7 years agoLos Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout had his 2017 season limited to just 114 games because of a thumb injury, a true shame because he was having the best season of his career. While a career year is good for most players, Trout (who had finished either first or second in the MVP race in his first five seasons) having a career season must be something special. Trout finished 2017 with 33 home runs and 22 stolen bases (being caught stealing only four times) and also led baseball with a 1.071 OPS. He also had more walks (94) than strikeouts (90) for the first time in his career and had a .442 OBP, his second consecutive season where he got on base more than 44% of the time. If one wanted to nitpick Trout's 2017 performance, you could start with the fact that his hard-hit ball rate was at 38.3%, his lowest since 2013, and his 19% soft hit ball rate was the highest in a single season of his career. While these are bad, Trout also had his lowest ground ball rate (36.7%) since 2014 and hit 44.9% fly balls, up from back-to-back seasons where his fly ball rate was under 40%. He also had the lowest BABIP of his career (.318), a by-product of his poor batted ball results and something that should improve in 2018 (his career BABIP is .355). It is not wild to think that Trout has a 30/30 season with a .325 batting average, 100 runs scored, and 100 RBI; that is easily good enough for the 26-year-old Trout to continue to go first in all formats.--Chris Zolli
Source: St. Louis Cardinals