On Mike Trout's Birthday, Some Facts About Mike Trout

Today, August 7th, is Mike Trout's birthday. He turns 22 years old. Let's talk about Mike Trout.

Last year, Trout was the best player in baseball and he was just 20. That kind of thing doesn't happen very often. In all likelihood, Trout was going to regress a tad entering his age-21 season, but nevertheless remain one of baseball's elite players. That was the plan.

Instead, Trout hasn't regressed. He hasn't even stagnated. He's gotten better, which should be virtually impossible. The only thing wrong with his game last year was strikeouts. He's cut his strikeout rate by almost 5%, while simultaneously improving his walks and maintaining his excellent batting average. Over the last month, he's gotten on base over half the time (!!!), which has raised his OBP to .424 (it was .399 last year). His OPS, a fantastic .963 last year, is a stunning .998 in 2013. As for base-stealing: Trout has now stolen 77 bases out of 86 attempts in his career. That's a success rate of 89.5%, which is the best all-time among players with at least 80 attempts. Thanks to that speed, he also remains one of the league's best defensive outfielders.

Admittedly, Trout will likely finish with fewer home runs this year (he has 19) than last year (30). But that doesn't mean he's not a power hitter. In fact, his .574 slugging percentage ranks fifth across all of baseball. Higher than Edwin Encarnacion's, just a smidge lower than David Ortiz's. Only Miguel Cabrera and Chris Davis have been more valuable hitters than Mike Trout this season. Think about this for a moment: one of the game's best players on the basepaths and on defense also happens to be the third-best hitter in baseball. That's insane. It shouldn't be surprising, then, to learn that Trout is leading baseball in Wins Above Replacement for the second year in a row. Once again, he's ahead of Miguel Cabrera (7.3 to 6.5 at the moment). He's on pace to reach 10 WAR for the second consecutive season. If he does so, he'll be the third player to accomplish that feat in the last half-century. Joining Willie Mays and Barry Bonds.

So where does Trout's ridiculous performance rank among all the best 21-year-olds in baseball history? Here are the players who accumulated the most value (according to WAR) by the end of their age-21 season (keep in mind that Trout still has almost two months remaining in his age-21 season, so his total is incomplete). They're listed in reverse order, accompanied by their WAR total in parentheses:

15. Cesar Cedeno (10.3)
14. Andruw Jones (10.8)
13. Eddie Mathews (11.2)
12. Frank Robinson (12.4)
11. Mickey Mantle (12.9)

That's three, perhaps four Hall of Famers. No Trout yet.

10. Sherry Magee (13.1)
9. Alex Rodriguez (13.3)
8. Ted Williams (13.8)
7. Jimmie Foxx (14.2)
6. Rogers Hornsby (14.3)

There's four more inner-circle Hall of Famers (Biogenesis scandal notwithstanding). Still no Trout yet.

5. Ken Griffey Jr. (14.4)
4. Al Kaline (15.0)
3. Ty Cobb (16.0)

Hey, three more all-time greats. No Trout yet.

2. Mike Trout (18.0)

There we go. And ...

1. Mel Ott (19.3)

Through the age of 21, Trout finds himself in the company of giants. Actually, he finds himself above most of the giants.

Think that's impressive? Well, Trout's placement on this list becomes even more mind-blowing when you consider another statistic: games played. Trout has played in just 290 games as of today, which is actually the lowest total among all of these 15 players. Cobb, Kaline, and Griffey, for instance, all accumulated their WAR totals in over 400 games. Ott played in nearly twice as many as Trout (539). In fact, because Trout still has 50 more games to go in his age-21 season, he'll likely pass Ott and sit atop this list alone by the end of the year.

What does it all mean? Basically, what Mike Trout is doing is completely unprecedented. We've literally never seen anyone play baseball this well at this age.

So if people want to wring their hands and moralize over Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun, fine. But they're missing out on the real baseball story of the year. Every instant that's wasted by coming up with new "A-Rod" puns (hey wait have you guys thought of "A-Fraud" yet???) is an instant that could've been spent watching Mike Trout become the best baseball player of this generation.