Mike Trout’s first half looked like a reminder that there was still plenty left in the tank.
The Angels didn’t give him much help, as usual, but Trout still put together a strong enough run to earn his 12th All-Star Game and his first Midsummer Classic appearance since 2019. Through the break, he was hitting .237/.390/.473 with a 141 wRC+, and his power production - 31 extra-base hits - helped cover for the fact that his speed and defense no longer look like they once did.
The second half has told a very different story.
Since the All-Star break, Trout has slid into a slump that has dragged his slugging percentage down to .341 and left him with a .698 OPS and 98 wRC+. What makes that line even shakier is the near 60-point jump in his BABIP compared to the first half, which suggests the modest production he has managed might be leaning heavily on good fortune.
This isn’t just a brief cold spell, either. Trout has run into slumps before in this post-prime stage of his career, but this one has stretched longer and looks more troubling than the usual rough patch.
The underlying numbers back that up. He’s hitting more line drives in the second half, but that has come mostly at the expense of pulled fly balls - the kind of contact that has long driven most of his home run power.
His hard-hit rate has also dipped, falling to 39% in the second half from 43.4% in the first. Put those pieces together, and the drop in slugging starts to make a lot more sense.
There’s another layer here, too: Trout is far more dependent on his bat than he used to be. Injuries have taken away much of the athletic edge that once made him such a complete force, and for the first time in his career, Statcast shows him with negative baserunning and fielding value.
That leaves him with very little margin for error. If he isn’t reaching base consistently or driving the ball out of the park with regularity, the All-Star version of Trout starts to disappear fast.
Still, it’s hard to fully bury him. This is Mike Trout, after all - one of the greatest players the sport has ever seen. Slumps happen, and betting against him has never been a safe move.
But with the injuries piling up and the years moving deeper into his thirties, this stretch has a different feel to it. The possibility that a real decline has begun is getting harder to ignore.
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