THE ROTOMILLTM

BY

Recently I wrote about the 2023 struggles of Trea Turner and a night or two later he went out 4-for-5 and hit two home runs. While the Trea Turner batting average has climbed back above .250 Mike Trout is headed in the opposite direction. As we go to press, Trout has slumped to a batting average of .248 but to be honest, most of his offensive game looks fine and he even stole his first base of the season the other night. Trout has hit 14 home runs and his OPS stands at a rock solid .814. Now some of you will point out that Trout build up a standard of putting up OPS figures closer to 1.00, but yes, we are also not used to his batting average being down to .248. So what gives with Mike Trout?

I went straight to some of the advanced batting metric to see what Trout was doing in 2023 and it struck me that Trout’s BABIP was down to .305 and Trout has had a career mark of .345 for his BABIP. BABIP is an acronym standing for Batting Average on Balls in Play. But I also took a peek at Trout’s sprint speed as measured by STATCAST. There is no slippage in Trout’s sprint speed. So, when a player does age