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Mike Trout reaches Baseball Hall of Fame milestone

By Damian Dydyn

TORONTO, ON - MAY 22: Mike Trout #27 of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim runs out of the dugout onto the field to warm up moments before the start of MLB game action against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on May 22, 2018 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Mike Trout
TORONTO, ON - MAY 22: Mike Trout #27 of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim runs out of the dugout onto the field to warm up moments before the start of MLB game action against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on May 22, 2018 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Mike Trout /
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ANAHEIM, CA – MAY 19: Mike Trout #27 of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim hits a two-run homerun in the ninth inning during the MLB game against the Tampa Bay Rays at Angel Stadium on May 19, 2018, in Anaheim, California. The Rays defeated the Angels 5-3. (Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images)
ANAHEIM, CA – MAY 19: Mike Trout #27 of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim hits a two-run homerun in the ninth inning during the MLB game against the Tampa Bay Rays at Angel Stadium on May 19, 2018, in Anaheim, California. The Rays defeated the Angels 5-3. (Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images) /

Mike Trout reached the average JAWS rating for Baseball Hall of Fame center fielders recently. If his career ended today would he be inducted?

Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels is pretty good at this baseball thing. He’s only led the majors in fWAR in five of the six full seasons he’s played to date. He’s also led in four out of six in rWAR. He finished 4th in fWAR in 2017 when a thumb injury sidelined him for more than a month. And he was tied with Bryce Harper for the lead in 2015. He finished 8th in rWAR in 2017 and 2nd to Bryce Harper in 2015.

Using the Play Index to look a little more closely at those rWAR totals we can see that he has the 30th, 31st, 89th, 131st and 378th most valuable seasons of all time by that metric. Even his injury-shortened 2017 comes in at 723rd all time.

That’s out of 96,609 seasons played since 1871, which means every one of his seasons falls within the 0.75% of greatest seasons ever played. Fewer than 1% of players in the history of the game have had an individual season with a higher rWAR than Mike Trout’s worst full season to date.

That he’s done so by the age of 25 is merely preposterous. Only 205 seasons of Trout’s low of 6.7 rWAR by a player aged 25 or younger exist. Ever. Six of them are Trout’s. 

The next highest total is Ty Cobb at five appearances. Then there is a small group including Mickey Mantle, Jimmie Foxx, Hank Aaron and Alex Rodriguez at four.

He may already be a Baseball Hall of Fame worthy player.

JAWS, or the Jaffe War Score system measures Baseball Hall of Fame worthiness through comparisons to enshrined players at the same position. You can read more about the metric here. The metric can be found on every player’s Baseball Reference page. It includes career WAR, a seven-year peak, and their JAWS score.

The average JAWS rating for Baseball Hall of Fame center fielders is 57.9. That’s exactly where Mike Trout sits as I write this on Wednesday morning, May 23, 2018. His seven year peak is 57.7 which is significantly higher than the average seven-year peak of 44.6.

His career WAR total comes up short of the average career total at 58.1 to 71.2. But this is just his seventh full season, and he is only 26 years old. So that is neither surprising nor all that much of a detriment.

At the moment he is sitting on 4.0 rWAR for the year. It seems likely he will eclipse his low of 6.7 once again. Let’s go back to the Play Index and look for career rWAR totals for players aged 26 and younger.

Mike Trout is 3rd all time right now with about 70% of the season left to play. He sits 3.3 rWAR behind Mickey Mantle and 5.3 behind Ty Cobb. Should Trout maintain his current pace, he would finish the season with 13.5 rWAR. He would then jump into the lead on that list with 67.7 rWAR. That means he could fall off of his pace by 4.2 rWAR by the end of the season and still finished tied with Cobb at the top of this list.

How about fWAR?

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The Fangraphs version of the metric tells a very similar story. Mike Trout is third on the list of fWAR accumulated with 58.4 to date. Mickey Mantle sits in second with 61.3 and Ty Cobb at the top with 63.5. If we once again extrapolate Mike Trout’s season total out over the rest of the year, we go from 3.5 fWAR to 11.8.

That puts him in first once more with a total of 66.7 fWAR. So he has a cushion of 3.2 off of his pace before having to share the lead.

When we open up the criteria to simply looking at career totals Mike Trout currently has the 128th highest fWAR total in the history of the game. He has the 131st highest rWAR total. If he simply ceased to exist before game time tonight, his totals appear to put him just outside of the first group of consistently enshrined players.

He’s in the range of players like Sammy Sosa, Kenny Lofton, and Gary Sheffield. But also well within reach of names like Andre Dawson, Willie McCovey, and the recently enshrined Vladimir Guerrero.

He’s all but guaranteed to get there.

Luckily for Trout, he’ll get to keep playing tonight and for years to come. His candidacy will almost assuredly be of the first ballot variety by the time he hangs up the cleats. The first 6+ years of his career have been, perhaps, the greatest ever seen by a position player.

Next: Trout's under-the radar career-season

If you haven’t paid much attention before now, you should probably make an effort to while you still can. He likely has at least a few more peak years in him. But these days decline sets in around age 30. He could go from baseball god to mere all-time great leaving you kicking yourself for not spending a few afternoons enjoying a Los Angeles Angels game during his heyday.

If he were to retire this afternoon, would you vote him in? If not, how much more would he have to do to get your vote? Let us know in the comments!

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