With two stolen bases Sunday, Mike Trout became the youngest player to reach 150 homers and 150 steals, adding to already impressive Hall Of Fame case.
For almost any other player in baseball, to use a title such as the one above would be almost entirely irresponsible. In some ways, to even mention a 25 year old outfielder and the Hall of Fame in the same sentence is kind of ridiculous. To even discuss Mike Trout’s pitching counterpart, Clayton Kershaw, as a Hall of Fame candidate to many feels premature. However, in regards to the two time AL MVP, it feels like the discussion to be had is not so much ‘if’ but ‘when’.
With 2 SB's today, @miketrout became youngest player to 150 HR/150 SB in his career @ 25 years, 280 days old. #HoHum #Angels
— Victor Rojas (@VictorRojas) May 14, 2017
On Sunday, Trout amassed two stolen bases. Those would represent career steals #149 and #150, making Trout the youngest player to reach 150 home runs and 150 stolen bases. In fact, in the interest of precision, through just seven seasons Trout now sits at 180 home runs to go with those 150 stolen bases. And those are just two of the reasons Trout is currently the game’s best player.
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Already, Trout’s seven years in the majors are among the seven best in the history of the game. The five time silver slugger has accrued the third highest WAR before 25 – the only two names ahead of him belonging to Ty Cobb and Mickey Mantle. With Cobb’s prime years coming in the first quarter of the 20th century, it seems fair to say that Trout has had the second best career through age 25 in the modern era.
However, those feats barely scrape the surface of Trout’s impressive Hall of Fame case. When assessing a players Hall of Fame chances, it is held that a player must surpass the 60 career WAR threshold and have an exceptional five to seven year peak. Trout, with some ten playing years remaining (assuming good health) currently sits at 50.4 career WAR and as we established above, has put together one of the most impressive seven year streaks in the game.
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Sitting on 180 home runs, its likely we’ll find ourselves writing about Trout’s next milestone, reaching 200 home runs, by the end of the season. Given that the five time All Star has never posted a full season WAR below 7.9, it seems inevitable that Trout will cross the 60 WAR threshold sometime early in the 2018 season, at which point we have to start asking ourselves not if Mike Trout is a Hall of Famer, but on what ballot he’ll be inducted.