Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout Joins Cobb and Mantle in Select Club
By reaching 50 Wins Above Replacement for his career at the age of 25, Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels joins a select club with Ty Cobb and Mickey Mantle.
Mike Trout is hardly the first player to enjoy such a fast start to his MLB career. In the history of baseball, there is a select group of players known for being very good at a young age. Bob Feller, for example, was in the major leagues when he was just 17 years old. He had 14 career wins under his belt by the end of his age-18 season. Then he won 17 games as a 19-year-old, giving him 31 career wins as a teenager.
Joining Feller in the “impressive teenagers” category are Bryce Harper, Mel Ott, Ty Cobb, and Ken Griffey, Jr. They are among the greats who were quite valuable before they hit their 20s. Another great young player was pitcher Dwight Gooden. In his rookie year, Dwight Gooden was the best pitcher in the National League when he was just 19 years old.
Baseball’s current superstar, Mike Trout, did not have a good age-19 season. He was called up to the big leagues in early July and struggled mightily in his first 14 games (.163/.213/.279). The Angels sent him back to Triple-A for three weeks where he regained his hitting stroke. He came back up in mid-August and hit .250/.318/.450 over the remainder of the season. That may not seem like much compared to the Mike Trout we’ve come to know and love, but it’s a solid showing for a 19-year-old.
Of course, at age 20, Mike Trout exploded upon the baseball world with an incredible Rookie of the Year season. He also finished second in AL MVP voting. He’s continued his excellent play ever since, winning two AL MVP Awards and finishing second two times. He could easily have five MVP Awards.
One of the many amazing things about Mike Trout is that he seems to pick something to improve upon every year and does that one thing better than he had before. He stole a league-leading 49 bases in 2012, then dropped to 33, 16, and 11 steals over the next three years. Last year, he stole 30 bases again. It was like he decided to run again, just because he knew he could.
In 2014, Trout struck out 184 times, leading the league in the category. That must have bothered him because he cut his strikeouts to 158 and 137 over the next two seasons. After his on-base percentage dropped to .377 in 2014, he came back with a .402 OBP in 2015 and a league-leading .441 mark in 2016. There doesn’t seem to be anything he can’t do.
Mike Trout is currently playing in his age-25 season. He’s off to a great start, with 11 runs scored, five home runs, 14 RBI, and three steals in his first 19 games. According to Baseball-Reference, he’s already been worth 0.7 Wins Above Replacement (WAR, which takes into account all of the things a player does on the field to help his team win, such as offense, defense, and base running for position players). This hot start has put Mike Trout over 50 WAR for his career.
To put this in perspective, in his sixth full season in the big leagues, Mike Trout has been more valuable in his career than Torii Hunter (played 19 years), Fred Lynn (17 years), Nellie Fox (19 years), and even the great Bartolo Colon (20 years). He’s already accumulated more career value than numerous Hall of Fame players and will likely pass Hall of Famers Orlando Cepeda (played 17 years), Kirby Puckett (12 years), and Bobby Doerr (14 years) in the next month or so.
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Trout has been so good at such a young age that he recently joined an elite club—players with 50 or more career WAR by their age-25 season. Trout is right there with Mickey Mantle (52.1 WAR) and Ty Cobb (55.8 WAR). If Trout has an average Mike Trout season, he will rise to the top of this group by the end of the year.
Ty Cobb had a head start on Trout. Cobb joined the Detroit Tigers as an 18-year-old for 41 games. Like Trout, he struggled in his first taste of big league play, hitting .240/.288/.300. That would be the last time he ever hit below .300 in a season. He was much better in his age-19 season but really came into his own at the age of 20. Cobb had his best sustained stretch of play from 1909 to 1912, when he was 22-25 years old and averaged 10.1 WAR per season over those four years. For comparison, Trout has averaged 9.6 WAR per season over the last five years.
Mickey Mantle joined the Yankees in 1951 at the age of 19. He played 96 games that year and hit .267/.349/.443. Like Trout and Cobb, Mantle had his first great season at the age of 20. He also had his best sustained stretch of play early in his career, from age 20 to age 25. During this stretch of six years from 1952 to 1957, Mantle averaged 8.5 WAR per season.
Trout, Cobb, and Mantle form a trifecta as the greatest under-25 position players in baseball history, but it should be mentioned that another all-time great could have been on this list if not for World War II. Ted Williams showed up in Boston fully-formed in 1939 at the age of 20. He finished fourth in MVP voting that year and led the league with 145 RBI. The next year, he led the league in runs and on-base percentage. He followed that up with an incredible .406/.553/.735 season in which he led the league in runs, home runs, walks, and all three triple-slash categories. Amazingly, he finished second in AL MVP voting (to Joe DiMaggio and his 56-game hitting streak).
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At the age of 23, Williams again led the league in runs, home runs, and walks. He added a league-leading 137 RBI to the mix and led the league in all three triple-slash categories for the second year in a row (.356/.499/.648). Incredibly, he finished second in MVP voting again (losing out to Joe Gordon). Through his age-23 season, Williams was worth 34.2 WAR and coming off two straight 10.6 WAR seasons.
After spending three years fighting in World War II, Williams came back to Boston in 1946 at the age of 27 and had the best season of his career (10.9 WAR). Had he not missed those years to World War II, Williams very likely would be right there with Cobb, Mantle, and Trout as players with 50 or more Wins Above Replacement through their age-25 season.