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Mike Trout is one of baseball’s biggest stars, but the Los Angeles Angels outfielder is still a young buck.

Albert Pujols, with 35 years of age to his name, gave Trout a reminder of that last nugget on his 24th birthday Friday.

Fellow Angel Kole Calhoun posted a video of Pujols deviously singing “Happy Birthday” to a seated Trout as the first baseman poured baby powder on the reigning AL MVP’s head.

It was then that Pujols slapped an egg right on top of his young teammate’s noggin.

Luckily, Trout was a good sport.

[Twitter]

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Starting pitching and superstars from both sides will determine who earns home-field advantage in the World Series when the American League and National League clash Tuesday in the 2015 MLB All-Star Game. 

The Houston Astros’ Dallas Keuchel (11-4, 2.23 ERA) will take the hill for Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost and the American League. Zack Greinke (8-2, 1.39 ERA) of the Los Angeles Dodgers will start for San Francisco Giants’ Bruce Bochy and the National League. 

Greinke has been stellar for the Dodgers this season, but he may end up in some trouble against this AL lineup. Keuchel leads an AL pitching staff featuring eight first time All-Stars, according to Bleacher Report’s Tyler Conway. The group may be slightly inexperienced, but they may be the key to an AL victory. 

Bryce Harper, 22, of the Washington Nationals and Mike Trout, 23, of the Los Angeles Angels lead a youth movement that will take over Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati for the Midsummer Classic. A record 20 players under the age of 25 are on the two rosters, per the Star Tribune. 

Here are some bold predictions for the game based on statistics, history and the abilities of some of the key players involved.

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Major League Baseball released its sixth All-Star Game balloting update Monday, with final results for the July 14 game in Cincinnati to be announced Sunday. Voters have until Thursday night to cast online, although there is always the threat of some votes being “scrubbed” away when the final count is announced.

The latest update shows that MLB’s cancelling of more than 60 million votes has taken some of the steam out of the Kansas City Royals’ domination of the American League starting lineup, but the message has likely been received that some tweaking to the system is needed going forward.

For now, we have the system MLB has relied upon since 1970, where fan voting determines non-pitching starters for each league, including a designated hitter. Despite the game determining home-field advantage in the World Series, the fan-voting system remains in place and has led to ballot-stuffing incidents, including this year, when eight Royals players were leading the AL voting as of June 15. That led to the cancelling of votes days later.

In the American League, there are only two races—second base and DH—where the leader and second-place player are within 1 million votes of each other. In the National League, there are likewise two—the race for third base and the third outfielder.

Some of the spots are therefore likely cemented, but a surge in some territories could lead to final-week upsets. So, knowing how things stand just days before polling closes, click through to check out Bleacher Report’s All-Star Game starter predictions.

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The 2015 MLB All-Star Game is taking place July 14 in Cincinnati. Fan voting for the starting lineups wraps up this week. There is still some time to get votes submitted for your favorite Los Angeles Angels players. However, only a few have a real shot at playing in the game this year.

Each team is required to receive at least one participant because of an asinine rule. Outside of that, an All-Star berth comes down to popularity and production. Here are the Angels’ top candidates to be named an All-Star in order of likelihood.

1) Mike Trout

No surprise here, as Trout leads all American League players in WAR.

2) Albert Pujols

A number of weeks ago, I wrote a Bold Predictions column in which I said Pujols would make the All-Star team. While most of the other predictions from that piece seem foolish now, this one I nailed.

Pujols has been on an absolute tear since May. He’s hit 20 home runs in the last two months alone. He has a 1.142 OPS during the month of June. He is even now up to second in the AL in WAR among first basemen. After such a shaky beginning to the season, Pujols is inarguably the team’s second-best player and is deserving of that All-Star bid that seemed so bold to predict just six weeks ago.

3) Huston Street

Sadly for Los Angeles fans, after Trout and Pujols, there is a real drop before the team’s third-best candidate. Street is that guy, but his chances of making the team are no sure thing.

Street is third in the AL with 21 saves. His peripherals also stack up nicely with his positional counterparts. The problem is there are a number of non-closers who have been much better than Street this year.

Dellin Betances and Wade Davis (besides picking up saves as injury replacements) have been untouchable middle relievers. The same goes for lesser names like Evan Scribner (41-to-3 strikeout-to-walk rate) or Darren O’Day.

The saves may get Street into the game anyway. Despite the progressive nature of baseball fans, that stat still matters in many circles.

4) Hector Santiago

The last player in Anaheim with any chance of making the All-Star game is Hector Santiago, and he likely doesn’t have much of a chance.

Santiago has been the team’s best starting pitcher this season and has solid figures across the board. Little else makes him a realistic All-Star, however. His record is just 4-4 in 15 starts and he’s given up 13 home runs this season.

Most pressing is the fact that there are simply too many elite arms in baseball right now.

His 8.4 strikeouts per nine innings mark is very good for a starting pitcher, but it puts him 13th in the AL this season among qualified pitchers. His 1.13 walks and hits per innings pitched (WHIP) is also superb, but it doesn’t even put him in the top half-dozen among AL starters.

Santiago has had a good year, but it won’t likely be good enough to make the team. The mediocre play of the Angels will hurt him, as will his manager’s propensity to rejigger the rotation to save arms. It may be the smart play, but it doesn’t come off positively when your manager skips your turn in the rotation.

At 39-37 this season, Los Angeles has had a sloppy year. Getting four players into the All-Star Game is a little too much to ask. The Angels are guaranteed one All-Star and could potentially have more. That’s not too bad.

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The Seattle Mariners began the season with lofty expectations, but they’ve failed to meet them as we approach the midway point of the season.

Seattle took a step in the right direction in the first game of a three-game series in Anaheim, beating the Los Angeles Angels 3-1.

Robinson Cano hit a solo home run, and Taijuan Walker pitched seven innings of one-run ball to get the win.

Aside from the Houston Astros, the rest of the division has been mediocre so far in 2015, with the Angels and Texas Rangers tied for second place, trailing Houston by five games.

Mike Trout hit a solo home run in the first inning for the only run of the game for the Angels.

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Earlier in June, Albert Pujols insisted that the Los Angeles Angels were not “the Mike Trout show.” This was despite all evidence to the contrary, as the Angels had been on Trout’s back all season.

But here we are a couple of weeks later, and time has proven Pujols wise. The Angels are no longer The Mike Trout Show. Now they’re what they were supposed to be: The Mike Trout and Albert Pujols Show.

After getting off to a painfully slow start with a .235 average and .702 OPS through May 27, Pujols has made it impossible to ignore what he’s has been doing since then. ESPN’s Baseball Tonight sent out this tweet Friday morning that highlighted Pujols as arguably the game’s hottest hitter:

He has refused to cool down over the weekend. The 35-year-old first baseman went 5-for-11 with a double and a home run—the 538th of his career, putting him 10 shy of Mike Schmidt for 15th all time—in a three-game series against the Oakland A’s. Even after taking an 0-fer Monday night against the Arizona Diamondbacks, he’s still hitting .369 with a 1.284 OPS and 10 homers since May 28.

In the meantime, Trout has also stayed hot. Though he hasn’t quite kept up with his slugging partner in crime, he’s hitting a rock-solid .297 with a 1.038 OPS and seven home runs since May 28. 

Thus have Trout and Pujols re-emerged as one of the American League‘s top offensive duos. Trout is having the better season with a .958 OPS, 18 home runs and eight stolen bases, but Pujols’ .863 OPS and 18 dingers hardly make him look like a slouch.

And now that it’s sipping on Mike and Albert’s Secret Stuff—like Michael’s Secret Stuff, except more potent—the Angels offense is looking more like what it was supposed to be. 

Per Baseball Savant, here are the splits:

When it was Trout doing all the heavy lifting earlier in the season, the Angels offense was one of the most punchless units in MLB. Since Pujols came alive, it’s looked a lot more like the league-best offense that led the Angels to a league-best 98 wins in 2014.

It makes you wonder: How, exactly, has Pujols’ bat caught fire in such a hurry?

According to the man himself, it’s a case of talent finally combining with luck.

As Pujols told Michael Kolligian of MLB.com: “I’ve been swinging the bat well all year long and, if you stay with that approach, sooner or later they’re going to fall.”

And as he told David Adler and Alden Gonzalez of MLB.com: “It’s the same thing I’ve been doing since Day 1, since Opening Day. I told you guys that. Just better luck, I guess. Instead of hitting balls right at people, I’m finding some holes. It’s a good feeling.”

It’s a reasonable explanation. Pujols is one of the greatest hitters to ever play the game, after all. And though his best days are undeniably behind him, the guy did just OPS .790 with 28 home runs in 2014, for cryin’ out loud!

But while Pujols’ current mega-hot stretch could indeed be a case of his collecting on overdue good luck, I’d like to propose an alternate theory: This is what Pujols looks like when he’s angry.

Let’s hop in the TARDIS and go back in time to May 25. 

On that day, the Angels found themselves locked in a 3-3 tie with the San Diego Padres heading into the bottom of the ninth inning. In the blink of an eye, there were runners on first and third, and Trout was striding to the plate.

With a base open, the Padres could either pitch to Trout or give him four wide ones and take their chances with Pujols. Trout entered the game with a .944 OPS, whereas Pujols had a .709 OPS. So, now-former Padres skipper Bud Black played the numbers and passed on Trout to bring up Pujols.

Here’s what happened:

That there’s a walk-off single. And if you watch to the end of the highlight, you’ll see Pujols glaring at the Padres dugout immediately after the ball left his bat and all the way down the first base line. He was effectively saying, “Take that!” And not at all in a jokey, light-hearted manner.

That wasn’t the first time an opponent intentionally walked Trout to bring Pujols to the plate. After it happened again in a couple of subsequent games, Jill Painter Lopez of Fox Sports West caught up with Pujols to get his thoughts.

His response: “I don’t think about that, dude. It’s part of the game. They can do that 100 more times. That doesn’t bother me. I’ve been on the other side, too.”

A diplomatic response, to be sure. In fact, Pujols made it sound like he checked his annoyance with the first intentional walk at the door as soon as the situation was over.

Looked at from another perspective, however? Maybe not. Since the Padres challenged him to live up to his career track record back on May 25, Pujols has been a different hitter.

One way we can tell is by looking at his approach in the batter’s box. According to Baseball Savant, Pujols was swinging at 46.1 percent of the pitches he saw through May 25, which FanGraphs tells us was in line with his career norms. Since May 26, however, he’s swinging 51.3 percent of the time. 

Thus, he’s gotten more aggressive. We’re witnessing Pujols in attack mode.

Normally, what you worry about when you see a hitter swinging more aggressively is more wild swings that result in too many easy outs for the pitcher. Or, as they’re colloquially known, “strikeouts.”

But those haven’t been a problem. Pujols was only striking out 12.5 percent of the time to begin with through May 25. Since then, he’s struck out in only 5.1 percent of his plate appearances. The exact numbers: four (four!) strikeouts in 79 plate appearances. 

So, Pujols hasn’t just been a more aggressive hitter since that fateful IBB. He’s been a more aggressive hitter who’s making lots of contact. 

And this extra contact has been of the loud variety. Here’s how Pujols’ average exit velocities split up:

• Through May 25: 90.9 mph
• Since May 26: 94.3 mph

Because we now know that batted balls really become dangerous once they get into the mid-90s and beyond in velocity, the leap Pujols has made is a significant one.

And if you go looking for hitters who have been crushing the ball like he has since May 26, you get a list that includes the likes of Paul Goldschmidt, Giancarlo Stanton and, naturally, Trout.

So, Pujols hasn’t just turned into a more aggressive hitter who’s making more contact. He’s turned into a more aggressive hitter who’s making contact and punishing the ball when he does.

If it wasn’t already taken, The Force Awakens would be a darn good title for a movie about the transformation that Pujols has undergone since the Padres dared to test him. And for the Angels, the result has been the rejuvenation of the Trout/Pujols duo and, with it, their offense as a whole.

Now, it should go without saying that Pujols can’t possibly keep this up for the rest of the season. What he’s doing right now would result in a 90-homer campaign over a 162-game sample, which says enough about the sustainability of his performance. And as Rob Neyer of Fox Sports noted, Pujols isn’t drawing walks or using the opposite field like he usually does.

However, the hitter Pujols is right now is more reflective of the hitter he’s supposed to be than the hitter he was before. The big projection systems see him managing an .800-ish OPS with around 17 homers the rest of the way. That’s probably asking a bit much. But he should be able to come reasonably close to being that good as long as his anger mode is kept on “BERSERK.”

And if that’s the case, the Angels lineup will continue to be a challenge. It could be beaten when it was all about Trout. It’s a lot harder to top now that it’s all about Trout and Pujols.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.

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Obviously, you’re not surprised to see “Mike Trout” and “most valuable” in the same sentence. Trout was the runner-up in the American League MVP voting in 2012 and 2013 before winning the award in 2014. His name and “most valuable” have appeared together a lot over the last three years.

And yet all that now looks like little more than a prolonged warm-up for what Trout is doing in 2015.

Part of the equation is that the Los Angeles Angels‘ 23-year-old superstar is having yet another stupendous season. Maybe not his best season, mind you, but it’s at least his most balanced season since back in 2012. Like he was then, he’s truly doing it all.

For starters, Trout has been an on-base machine. He’s hitting .294 with a .381 on-base percentage. Neither is his best mark, but both are improvements over last year’s .287 average and .377 OBP. For this, he can thank his newly crafted aggressive approach and, as ESPN Stats & Info highlighted, turning his weakness against high pitches into a strength:

Trout is also hitting for power. His raw power production has taken only a slight downturn from where it was in 2014, and his 13 dingers put him on pace for a career-high 41. Considering that he entered the week making hard contact a career-best 41.5 percent of the time, he might actually get there.

But it’s not all about Trout’s bat. He’s also using his legs, as his eight stolen bases put him on a pace for 25. If he gets there, he’ll have reversed a trend that saw his steals fall from 49 in 2012 to 33 in 2013 to just 16 in 2014. 

Lastly, the advanced metrics have Trout back to playing quality defense in center field after down years in 2013 and 2014. Entering Monday, ultimate zone rating said Trout’s defense has saved three runs above average. Defensive runs saved disagreed, saying his defense had actually saved twice as many runs.

In so many words: After flirting with becoming a bat-only player in 2013 and 2014, Trout is actually living up to his reputation as the game’s best all-around player in 2015. Cue Bryce Harper to sum it up.

“Baseball is always, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ That’s just how the game works. I still believe Trout is the best player in the game, hands down,” the Washington Nationals superstar told ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick a week ago. 

It’s indeed hard to argue the point. And even if it doesn’t back it completely, wins above replacement once again strongly agrees with it.

According to Baseball-Reference.com, Trout began the week tied for third in the AL in WAR at 3.2. FanGraphs put him at only 2.9 WAR, but that was good enough for sole possession of third on its AL leaderboard.

All this is the long way around the barn of stating the obvious: Based on his play alone, yes, Trout is once again a leading candidate for the AL MVP award. 

However, remember that this is only part of the equation. The other part is more beneath the surface, and it’s where Trout is really demonstrating the whole “most valuable” thing like never before.

In the background of Trout’s latest awesome season is an Angels team that’s, well, not awesome. Before sweeping a four-game series against the Detroit Tigers over the weekend, they were just 23-24.

Of course, Trout’s awesomeness being wasted on not-so-awesome teams is nothing new. Before he took part in a 98-win season in 2014, his efforts were wasted on an 89-win team in 2012 and on a 78-win team in 2013. Like Ewan McGregor in the Star Wars prequels, he was a bright spot in a sea of “meh.”

But even on those teams, Trout had at least some help. It’s hard to say as much about his current situation, especially in his primary neck of the woods: on offense.

Because the Angels entered the week ranked 14th in the AL in OPS and runs scored, it’s not a secret that their offense has issues. But it’s still shocking, as what’s going on this year represents a huge drop-off from the prior three seasons:

The reasons for this are plentiful. Albert Pujols is back to looking old and over the hill. Howie Kendrick’s dependable bat is in Los Angeles proper. Matt Joyce has failed miserably at being a Plan B for Josh Hamilton. And speaking of Hamilton, the Angels’ pettiness put him back in Texas.

At any rate, all it takes is one glance at what Trout has done offensively and one glance at what the Angels as a whole have done offensively, and you can come to a conclusion that Trout has truly taken over the Atlas role for the Angels offense. That is, it all rests squarely on his shoulders.

But we can put some more numbers to the idea too, and what they say is straightforward: yup.

For this, we’ll turn to two useful but obscure stats: Bill James’ runs created (RC) formula and Tom Tango’s weighted runs created (wRC) formula. The two stats have different calculations, but they both measure a player’s offensive value in terms of how many of his teams runs he’s created.

Entering play Monday, Trout’s RC stood at 40. That’s out of the 192 runs the Angels have created—not the same as scored—so Trout is responsible for 20.8 percent of the team’s offense.

As for Trout’s wRC, that stands at 38 out of the Angels’ total of 180. That’s 21.1 percent.

Given how awesome Trout has been in an otherwise terrible lineup, his accounting for a fifth of the Angels’ offense sounds about right. It’s also, as these figures show, the biggest weight he’s ever carried:

In 2012, 2013 and 2014, Trout was most certainly a valuable member of the Angels offense. But in 2015, he’s become downright indispensable. Without him, the Angels offense might be the worst in baseball.

But of course, hitting isn’t what Trout is all about. He’s the complete package, and that’s where WAR can provide an additional perspective on what he’s meant to the Angels.

Ask FanGraphs, and it’ll tell you that Trout’s 2.9 WAR is out of the Angels’ total WAR of 10.7. That’s 27.1 percent. And while that doesn’t match the 28.0 percent of the Angels’ WAR he accounted for in 2013, it still borders on ridiculous to see a single player accounting for more than a quarter of his team’s value.

Baseball-Reference.com, meanwhile, has a slightly different opinion. It has Trout accounting for 3.2 of 9.1 total WAR, or 35.2 percent. That’s not just an even more ridiculous chunk of the team’s overall value but also a mark that blows his previous career best of 26.8 percent (also in 2013) out of the water.

So when Pujols said Monday night, via Pedro Moura of the Orange Country Register, that the Angels aren’t “the Mike Trout show,” he wasn’t entirely right. Because the thing is, they kinda are.

Bottom line: Just when you thought Trout couldn’t possibly be more worth raving about, he goes and does something like this. Albeit with a bit of help from the Angels, he’s found a way to go from being “most valuable” to “even more valuable.”

Of course, there’s no guarantee things are going to stay this way. Maybe Trout can keep up his end of the bargain, but his production won’t loom quite as large if some of the quality hitters in the Angels lineup wake up. 

Also, none of this is to say that we should go ahead and give Trout his second straight AL MVP and be done with it. It’s a wee bit soon for that, and Nelson Cruz and (naturally) Miguel Cabrera are just two of several worthy competitors. 

But if it so happens that the final two-thirds of the Angels’ season continues to resemble the first third of their season, by the end, they’ll be a team fighting hard for a wild-card spot thanks overwhelmingly to one guy. He’ll have his strongest case yet for an MVP award, which is saying something in his case.

Regardless of how things pan out, you can at least consider all this as the latest in a long line of reasons not to take Trout for granted. His excellence really should be ho-hum by now, but evidently, he’s just as good at self-one-upmanship as he is at baseball.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Mike Trout was dead to rights when he tried to steal third in the fifth inning against the Boston Red Sox on Friday night.

But like all superheroes do in the face of danger, the reigning MVP wiggled out of trouble—literally.

Trout eluded Brock Holt by moving his left hand as he approached the bag and swiftly slid his right foot underneath the third baseman’s glove.

The Los Angeles Angels’ outfielder was initially ruled out, but the call was overturned upon review.

[MLB]

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There’s a new Mike Trout roaming the baseball landscape early in 2015. And so far, he looks suspiciously like the old Mike Trout, who most everyone knew and loved as the game’s best player.

That’s the takeaway you get when looking at Trout’s numbers. In 19 games, the Los Angeles Angels Angels center fielder is slashing .318/.432/.545 with four home runs, five stolen bases and a .978 OPS.

Among the game’s elite players, numbers like these place Trout about where you’d expect. On Monday morning, he ranked in the top 10 in the American League in adjusted OPS and behind only three other players in Wins Above Replacement.

Because Trout led everyone in adjusted OPS and WAR between 2012 and 2014, it might be tempting to say his current positions in both categories were inevitable. But if you rack your brain, you’ll remember that Trout being his usual self in 2015 wasn’t supposed to be a sure thing.

Though Trout captured an overdue MVP award in 2014, it was a down season by his standards. His average fell from the mid-.320s to just .287, and his OPS fell to .939 from .988 the previous season. He went from being “easily” baseball’s best player to “arguably” baseball’s best player.

After a year like that, it was clear that making an adjustment or two would be in Trout’s best interest. And that, naturally, brings us to where this “new” Mike Trout is coming from.

If you already know where we’re going, that’s either (a) because you can read headlines or (b) because Trout wasn’t keeping any secrets in spring training about what he wanted to do in 2015.

In February, Trout told Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times that one of his biggest goals for 2015 was cutting down on his strikeouts after leading the AL with 184 of them in 2014. When asked in early March to elaborate on his plan, Trout made a point about being more aggressive.

“Throughout my career, I’ve been taking,” he said. “I like to see pitches, but I’m going to get locked and loaded on the first pitch. If it’s in the zone, I’m going to take a hack at it.”

In theory, swinging at pitches that are good to hit instead of taking them makes perfect sense. And according to a person in the know, this was the right idea for Trout to pursue.

An advisor to an AL team told this to Anthony Castrovince of Sports on Earth: “The book on Trout is to get a first-pitch strike on him, because he usually takes on first pitches. … So what I want to know is what happens when he starts swinging at more first pitches. How does that change everything else?”

As far as that last question is concerned, Trout hinted at what he could do with more early swings with his spring performance. He hit .441 with a 1.362 OPS, numbers that, as he told Bob Nightengale of USA Today, had a lot to do with his newfound aggressive approach.

But now we’re in the regular season, and we don’t need to take his word for it about what’s behind his production anymore. We can see for ourselves.

Not surprisingly, what we can see is some pretty good stuff.

Trout is indeed being more aggressive. He’s doubled his first-pitch swing rate, going from 10.6 in 2014 to 21.0 this year. And according to FanGraphs, his overall swing rate is at a career-high 41.7 percent.

Now, you’d think that these extra swings would be leading to shorter, easier at-bats. But actually, the opposite has happened. Trout is working on a career-high rate of 4.52 pitches per plate appearance and, according to Baseball Savant, seeing more two-strike pitches than ever before.

But this isn’t to say Trout’s extra swings have been wasted. It just means we have to go back to something else he said during spring training.

As told to DiGiovanna: “Being aggressive on that first pitch is getting me ready to hit better than just taking.”

Or, translated: You can be a better hitter by swinging than you can by taking.

That Trout’s strikeout rate has dropped from an ugly 26.1 percent last year to a more reasonable 19.8 percent this year says this new outlook is working for him, and it’s no mirage. He has a career-low 5.7 swinging-strike rate, as well as a career-high 36.8 foul-ball percentage.

There’s no need to explain the value of a low whiff rate, but don’t underestimate the value of a high foul-ball rate. Many believe foul balls are a valuable skill, including former major leaguer Gabe Kapler:

That Trout has improved his whiff and foul-ball rates despite being more aggressive looks good enough on its own. But what can make these two strengths look even better is how they’re stemming largely from an area that had previously been a key weakness.

One of the worst-kept secrets in baseball in 2014 was how much Trout was struggling against high fastballs. He saw a lot of them, and Baseball Savant says he hit a career-low .113 against them.

In 2015, Trout is seeing even more high heat. But he’s handling it a lot better, as he’s 6-for-22 (.273) against the high hard stuff. That’s obviously a small sample, but there are good reasons for it. Though Trout has being similarly aggressive against high heat, his whiff and foul rates against it have improved dramatically:

As such, Trout’s aggressiveness hasn’t just helped him solve his strikeout problem. It’s also helped him take away the best weapon pitchers had against him in 2014. More so than ever before, he’s dictating his own at-bats.

And in a big-picture sense, it’s not hard to see how this is benefiting him.

Easily the biggest benefit of Trout’s new approach is something he hinted was coming: domination within the strike zone.

Given how much he killed pitches in the zone between 2012 and 2014 when he did swing, it was frustrating how infrequent Trout’s in-zone swings were. But so far in 2015, he’s drastically ramped up his in-zone swing rate (Z-Swing%) and, per Baseball Savant, is crushing in-zone pitches better than before:

Trout’s increased aggressiveness and production against in-zone pitches accounts for the bulk of his overall production. Just as important, though, is how this transition doesn’t come with the expected downside.

One thing you fear with hitters who are being more aggressive is that they might also be chasing more pitches outside the zone. But this hasn’t been the case with Trout. His chase rate (O-Swing%) hasn’t increased nearly as much as his zone rate (Zone%) has dropped:

When you mix good discipline and a small percentage of pitches in the zone like that, you’re going to walk a lot. So it has been with Trout, who’s working on a career-best 16.0 BB%.

Add it all up, and what we’re seeing in 2015 is Trout at his very best as a hitter.

By becoming more aggressive, Trout has been able to fix things that were ailing him in 2015. And by mashing in the strike zone and still maintaining enough discipline to take his walks, he’s enjoying the best of both worlds like never before.

Basically, he’s answering the challenge that was issued in 2014. The league sent a message that Trout was going to have to get better if he wanted to remain the best. He’s done that, and in the process, Trout has sent a message of his own:

How ’bout something a little harder next time?

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Many would argue that Mike Trout is without peer in today’s MLB. On Friday night, he set himself apart in the baseball record books. 

In the top of the sixth inning against the Houston Astros, the Los Angeles Angels outfielder drilled a two-run homer off Roberto Hernandez to give his team a 3-1 lead.

The home run made Trout the youngest player ever to amass 100 home runs and 100 stolen bases, per Fox Sports West’s Alex Curry. Fox Sports MLB noted Trout’s age in relation to the previous record holder, Alex Rodriguez:

Trout then hit a tie-breaking three-run homer in the eighth inning, which proved to be the difference in the Angels’ 6-3 win. 

Angels manager Mike Scioscia and teammate Jered Weaver talked about Trout after the game, per Alden Gonzalez of MLB.com:

Jason Collette of RotoWire.com put Trout’s accomplishments in perspective relative to the hype surrounding Kris Bryant:

The 100-100 achievement is a testament to Trout’s versatility. Although his steals dropped from the previous season in 2013 and 2014, he remains a dynamic offensive presence and one of the game’s best players. It’s scary to think what his numbers may look like a decade from now.

The 2014 American League MVP has gotten off to a great start this year. Entering Friday, he boasted a .438 batting average and a .500 on-base percentage. The Angels will certainly need Trout to continue posting monster numbers to win the AL West. 

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