Mike Trout is having the worst season of his career, and he's finally going to win an MVP.
This is strange, this is irony, this is fair. Well, maybe it isn't fair that Mike Trout didn't have an MVP after the first two years of his career, when his rookie season was historically good and his second season was, by some measurements, even better. Not to rehash the Trout vs. Cabrera debate, because Miguel Cabrera was pretty damn impressive along the way to his MVP trophies in 2012 and '13, but Trout was historically good in those two seasons with the Angels and didn't get an MVP.
He's not historically good this season, but Trout almost surely will be the MVP -- and he should win it in a landslide.
How this happens is a combination of stuff. Big picture, it's one of those baseball things. Each season is an entity unto itself, with 162 games languidly stretching out and defining the sport in unpredictable ways. It's among the things that make the sport so great, when the season is nearing completion and we can take a look back, like watching time-lapse images of a baseball stadium being built. As it was happening, it was hard to see the incremental progress. But look at the finished product. Fascinating. And it was happening right under our eyes!
That's this season with Mike Trout and the rest of his American League MVP competition: Fascinating. Happening right under our eyes. And it's almost finished, so we can take a look back and see how we got here, to this point where Mike Trout is having his worst season (worst is a relative term for a guy this good) and yet about to claim his first MVP. And one of the reasons, like I said, is the big-picture truth that each baseball season is unique and strange and you just never know.
Other factors, though, are some of the minutiae we didn't know: Who knew scoring would be down so much this season? Maybe PED testing is that much better. Maybe pitching is that much better. Maybe pitching is that much better because PED testing is not that much better. Defensive shifts, pitcher-friendly ballparks, the baseball has been messed with -- who knows? All we know for sure is this: Runs are being scored at a low level not seen in more than 20 years, and home runs are down, and the MLB batting average of .252 is the lowest since 1972.
Across the board, batters are doing less. Cabrera himself has seen his OPS tumble nearly 200 points from last season (1.078 to .888 in 2014) while his 22 home runs are half his 2014 total. Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre, seventh in MVP voting a year ago when he hit 30 home runs and had 92 RBI, spent time on the DL and is on pace for 20 homers and 80 RBI. A's third baseman Josh Donaldson, fourth in MVP voting a year ago, has seen his slash line plummet from .301/.384/.499 to .255/.342/.456.
And Donaldson is probably Mike Trout's biggest competition for MVP.
That's because Donaldson leads the AL in WAR (baseball-reference.com version), despite his pedestrian slash line. Donaldson does have 26 home runs (10th in the AL) and 93 RBI (ninth), and he does play a mean third base, but even his fielding percentage is down from .961 last season to .950 this year.
And he leads the AL in WAR.
Part of the story here is WAR itself. It's wonky this season, as Yahoo's Jeff Passan points out in this thoughtful story. It leans too heavily on defense, possibly, or needs to better its defensive metrics, probably. Whatever the case, the defensively down and offensively good (but not great) Josh Donaldson leads the entire American League in WAR, and Royals left fielder Alex Gordon (hitting .269 with 19 home runs, 66 RBI and a .792 OPS) is fourth in WAR. He plays a mean left field ... but it's left field. And he's fourth among position players in WAR?
Tigers DH Victor Martinez is one of the few players enjoying a breakout season offensively. At age 35 his league-leading .972 OPS is 139 points better than his career OPS of .833 entering the season. He is hitting .333 with 30 home runs and 96 RBI, but his overall WAR is out of the top 10 because he doesn't contribute much defensively or on the bases -- and his offensive WAR is just eighth, one spot behind Beltre. Because WAR's wonky this year, wonkier than I can remember. Why? Maybe my memory's faulty. Maybe WAR is faulty.
Whatever the case, WAR is the only reason Mike Trout won't win the MVP unanimously, because he's not leading the league in overall WAR and (just my guess) there will be a handful of MVP voters who go for WAR leader Donaldson or use Trout's No. 2 status as an excuse to vote for Robinson Cano or Nelson Cruz or even a pitcher, perhaps Felix Hernandez. But he will win it handily because his offensive numbers, while notably lower in most areas than in his first two seasons, haven't tumbled like those of Cabrera, Donaldson or Beltre.
Trout is having a career year for home runs (32) and RBI (103), but his .285 batting average is nearly 30 points below his career mark entering the season (.314) and his OPS (.922) is well below his 2012-13 production (.976). He is walking less (75 this season), striking out much more than ever (165) and has just 14 stolen bases after swiping 49 in 2012 and 33 in 2013. Also his defense, which was remarkable in 2012, is said to be pedestrian this season.
Trout isn't the player he was in either of the last two seasons, but he's the MVP. By a landslide. Because when you get right to it, a down year by his standards is still better than the seasons -- a career year for some, down for most others -- put up by everyone else.
