Case of the K's

Case of the K’s

            Mike Trout is easily the best player in baseball and not many people will argue that fact.  His speed, glove, bat and athleticism just make him the total package when it comes to baseball players.  He’s also only 23 years old making him on the rise of his career and he could only get better.  So what’s wrong with him this year?  Well to get a better look we need to look at the numbers and see what exactly has changed on his approach at the plate.

            The first place to look is just his overall stats; lets see if there is any real outstanding issues other than just the K’s.

Slash Line:

	BB%	K%	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	BABIP	ISO	wOBA	wRC+
2014	11.8%	27.6%	.272	.359	.524	.883	.347	.252	.380	146
2013	9.0%	18.5%	.283	.348	.503	.851	.320	.220	.367	137
Career	12.4%	21.2%	.310	.399	.542	.941	.365	.232	.403	162

            What I’ve done is taken the stats from this year and matched the date to show what Trout had done up to this point last season, the career numbers are just to give you a reference what his career totals are.  So looking at the numbers the first thing we’ll notice is Trout is doing better this year than he was last season in the same time frame across the board.  Wait?  Hasn’t every sports station been saying how bad Trout is doing?  How his K% is the highest in his career and he’s struggling?  Yes, I thought that too and in fact only 2 stats are worse than last year: BA and K%.  Even his BB%, which has been a major concern to so many, is UP from last year in the same time frame.

            So what can we take away from this first look at the stats?  Trout isn’t doing nearly as badly as people think he is, even on the team he’s on his wRC+ puts him 46% better than average so he’s not hurting anyone.  While his overall stats obviously are lower than his career what we’re seeing in the chart is that his pace is actually BETTER than last years.  While everything is down career wise it doesn’t mean he’ll continue to be under the averages so lets take a look the quality of the contact.

Batted Ball:

	GB/FB	LD%	GB%	FB%	HR/FB
2014	0.95	17.6%	40.2%	42.2%	16.3%
2013	1.66	21.1%	49.2%	29.7%	15.8%
Career	1.19	22.1%	42.3%	35.6%	18.0%

            So here we do see something that is much different that normal.  One of Trout’s best tools is his speed and this actually can account for the lower BABIP.  Players that are faster tend to have a higher BABIP since they can force plays or rush the defender or even just beat a throw out.  Trout is hitting almost 20% more balls into the air where his speed has no advantage and adds no pressure to the defense.  Yes his HR/FB is technically higher but when your hitting double the amount of FB then it’s not really as big of a plus.  The most concerning thing to me is the decline in LD% and GB%; as I said one of his better tools is his speed and Trout’s ability to hit to the gaps and allow his speed to stretch that single into a double or triple, or just to steal bases in general.  Trout is getting under the ball and lifting more than normal and if he gets the ball to flatten out more then we could see that BABIP and in turn his BA go back to normal.  So we know he’s getting under the ball but lets take a look at what pitches he’s swinging at.

Swing Rate:

	O-Swing	Z-Swing	Swing	O-Contact	Z-Contact	Contact	F-Strike %	SwStr%
2014	26.0%	58.6%	41.0%	68.0%	88.1%	81.7%	55.9%	8.3%
2013	29.3%	53.4%	40.6%	59.4%	93.6%	80.5%	52.3%	7.7%
Career	25.8%	55.4%	39.2%	70.2%	88.1%	81.7%	55.4%	6.9%

            Here we see some interesting differences as well.  This year he’s making more contact outside the zone by a fair amount but is swing less, could be he’s not being fooled by many of the pitches outside the zone.  There are 2 stats that strike me as odd: Z-Contact% and F-Strike% (First pitch Strike%).  He’s making his career totals of contact but it is far less contact than last years pace so that is something that I don’t like.  As for the F-Strike% its 3% higher than last year and it does give credit to the higher K% since he’s in the hole more.  What gives more credit is the 1.3% higher than career Swinging Strike Percent (SwStr%) and that is on the rise.  Adding the increased F-Strike% and SwStr% together could indicate that he’s putting himself in the hole often and early.

Hot and Cold Chart:

0-1	0-3	.000	.000	0-1
1-3	.375	.400	.125	.091
.400	.294	.500	.214	.286
0-3	0-3	.222	2-4

            So we can see something quite interesting, Trout can’t turn on the ball right now.  Pitchers are challenging him inside and winning the battle quite easily from what the numbers say.  Worse than that is the pitch he struggles the most against inside is the fastball, of all pitches the fastball.  This isn’t a good sign for him but it isn’t a damning one either.  Trout is getting ahead of himself and swinging early, pitchers are now challenging him inside and he can’t fight it off and since he’s lifting the ball more what contact he’s making is very soft.  The pitchers are also noticing this; you can see that the top of the strike zone is full of .000 BA, which supports the rise in the FB%.

            I found it so odd how people keep focusing on the K% and lower BA; in fact that’s what I expected to see.  When I noticed that there was more to it than just a rise in K’s I was a little taken aback.  The data supports that Trout is struggling with more than just K’s; the rise in FB% and his struggles against the fastball mixed with the Hot/Cold chart data makes for a compelling argument.  Now the good news, this doesn’t seem like a hard fix for someone of Trout’s skill level.  The one thing he needs to do is to get back to that level of patients that allowed him to get better pitches.  The fact he isn’t fairing well on the inside can also be worked on, in the end Trout is the best player in baseball for a reason and I trust him to make the adjustments he needs to.