With 2020’s pandemic-shortened season and a calf injury suffered in May of last season, the baseball world has been robbed of seeing Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels on the field for much of the last two years.
However, Trout is anticipating he will be fully healthy by the time 2022 spring training begins as he begins a quest to get the Los Angeles Angels to the postseason and earn his fourth American League MVP honor.
So what do the projections look like for a healthy Mike Trout in 2022 as he tries to lead the Los Angeles Angels to the postseason?
Let’s take a look at three different projections of the statistics the 30-year-old Trout could put up next season for the Angels.
Steamer from FanGraphs
We will start with the Steamer projections from FanGraphs. In those projections, Trout is predicted to slash .271/.406/.546 with 37 home runs and 102 RBI. This would be over 147 games and 648 plate appearances. Compare that to the 89 games and 387 plate appearances Trout has had combined over the last two seasons (with 25 home runs and 64 RBI during that span) and you can see that 2022 would not only be a wide jump in terms of playing time, but also production as well.
Of the three sets of projections on this list, these are the most generous for Trout in terms of his offensive production next season.
Interesting note about these projections: Trout struck out a career-high 28.1 percent of the time in 2021. In 2022, Steamer has him projected to strike out in 23.1 percent of his plate appearances. That would still be above his career percentage of 21.5 percent and his 149 projected strikeouts would be the most he has had in a season since 2015.
Baseball Reference
Moving on to the projections from Baseball Reference placed on Trout’s page, Trout is projected to slash .277/.396/.561 with 20 home runs and 51 RBI. These numbers are low because the page estimated Trout to only have 338 plate appearances in 2022. Yes, that number would be less than he has had in the last two years combined.
Interesting note about these projections: So why so low? Here’s the explanation from this page: “It (the projection) uses 3 years of MLB data, with the most recent data weighted heavier. It regresses towards the mean. And it has an age factor.”
Recent seasons have done no favors to Trout, so it makes sense why this is so low. However, this would, of course, be a worst-case scenario for Angels fans. All of the numbers listed for Trout would either indicate another injury or a horrid season at the plate (which Trout has shown no signs of producing).
ZiPS projections
Also on FanGraphs is Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections for the Angels, which contains a much better scenario for Trout than Baseball Reference and slightly better slash line for Trout than Steamer, but with fewer chances at the plate as well.
In the ZiPS model, with 452 plate appearances, Trout would slash .274/.418/.581 with 29 home runs and 78 RBI. His 107 strikeouts in this model would equate to a 23.7 percent rate, which would be a higher rate than Steamer listed.
Interesting note about these projections: In this model, Trout produces a 169 OPS+. That is 22 higher than what Shohei Ohtani (147) is projected to produce in the same simulation. Last season, Ohtani had an OPS+ of 158, which would mean a slight regression for last year’s American League MVP.
Additionally, Trout’s 29 homers would be third on the team in this scenario, coming in behind Ohtani’s 38 and Jared Walsh’s 31.