantle’s first four seasons, 49 percent of his home runs were of the solo variety. But perhaps given Trout’s circumstances early on (he’s hit leadoff in 27 percent of his career starts), there might be a more apt comparison than the Commerce Comet. To say Trout is not clutch with RISP is untrue. He is a career .318 hitter in any such scenario. The Millville Meteor also has three walk-off homers, 16 game tying ones and 55 go-ahead shots. His predecessor has 12, 53 and 190, respectively, with Mantle having 14 years of service time over Trout.
Since he consistently began hitting second or further down in the batting order in 2013, Trout conceivably would have had more RBI opportunities and thus, more chances of going deep with runners on-base. Yet his career pace of doing so looks nothing like Mantle’s, who hit only 56 percent of his career home runs with nobody on-base. Instead, Trout’s slugging ways are instead more aptly compared to someone like Rickey Henderson.
Often regarded as one of the greatest leadoff hitters of all time, Henderson still managed 297 total homers in his playing days. He hit 81 of them leading off a game, an all-time mark that may never be surpassed. But like Trout’s high ratio of solo homers, 70 percent of Henderson’s left the park with nobody on-base.
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Trout is a generational talent like few others baseball has seen in the last couple decades. With the build and tools of Mantle, he’s a familiar specimen the game has welcomed with open arms. It seems likely the Los Angeles Angels’s star will surpass Henderson’s career home run mark. Mantle’s 536 will be an interesting one to keep an eye on. Trout’s solo shot ratio may drop as he moves deeper down the batting order into his veteran seasons. But it might not, and if it doesn’t while he’s mainly hitting third and/or fourth, that would make for some interesting analysis years down the road.
But perhaps the more intriguing all-time record that could once be owned by Trout is Henderson’s career runs scored mark of 2,295.
Trout is now leading the AL for a fourth consecutive year in runs scored with 72. His current pace has him on track to compete with his personal best of crossing home plate 129 times in 2012. In terms of lifetime runs scored, he has a way to go and won’t have the same advantage of getting himself into scoring position via the stolen base as Henderson did. But if Trout keeps his current pace of hitting 69 percent of his home runs as solitary ones and ends up surpassing Mantle’s career home run mark, that will be over 160 more runs scored through the solo shot process than Henderson had in his illustrious career.
Perhaps it’s time Mike Trout adds to his list of nicknames and builds a lexicon similar to Mantle’s. Mantle had three distinguished ones in his day. If Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat, then surely, a fitting addition to the Millville Meteor for Trout might be Sir Solo.