Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Trout has a good chance to be first batter to finish with a 200 OPS+ or higher since Bonds did it in 2004 (and only 19th since 1901)

Trout currently has an OPS+ of 216. He has played 68 games and the Angels have 49 left. Assuming an equal number of PAs per game played for each group of games (which might not be quite right), if he has an OPS+ of 178 the rest of the way, he would finish at 200 (his career OPS+ is 173, so that seems reasonable that he could reach 178 the rest of the way, given what he has done so far).

Three guys reached 190 since 2004: Pujols with 192 in 2008, Miguel Cabrerra with 190 in 2013 and Harper with 198 in 2015.

His path might be easy. The Angels have only 3 games left against any of the top 4 teams in the AL in ERA+ (Bos, Clev, NY, KC).  That team is Clev. Here is the OPS+ of those teams

Bos 124
Clev 124
NY 122
KC 109

The next highest ERA+ the Angels will face is the 102 of Texas & Tampa Bay and Texas traded Darvish. The Angels have 15 games left against 3 of the 4 lowest ERA+ teams in the AL.

Bal 89 (5)
Oak 90 (6)
Chi 92 (4)

The Angels have 2 games left against one NL team, Wash. They have a 107 ERA+ and some good starters: Scherzer, Stasburg (if he is not on the DL) and Gonzalez.

Here are the players who have done it and the number of times. I used the Baseball Reference Play Index and set the minimum PAs as what qualifies for the batting title. If I lower that to 400 PAs (Trout might not make 502 PAs since he was hurt), McGwire and Williams would each get one more.


Player Count
Babe Ruth  11
Ted Williams  6
Barry Bonds  6
Rogers Hornsby  4
Ty Cobb  3
Lou Gehrig  3
Mickey Mantle  3
Jimmie Foxx  2
Frank Thomas  1
Jeff Bagwell  1
Norm Cash  1
George Brett  1
Stan Musial  1
Nap Lajoie  1
Willie McCovey  1
Sammy Sosa  1
Honus Wagner  1
Mark McGwire  1

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