Trout In A Great Position To Join Ted Williams, Cobb, Hornsby And Ott In Exclusive Club

Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Mel Ott are the only players to have at least a 150 OPS+ at both ages 20 & 21. Trout did it last year at age 20 and is likely to do it again this year.

OPS, of course, is on-base percentage (OBP) + slugging percentage (SLG). OPS+ is a stat that can be found at Baseball Reference. It adjusts for park effects and the league average. An average OPS+ would be 100 if a player had the league average OBP and the league average SLG and his park neither helped him nor hurt him as a hitter, his OPS+ would be 100.

I also later look at where Trout ranks in a stat called wRC+ (weighted runs created, which rates hitters a little differently but also adjusts for park effects and the league average).

The table below shows all cases of a 20 or 21 year old reaching an OPS of 150 (minimum 400 plate appearances (PAs)). All the players who have done it twice are in red and Trout is in green.

Notice that Trout has 175 so far this year. With about 1/3 of the season left, Trout only has to have an OPS+ of 100 the rest of the way to finish at 150. Then he would be in this club with Williams, Cobb, Hornsby & Ott. In fact, he could end up with the highest OPS+ ever at both age 20 & age 21.

Rk	Player	OPS+	Year	Age
1	Mike Trout	175	2013	21
2	Jimmie Foxx	173	1929	21
3	Eddie Mathews	171	1953	21
4	Mike Trout	169	2012	20
5	Rogers Hornsby	169	1917	21
6	Ty Cobb	169	1908	21
7	Ty Cobb	167	1907	20
8	Sam Crawford	167	1901	21
9	Mel Ott	165	1929	20
10	Cesar Cedeno	162	1972	21
11	Al Kaline	162	1955	20
12	Mickey Mantle	162	1952	20
13	Denny Lyons	162	1887	21
14	Alex Rodriguez	161	1996	20
15	Ted Williams	161	1940	21
16	Ted Williams	160	1939	20
17	Albert Pujols	157	2001	21
18	Ken Griffey	155	1991	21
19	Tom McCreery	155	1896	21
20	Mike Tiernan	152	1888	21
21	Stan Musial	151	1942	21
22	Rogers Hornsby	151	1916	20
23	Tris Speaker	151	1909	21
24	Hal Trosky	150	1934	21
25	Mel Ott	150	1930	21
26	Fred Carroll	150	1886	21

A more sophisticated measure, wRC+, gives a different weight for outcomes like singles, doubles, etc. Each event is multiplied by a different coefficient or run value. This gets summed and divided by PAs (or something close to it). Fangraphs reports this measure. Some links about it are at the end of this post.

wRC+ is also set up so 100 is average. Here are all the players who had at least 150 at ages 20 or 21. Fangraphs says Joe Jackson was born in 1889 while Baseball Reference has 1887. That is why Jackson's 1911 season does not appear in the above list (they both say 7-16 and if you are born after June 30 you age is the one you started the season with).

In this case the quartet that Trout would join by reaching 150 at both ages would be Cobb, Ott, Foxx and Williams. Hornsby just misses because his wRC+ was 146 at age 20. Foxx just missed being on the above list (for OPS+) by having 148 at age 20.

Rk	Name	wRC+	Year	Age
1	Joe Jackson	184	1911	21
2	Jimmie Foxx	177	1929	21
3	Mike Trout	171	2013	21
4	Eddie Mathews	167	1953	21
5	Mike Trout	166	2012	20
6	Cesar Cedeno	163	1972	21
7	Mel Ott	163	1929	20
8	Rogers Hornsby	162	1917	21
9	Ty Cobb	162	1908	21
10	Alex Rodriguez	161	1996	20
11	Ty Cobb	160	1907	20
12	Albert Pujols	159	2001	21
13	Mickey Mantle	158	1952	20
14	Ted Williams	158	1940	21
15	Ted Williams	157	1939	20
16	Al Kaline	156	1955	20
17	Stan Musial	155	1942	21
18	Jimmie Foxx	150	1928	20
19	Mel Ott	150	1930	21

Wikipedia's entry for Runs created

Fan Graphs on wOBA

Fan Graphs on wRC (wRC is based on wOBA, weighted on-base average)