At a slow start, Mike Trout is now injured again

The best thing you can say about Mike Trout during the first five weeks of the 2025 season is that he is at least healthy and can play every day and score a lot of home runs. However, the 33-year-old Slugger, who had surgically repaired his left knee soreness in Wednesday's game against the Mariners, maintained an active roster at a sore pace after sprinting to first base, before the Angels placed him on the injured list with a bone scratch on his knee. This isn't the worst case scenario, but above the already slow start, it's frustrating news.

Trout enters the season with more question marks hanging over his head than at any time in his 15-year career. After playing only 82 games in 2023, he had only 29 games last year due to a torn meniscus on his left knee due to a fractured Hamate Bone (including after July 3). He underwent surgery, but he was no longer a typical four-to-six-week schedule, but it took nearly three months before starting his recovery, before quitting three innings of Salt Lake City due to dissatisfaction with the same knee, and then played in just two innings. After he flew back to Anaheim for further evaluation, he was diagnosed with another curvature tear that required end-of-season surgery.

In February, after reporting to the Angels Spring Training Facility in Tempe, Arizona, Trout met with general manager Perry Minasian and manager Ron Washington, who jointly decided that the best move was to move 11-time All-Star midfielder to the right field to save on their own wear and tear. The plan seemed to be working until Wednesday. He played all 29 Angels games (total last year), met seven starts on DH, scattered on the right court. His .179/.264/.462 batting line, 96 WRC+ and 0.1 wars are not anything to write about, but he keeps playing while batting. His nine home runs were enough to put him third in the American League with Tyler Sodstrom, Spencer Torkelson and teammate Logan O'Hoppe, behind Judge Aaron and Carl Rowley.

That put us on Wednesday's game against the Seattle Mariners. In the first inning, the Trout entered a high sinking piece in the left field from Emerson Hancock and reached third base before the inning was over. In the third inning, he hit a slow roller and turned on the jets to arrive safely. According to Statcast, his sprint was 29.7 feet per second, the fastest he has done this season, but he still has gone step by step. After returning to the right at the bottom of the third inning, he succumbed to two knockout matches in Game 4 Joe Adel.

Trout explained after the game that while his sprint felt good at first, he started to feel “weird” when his left knee returned to the right. “When I started jogging in the outfield, I started to feel more. Want to feel smart about it,” he said. He later added, “Hopefully it's just a little bit of scar tissue breaking down.” The angel removed him from the game, the trout was examined by the doctor, his knee was stroked and received pulsed electromagnetic field treatment.

The Trout did not compete against the Tigers on Thursday, but he is still in an active roster, with Washington telling the media that he is still being evaluated but excited. After the team lost 10-4 to Detroit, the manager announced that the team placed the trout on the injured roster. “He has bone bruises, so we're going to put him on Illinois State,” Washington said. “It doesn't matter. But he needs a break.”

While the tests did not reveal structural damage, bone bruising was not good news, especially before this loss of cartilage in the joints through its meniscalectomy. Often, lack of cartilage to cushion the joints increases the likelihood of bone grinding, which can be the cause of bone bruises, especially if no major trauma is involved. There is at least one description of the “blocking” knee, the trout's left knee may have produced enough strength, and the final step of the lunge took the first base to cause bruises, but enough to send him to the IL to show to demonstrate the fragile nature of the joint.

According to the recovery dashboard of the baseball prospectus, five players have hit the IL with bruises on their knees since 2016, with absenteeism ranging from 16 days to nearly four months:

It's a mixed bag, including a short power outage for players who had previously undergone bends; crook surgery (Lewis) and for players who have never had knee surgery (Marte) (to our knowledge).

When the trout cools his knees and heels on the IL, it’s worth mentioning his efforts to maintain alternative levels. While he barely took the old-fashioned form last year, his .220/.325/.541 series translated to 139 WRC+; his 10 home runs in 29 games put him at 56, while his 1.0 war put him at 5.6. He is much lower in productivity this year, and so far his strikeout rate is 29.8%. From 2012 to 199, he was only 21.2%, while in 2014 only once (in 2014), his strikeout rate exceeded two percentage points (26.1%). His strikeout rate has become more volatile as his game time becomes more sporadic due to injury. Starting in 2020-24, he has 26.7% of the time, with a 82-game '23 season high of 28.7% and a year below 21.4%.

Given the sample size in the game, it is especially useful to view scrolling rate graphs to find precedents for performance. It's Trout's strikeout rate and his chase and swing rate. All of these are interconnected, all of which are more seasonal than we have seen before. Currently, he has chased 25.5% of the courses outside the area, up nearly six points from last year, and his highest score since the 2011 coffee cup, he swings and missed 12.4% of the courses, five points higher than last year, up from his 2021-23 coffee (11.3%) (11.3%):

The figure illustrates that the trout has extended longer than in 2022 and now looks like the last real Mike Trout season, a 119 game that he hit 40 home runs and 6.0 home runs and 6.0 wars in 0.283/.369/.630 (176 WRC+), but was out for five weeks due to the T5 Costoveroderoderteptral dysovertepral Dysbral Dysfral dyspral dysfunution. These rolling rates more or less match the point where he is on the injury list.

Looking at the pitch-type split of Trout shows that he outstrips his pro chase rate in all six of the most frequently thrown court types. Given that number, the biggest deal is that he chased 14.6% of four seats and 25% of the sinker; both are twice his 2023-24 years, surpassing his career, with four sellers tagging 11% and 17.9% of the sinker's careers, respectively.

His 31.7% pursuit rate for sliders (including sweepers) is more in line with his career and recent fluctuations. Although he hit .229 and beat .521 on four players, he had a career-high 30.8% free throw. He has never whipped more than 22.4% on such courts until 2022. His impact rate was only .111, hitting .278 on the sinker, downers dropped .294 and .647 last season, although in a small sample (19 PA this season, 21 last season). His match against the slider and sweeper match was 18-18, with a WHIFF rate of 42.2%.

Given his high chase and swing strike rate, it is worth mentioning the rolling contact rate of trout in and out of the area. While moving from the previous scrolling charts, we see that although he is within relatively new range of areas, he does exist in weeds outside the area:

So that's not very good. For some more encouraging news, we shifted to what happens when he made a connection. Perhaps because of some of his best seasons before the Statcast era – he was the MVP in 2014 and was second in the first two seasons, surpassing 10 wars in both games – Trout never dominated the level of Judge or Shohei Ohtani on the Statcast rankings. His average exit speed and tough speed are in the 99% field in some places, but are already centered near the 90th percentile, while the EV is low at 69% and Hard Hitt is 74th. His barrel rate is usually at or above the 98th percentile, down from the 93rd percentage point. He's currently below all of this from a percentile standpoint, but his barrel rate is closer to his norm, but the average in other categories is still not far:

On the sample side, we are far enough to put some inventory into these numbers. The exit speed stabilized at 50 BBE markers on 40 hit event markers and barrel rate; the hard impact stabilized at 80 BBE markers so he lacked that, but his speed didn't seem to be a departure.

Trout expectation statistics show he got a particularly original deal in the batting average division, but his expected hit rate matches his recent sporadic season. The lag between the actual number and the expected number is very wide in the tone of the region center:

On the court in the heart of the area, the trout actually performed poorly – nine below average, an unknown area for him – but, although his contacts in the area have not yet met his recent standards, it is much better than what his Raw Slash Line suggests. In fact, he did well in the shadow area, with the above-average courts on either side of the strike area boundary, which is better or better than he had in some years (2016-18).

So far, neither his current injury nor statistics indicate that things are particularly optimistic about Troutland. But while we shouldn't expect him to suddenly return to MVP form, his basic metrics show that he's not doing as bad as he's for the numbers at this juncture. We can hope again that this won’t be a long absence and as he gets more playing time upon his return, he will show us something closer to his productive 2023-24 level. Cross your fingers.