Mike Trout Is Jesus Christ Reincarnated

This statistic came across my timeline today and it blew my mind.  Obviously the White Sox have STUNK since 2008, but one player amassing a higher cumulative value than an entire team’s position group – in 7 less years – is nothing short of incredible.

Now I’m doing my best to suppress all of the bad players that have trickled through the South Side over the years.   I just skimmed over rosters from the 2004-2008 teams and even then – in years the team was actually really good – the amount of STINK that has been with the team since then is cringeworthy.  Players I forgot existed.  The one good OF in terms of WAR since 2015 is Adam Eaton.  Brutal.

But it’s also a testament to how great Mike Trout is.  He could drop dead right now and would have a good case to be called a top 5 player in the game’s history.  A true 5 tool talent; gold glove caliber defense, speed, hit tool, power.  The guy does it all, and that goes without say.

But my very favorite part about him is his swing.  Gonna break it down from a few different angles right here, but I’m going to start with this one:

There are a billion different schools of thought on swings right now.  People have turned hitting into a science and though that does have a place in the game, so do old school methods of teaching the art of swinging a bat.

Question: in the GIF above, what do you notice?
Answer: Uhhh, not much.

And that’s the point.  Mike Trout has an incredibly simple swing.  There are probably dozens of peer reviewed articles on the biomechanics of Trout’s swing, but in the end it boils down to Trout limiting as much excess movement as possible prior to unloading on a baseball.

With that said, with his leg kick, he builds up crazy torque in both his hips and core.  All of his weight is on the inside of his back leg and when he plants down his left leg, his bat is still wrapped around his neck.  This creates a  catapult action with his bat because the momentum he built up on his right/drive leg that transfers energy towards the pitcher.

Everything he does is so goddamn simple.

Let’s continue with more GIFS

Mike Trout, on top of having one of the easiest, simplest swings also has the most violent swing in the game.  Yes he’s built like Mike Alstott which helps, but all of the aforementioned tension and torque creates absurd bat speed through the zone, during and after contact.

And look at that back hip:

“SQUISH THE BUG!!!” They say.  WRONG.  Good hitters drive their back leg and hip THROUGH the baseball.  This causes a harder collision with the bat and ball; “squishing the bug” with the back toe/leg causes a hitter to become rotational.  Rotational hitters pull off outside pitches and have a harder time making powerful contact.

Trout though, he drives through the baseball like a MLB filling a hole on a running back.  Oh, and his hands are fucking fantastic too.  Slight upper cut to get that “lift” under the ball, yet level enough where he’ll make consistent contact on all types of pitches and find the barrel with ease.  It’s a goddamn thing of beauty.

So with all of the new aged methods of teaching hitting like thoracic thrust, launch angle, etc… just KISS.  Keep it simple, stupid.  Mike Trout does that incredibly well.  And it’s lead him to outperform the cumulative collection White Sox of White Sox outfielders over the last 15 years in the 8 years he’s been in the league.  Hitting doesn’t have to be rocket science.