IN THE SPOTLIGHT
MVP CANDIDATES BETTS, TROUT TAKE STAGE AT FENWAY TONIGHT
We can all agree that Mike Trout is easily baseball’s premier talent, a toolsy wunderkind who hits, who hits for power, who gets on base, who is just about the fastest big in big league history, and who . . .
Wait! Some of you out there do not agree that
Trout is all that and more. Surely the hardball purists see the Los Angles Angels’ stellar center fielder as what Marvel Comics would come up with if they created a baseballplaying superhero — I’m thinking Captain Hardball and Diamondman as possible sobriquets — except that hardball purists, like the Sumatran elephant, are an endangered species.
Why doesn’t every kid in America dream of growing up to be Mike Trout? Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The Angels are a West Coast team, meaning by the time Trout has done the walkoff thing, most East Coast fans, kids especially, have long since dozed off. Postseason? He has made but one visit to the playoffs since arriving in the big leagues, and it would appear that Trout went fishing. In 2014, as the Kansas City Royals were registering a Division Series sweep, Trout was 1-for-12.
And there’s this: Major League Baseball perfected a process by which the game can be stopped for five minutes to see if a runner lifted his hand one-sixteenth-of-an-inch off the base after a slide, but they can’t figure out how to get Mike Trout a seat at the cool kids table at America’s junior-high cafeterias.
But help has arrived, and it’s not MLB’s marketing department. It’s Mookie Betts.
With the Angels in town tonight to begin a three-game Fenway Park showdown against the Red Sox, two of baseball’s best players will share one stage. And there’s been lots of Trout-vs-Mookie talk going on this season. As in tons of Trout-vs-Mookie talk.
As great baseball rivalries go, this isn’t Carlton Fisk vs. Thurman Munson. Fisk and Munson brawled; tonight, we can expect a pleasant exchange between Betts and Trout behind the batting cage before the game.
They have arrived at a special place and in a special time, each player applauded for across-theboard superior skills, each player planting seeds that, with continued success, a little luck and lots of sunshine, will grow into mature, ripe Hall of Fame inductions.
You’re probably saying, “Hey, wait a minute! Wasn’t there a lot of Trout-vs-Mookie talk in 2016 when they finished 1-2 in American League MVP balloting? Well, yes. But let’s consider what was going on with these two fellas in 2016. Trout had already captured his first MVP going into 2016 and placed second on three other occasions. As for Betts, the MVP race was all new and shiny to him in 2016. He did get some attention in 2015, but it was 19th place, which is playing the lounge.
Prior to this season, the only knock-down, drag-out Trout-vsAnybody discussion to have taken place involved the 2012 MVP race. It was Trout’s rookie season and he was phenomenal, whether going by your grandparents’ stats, your parents’ stats or The New Baseball Math. He hit .326 with 30 home runs and 83 RBI, had a .399 on-base percentage, a .564 slugging percentage and a .963 OPS. His OPS-plus was 168 and his WAR 10.5, both league bests.
Ahhh, but the Detroit Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera did something we hadn’t seen since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967: He won the Triple Crown, leading the AL in batting average (.330), home runs (44) and RBI (139). The sniping between the Triple Crown stalwarts and the analytics brainiacs was intense. In the end, Cabrera and his Yaz-like season emerged victorious.
A year later, Cabrera again won the MVP award, again finishing ahead of Trout.
Trout captured his first MVP in 2014, garnering all 30 first-place votes as Cabrera fell to ninth. He won it again in 2016 with 19 firstplace votes. Betts had a strong second place, earning nine firstplace votes.
Betts had a fine 2017 season — 24 home runs, 102 RBI — but was a distant sixth in the balloting. Trout was fourth. It was a runaway for the Houston Astros’ Jose Altuve, as it should have been.
This year? We aren’t at the point to where it’s back to being a two-man race between Trout and Betts — Altuve and the Red Sox’ J.D. Martinez, among others, will have something to say about that — but we have arrived at a place where they will be among the top all-around players for several years and beyond.
Betts is 25. Trout turns 27 in August. For the next three nights these boys of summer will share an ultra-exclusive playground, and, thanks to each other, some of you out there will be noticing.