Mike Trout is one of baseball’s most underrated players

Sam Allery, Section Editor

“Mike Trout is impossible.”

That’s the headline for a FanGraphs article published on April 23rd, and it sums up Mike Trout about as well as any word can. Impossible. For the last seven years, Trout has been the undisputed best player in baseball. With two Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards and over 200 home runs, he has become a dominating force for the Los Angeles Angels. But while he’s widely regarded as great, not as many recognize him as historic. Mike Trout is one of the greatest baseball players of all-time, and people need to start recognizing that.

Mike Trout hits his 11th home run of 2018, this one off Orioles starter Dylan Bundy on May 2nd. The Angels ended up winning the game 10-7. (Mark J. Terrill/AP Images)

Trout’s first full season was in 2012, and he got off to as hot of a start as he possibly could have. He led the league in runs scored with 129 and steals with 49. He managed to win the Rookie of the Year award unanimously and was second place in the MVP voting. Trout also notably led the league in OPS+, a measure of overall hitting. While earning an OPS+ of 168 is impressive, beating out triple crown winner Miguel Cabrera is something entirely different.

Trout has played like a first ballot Hall of Famer for his entire career, and the analytics show it. His historic value is shown best through his similarity score, a statistic designed to measure how similar two players are, and his best matches are quite impressive.

Frank Robinson. Ken Griffey Jr. Mickey Mantle. Hank Aaron.

These are four of the greatest baseball players of all-time. They are all in the Hall of Fame. They all are in the top 20 of most career home runs (three of them are in the top 10). And they’re all synonymous with baseball history.

Trout is on the same path as the greatest players in baseball history, and he’s not being treated like other players who are.

Trout suffers a lot due to the mediocrity of his team. Yankees slugger Aaron Judge came up last year and hit 52 home runs, a new record for rookies. Judge shocked the world, so it took no time all for him to get his own designated cheering section, appear on talk show segments, and be on the cover of video games like MLB the Show. Judge was even compared to Yankee great Derek Jeter midway through his rookie year just for briefly bringing new life to baseball in the Bronx.

Meanwhile, Trout has been playing at a Hall of Fame level for nearly a decade, and has half of Judge’s recognition.

While most things in sports are left for managers and players to decide, fans are the ones who can determine the praise Trout receives. Fans need to look at his stats and recognize that he’s as good as almost anybody who has ever played the game. From Jeter to Yastrzemski, Trout is as good as any one of them.