Mike Trout is Hitting Well Even if His Batting Average Doesn't Say It

Mike Trout is hitting the ball harder and on the barrel more often than almost anyone in baseball despite sporting a batting average of .174 and slugging percentage of .326. It is truly odd to have such a diversion between the underlying metrics and publicly cited numbers but that is the case here.

In every way except the averages, Mike Trout is back to doing Mike Trout things in the batter's box. One key metric will change soon to prove it on the stat line.

Mike Trout's average exit velocity and barrel rates are elite.

In the case of barreling the ball, Mike Trout is nearly the best in all of MLB. His 25.8% barrel rate is in the 99th percentile of qualified hitters. He sits behind only Owen Cassie and Kyle Schwarber among qualified hitters.

When a player is getting a lot of barrels, he hits the ball hard. Trout is in the top 15% of qualified hitters in average exit velocity. His 92.6 average exit velocity places him above sluggers like Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Freddie Freeman.

So far Trout has recorded multiple hits with exit velocities greater than 100 miles per hour including his 106.1 MPH double yesterday and a 109.7 MPH home run he crushed in Houston.

Mike Trout is taking walks and swinging at good pitches.

Both the walk and the strikeout have always been part of Trout's game. At his best Mike Trout was an on base machine who would still swing through the high fastball. but rarely expand his strike zone. The metrics show he is back to being that type of hitter.

So far this year, Trout's 20% walk rate is again in the top 1% of all of baseball. He is tied for first with Yordan Alvarez for the most walks in baseball with 14.

This is yet another good indicator for Trout, who is chasing pitches outside of the zone less often than 95% of MLB hitters.

In short, Mike Trout is swinging at good pitches and letting the bad ones go by. And when he swings, his bat speed is still in the top 13% in the game.

So why are his numbers so bad?

In short, luck. BABIP is an acronym for Batting Average On Balls In Play. That's a long way of saying how often do the balls hit into play fall for hits. Home runs and foul balls are eliminated from this equation.

In Trout's case, when the ball is put into play it is only falling in for a hit about 20% of the time. That is simply not sustainable over a larger sample size; especially when a player is consistently hitting the ball as hard as Mike Trout.

For his career, Trout sports a BABIP of .340. Even in his recent seasons that number has been between .310 and .323.

Expect Trout to go on a tear soon.

BABIP is a notoriously fickle statistic in a small sample size. Any baseball fan has seen players go through stretches where everything seems to fall in for a hit. That ball down the line lands an inch in play rather than an inch foul. That smoking line drive gets past the third baseman for a hit.

But then there are stretches the other way around. A player drills the ball right at a defender. That ball down the line falls just foul, A guy simply can't guy a hit.

As long as Trout keeps swinging at good pitches and hitting the ball hard, this trend will change. By the Metrics, Trout should be hitting well over .300 and slugging well over .500. When the BABIP luck changes, and it could be as soon as today, Trout will get hot and the numbers will even out.

This is not the injury plagued Trout of the last three years. His bat and sprint speed are looking good. HIs batting eye is even better. Pretty soon his batting average and slugging percentage will reflect that.