Fantasy Baseball All-Decade Team: Mike Trout, Justin Verlander, and the rest of the 2010s studs

The 2010s was a challenging decade for fantasy baseball managers, with pitchers and hitters each enjoying separate phases of league-wide dominance. As the league-wide plan shifted to drawing walks, increasing launch angles and avoiding risks on the basepaths, wise managers also shifted their priorities. With the decade coming to a close, let’s take a look at a team of players who dominated the fantasy landscape.

I will freely admit that I am not involved in fantasy baseball, and that the way they appraise players may not match my own- but does this list seem odd to anyone else in certain regards?

Numbers Suggest Mike Trout’s Best Days Are Already Behind Him

Why? Well, as with seemingly everything else in baseball these days, all roads lead to launch angle.

Once you place among the 10 highest average launch angles in either league (among the top 250 or so in batted balls), you’re asking for trouble. Virtually every player meeting that criteria since 2016 has declined or disappeared in pretty short order. You see, extremely high average launch angle is an “old player” characteristic.

Mikey, we hardly knew ye.

MLB announces an “All-MLB” team

Major League Baseball announced today that it is launching an official “All-MLB Team,” recognizing the top performances by players in the 2019 regular season.  The inaugural All-MLB choices will be announced on Tuesday, December 10 during the Baseball Winter Meetings in San Diego.

Like most of MLB’s more recent awards and honors, the All-MLB team will be selected via a combination of a fan vote and a panel of experts. As for the fan vote, starting today and continuing through December 3 at 5:00 PM Eastern, fans may vote for their 2019 All-MLB choices. Like the other fan votes, fans can vote more than once — once every 24 hours on this thing — at MLB.com. No one at MLB ever tells you that that’s a nifty way of driving traffic to a page sponsored by a single, exclusive paid sponsor — in this case Scotts — but such is business in the 21st century.

The non-fan-voting portion of this will be decided by a “decorated panel of media members, broadcasters, former players and other officials throughout the game.” The panel vote will be weighted equally to the fan vote. There will be a first team and a second team All-MLB squad.

2019 MVP Award winners announced | MLB.com

Mike Trout and Cody Bellinger began the 2019 season in such different places that it was a stretch to imagine that they were on their way to being mentioned in the same breath. As one built on a legacy of greatness, the other was still very much a work in progress.

On Thursday, they achieved the highest individual honor—Most Valuable Player. Trout won in the American League for the third time in six seasons with a performance that included a career-high 45 home runs.

Bellinger was named the NL MVP for a season that featured 47 homers, 34 doubles and an NL-leading 351 total bases. Two years after being named the NL Rookie of the Year, the 24-year-old Dodgers outfielder used the 2019 season to establish himself once and for all as one of the game’s best players.

Trout, Verlander, Yates win Baseball Digest awards

NEW YORK (AP) — Mike Trout has been chosen major league player of the year by Baseball Digest and eBay.

The star outfielder from the Los Angeles Angels edged Dodgers slugger Cody Bellinger by two points in voting by a 17-member panel of baseball writers, broadcasters, former players and executives.

Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander was selected pitcher of the year and San Diego Padres closer Kirby Yates got picked as the top reliever.

The awards were announced Thursday. Trout also won in 2014.

And now, awards seasons has officially begun….

Even in Mike Trout’s ‘best year yet,’ the playoffs, and maybe an MVP, elude him

ANAHEIM, Ca. — In his 11th professional summer, Mike Trout hit 45 more home runs, had 137 more hits, scored 110 more runs, turned 28, made $37 million, mourned a friend, endured foot surgery, earned handfuls of MVP votes … and prepared to go home.

In some ways, in how he conducted himself and played the game and dragged a franchise behind him, this summer was as nearly all the others. He’ll turn 29 next summer, his 10th as a major leaguer, and so the summer that qualifies him for future Hall of Fame ballots, having participated in three playoff games, in the same time frame having played for at least three general managers, two field managers and one owner.

The nine major league teams of which he’s been a part will have a .510 winning percentage, plus or minus the coming five games. He will have seen four winning teams. The finest player of his generation, give or take a beery argument, carries 12 postseason at-bats into the second half of a career that promises all of the personal momentum and little of the organizational kind.

On Wednesday evening, two-and-a-half weeks after his season ended, Trout rolled into a media conference on a scooter designed to keep his weight from his right foot. In the time away, he’d seemed to have come to terms with his season ending too soon. These things happen. He shrugged. And it’s not as though his Los Angeles Angels would play for much beyond parking fees and concession sales in the weeks that followed. Still, he said, sitting and healing and watching baseball and clattering around on crutches isn’t really his style.

Will he even get a copy of our lousy home game?

Quit slamming superstars for their teams’ failures

Fans have long loved to criticize players who sign big contracts. The media has long encouraged and aided this effort to greater or lesser degrees. Players who rake in the big bucks have long had a target on their back and probably always will.

Which is not totally unfair, of course. They’re supposed to be good. They’re supposed to help the team win. That, as the old saying goes, is why they’re paid the big bucks.

But there are limits to that right? A baseball team has 25 guys on it, not just one, and any one baseball player has way less power to carry one’s team to victory himself than, say, the quarterback of a football team or any single basketball player, each of which can make a huge difference. As such, while it’s fair to hold star players to a higher standard, it’s less fair to blame them when their teams fare poorly through no fault of their own.

Two injured MVPs is a major bummer for baseball

Last week Christian Yelich‘s season ended with a fractured kneecap. At the time he went down he was neck-and-neck with Cody Bellinger — I think a tad behind, though people may reasonably differ — and, at least by my reckoning, a hair or three above Anthony Rendon, Ketel Marte and Pete Alonso in the race for the NL MVP Award. As I wrote last week, I think that means Bellinger is going to walk away with the hardware when the winner is announced in November. Yelich’s injury will prevent him from making a late season surge to surpass Bellinger, but I think it would’ve taken a surge for him to do it.

Over the weekend we learned that Mike Trout’s season is over as well. He’ll be having foot surgery to deal with a nerve issue causing him pain. At the time he went down he was the clear frontrunner to win his third MVP Award. Unlike Yelich, I’m pretty sure Trout will still win the trophy. Sure, Trout hasn’t played since September 7, meaning that he’ll miss more time than Yelich will, but strained articles stumping for alternative candidates notwithstanding, his lead in the MVP race was more secure.

Trout’s 2019 ends with him setting a career high in homers with 45 and slugging percentage at .645—both of which lead the American League. He likewise leads the league in on-base percentage (.438), OPS (1.083), and in both Baseball-Reference.com’s and FanGraphs’ versions of WAR at 8.3 and 8.6, respectively. With just under two weeks to go it seems likely that Jorge Soler of the Royals will pass Trout for the home run lead, but he’s not an MVP candidate himself. Alex Bregman will likely pass him in walks. Trout seems pretty certain to finish with his lead in all or most of the other categories intact. That’s an MVP resume even if he’ll only have played in 134 games. To give the award to anyone else would be an exercise in narrative over reason. Something born of a desire to reward a guy — like, say, Bregman — for playing on a winning team as opposed to his individual accomplishments. Sure, voters are allowed to do that, but they’ve mostly eschewed such tendencies in recent years. It’d be a surprise if they backslid.

Even if Yelich’s and Trout’s injuries aren’t likely to radically change the MVP race — again, I think the NL’s was Bellinger’s to lose — they’re both still lamentable separate and apart from the fact that all injuries stink. Lamentable in a way that, unfortunately, creates a downer for baseball as it gets ready for the postseason.

Bad for baseball- but, on the bright side, it’s given me an idea for what could be the great hit sitcom of our time…..

Mike Trout will undergo season-ending foot surgery this week | LA Times

Mike Trout’s stellar 2019 season is officially over.

The Angels center fielder will undergo season-ending surgery to remove the Morton’s neuroma in his right foot, the team announced Sunday. Manager Brad Ausmus says Trout will not play again this season. Morton’s neuroma is a condition that causes pain in the the ball of the foot.

LEADING OFF: Astros romping, Trout out, long games

CLOCKED

Big league bullpens are full this month, boosted by September call-ups, and a plethora of pitching changes is contributing to longer and longer games.

The Brewers beat Miami 8-3 Monday night in a matchup that took 4 hours, 8 minutes. The game featured 15 pitchers who combined for 14 walks.

On Sunday, the Phillies topped the Mets 10-7 in 4:29 — one minute from matching the longest nine-inning NL game. Each team used eight pitchers and the clubs used up all 16 dozen baseballs that were prepped pregame, forcing another couple dozen to be rubbed up and put in play.

On the one hand, this is the last season for the traditional system of September call-ups- on the other hand, given the general trajectory with both pace-of-play and pitcher usage, I’m not sure that will solve anything…..

Video: Mike Trout becomes youngest player to enter the 200-200 club

Saturday’s 10-4 route of the Red Sox marked an auspicious moment for Angels’ superstar Mike Trout. The 28-year-old center fielder became the youngest player to reach the 200-200 club, a milestone he passed with his 200th career steal in the second inning.

With Brian Goodwin up to bat against Boston right-hander Marcus Walden, Trout seized the opportunity to nab second base as Goodwin swung through an 86-m.p.h. slider. He eventually struck out swinging, rendering the stolen base useless, but it still marked a significant moment for Trout.

Following the stolen base, Trout now has a staggering 283 career home runs and 200 stolen bases under his belt. Per MLB Stats, he’s managed double digits in both categories every season since 2012. He’s joined by Willie Mays (279 HR; 204 SB) and Darryl Strawberry (280 HR; 204 SB) as the only Major League players to produce at least 275 home runs and 200 stolen bases in nine straight seasons.

Is Mike Trout really better than Derek Jeter?

Fools. WAR is famously context neutral but context matters. Any fan of baseball from 1995-2014 (the best era for watching baseball) should know who the Captain is. To see who wins the Jeter-Trout debate, let’s go to the tale of the tape….

Did Mike Trout break Byung-Hyun Kim’s spirit on a chilly autumn night to earn the iconic Mr. November title?

Did Trout partner with a 12-year-old boy, psychically guiding young Jeffrey Maier to stick his glove in the perfect position to stop Tony Tarasco from catching his game-tying home run? Maier was a kid; Jeter and Rich Garcia let the kid play. That’s MLB’s new marketing mantra, and commissioner Rob Manfred has complained about Trout not participating in baseball’s ad campaigns. Advantage, Captain.

Trout has 282 home runs through age 27, and Jeter has 260 for his entire career. But Jeter’s got at least two home runs printed on an overpriced championship VHS.

Mike Trout hits career-high 42nd home run

With a two-run home run in the first inning of the first game of Tuesday’s doubleheader against the Rangers, Angels outfielder both tied Cody Bellinger for the major league lead in home runs and set a new single-season career-high at 42. Trout’s blast opened the scoring, staking the Halos to an early lead.

Trout is batting .300/.445/.669 on the year. The dinger leaves him two RBI shy of 100 for the year, and he’s already at 101 runs scored. MLB can already inscribe Trout’s name on the 2019 AL MVP Award. Per FanGraphs, he has 8.5 WAR, which is almost a full 3.0 WAR more than his next closest competitor, Xander Bogaerts (5.6). The difference between Trout and Bogaerts at No. 2 is about the difference between Bogaerts and Jonathan Villar (2.8) at No. 25.

A reminder that the great players are also benefiting from the home run derby environment in the sport currently.