Baseball’s Best Player Mike Trout is not above autographs

This is always nice to see – especially this time of year in Spring Training. I still remember that night in 1993 when Ken Griffey Jr. walked up and shook my hand as an 11 year old kid. I remember the feel of his Franklin Carbon Fiber batting glove in my small hand. I remember thinking I shouldn’t ever wash my hand again. It’s something magical that a kid just keeps forever inside him until he’s a man.

And Mike Trout is today’s Griffey, and he’s okay with stopping for a moment and signing autographs still.

We don’t write nearly enough about the greatness of Mike Trout. We can buy a ticket to see him but we can’t buy more time for him to be a big league player. All we can do is try to appreciate what is in the flesh in front of us. So let’s do that in this post. Seven eye opening stats from his 2016 MVP campaign:

  • Batted .613 (19-for-31) on the first pitch – .350 league average
  • Chased just 29% of pitches with two strikes – 43.4% league average
  • Swung at 49.1% of pitches with two strikes – 61% league average
  • Led the majors with a .441 OBP
  • Went to the opposite field 37.8% of the time with runners in scoring position (34 of 90 times put in play) – 29.4% league average
  • Swung and missed at changeups just 19.2% of the time (20/104) – 31.2% league average
  • Had 162 opportunities to ground into double plays, and did so just 3.1% of the time (five GIDP) – 11.2% league average

Incredible. What is he going to do next?