The best player of his era is making a compelling case for the greatest season in baseball history. So why aren’t more people talking about it?
Anyone with even a passing interest in baseball knows that Mike Trout is, and has been since not long after breaking through as a teenager in 2012, the best player in the sport in a way that defies easy categorization.
The Los Angeles Angels’ center fielder does most baseball things exceptionally and none of them badly. He hits for average (.306 career batting average, sixth among active players) and he hits for power (.571 slugging percentage, first) while playing in a park that favors pitchers. His patient plate approach routinely lands him among the league leaders in walks (.414 on-base percentage, second) and once on board he’s a menace on the basepaths, with a lifetime 162-game average of nearly 30 stolen bases (with an absurd 84% success rate, second all-time among players with at least 200 attempts).
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