Mike Without a K

Pitchers failed to strike out Mike Trout so far this spring.

His 44 plate appearances without a strikeout, through Tuesday’s game, are the most in the major leagues. The Royals’ Humberto Arteaga is second with 28. For context, Trout’s longest career whiff-less streak in the regular season is 28 plate appearances, from last year.

And going without strikeouts in spring training is probably harder than in the regular season, because hitters are still trying to get their timing and acclimate to the strike zone. They are also facing many pitchers they’ve never seen.

Trout, as you might expect, shrugged off this accomplishment, saying he’s made no changes to his swing or approach to cut down his strikeouts.

“Nothing new,” he said. “Just with two strikes, I’m trying to battle and get a pitch and put it in play. … Just getting better at it.”

The article notes that Trout over the last few seasons decreased his strikeout rate from 26% in 2014 to 18% in 2017.

One exciting thing about Trout reducing his strikeouts is that a low strikeout rate for a high BABIP batter could lead to an extremely high batting average. Note that Trout’s BABIP in 2017 came in at .318, well off his .355 career average. If he regresses to the mean of his BABIP with a 15% K rate, and gets 700 PA:

• We would expect him to get 585 at bats.
• We would expect 35 home runs.
• We would expect 88 strikeouts.
• That would leave 462 BABIP at bats.
• Which would give Trout 164 non-home run hits.
• So his BA would be 199/585 = .340

Note that if Trout were to have a super season and hit 50 homers and strike out 44 times with a .355 BABIP, he would hit .383. Fifty home runs and 22 strikeouts would bring him to .397. This might be a season to remember.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2IIVWQv