Major League Baseball

Mailbag: Trout levels off, backing Ken Burns, and Duffy's regression

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 5:46 p.m. ET

foxsports

I get mail. So much mail. Granted, most of it’s from catalog-centric retailers that simply ignore my repeated requests to be removed from their lists. Which is why I’ve turned to Facebook for questions about baseball from the likes of you. Herein, a sampling of your recent missives, with my responses appended...

I get the feeling that Mike Trout, like a young Stan Musial, has entered a phase of his career where he has found his level, and will stop surprising us. He will just put up 175 OPS+ years like a dull metronome. What say you?

- Mark Armour

Well, as I write this, his OPS+’s have gone 168-179-167-177, which averages out to ... 172. So yes, 175 seems like a pretty fair guess. While Trout’s OBP’s have significantly fluctuated from season to season, his slugging percentages have been practically identical.

Your point, I think, is that we can’t really expect Trout to improve. Which I think is basically correct. We’ve always assumed that hitters are supposed to improve until they’re 27 or 28, then begin that slow decline (and the better the player, the slower the decline). But some hitters mature earlier than others, and it’s possible that Mike Trout was mature at 21. You could argue that Junior Griffey’s best season came when he was 23, Mickey Mantle’s when he was 24. I don’t mean to suggest that we’ve seen Trout’s best; rather, if we haven’t, we might soon.

For me, the really interesting questions are about his speed and (in related news) his defense. At 20, Trout was regarded as a potential game-changer in center field. But his numbers since then just aren’t anything special (Wednesday night’s multiple heroics excepted, of course). And so I won’t be surprised if he’s in left field soon. Still a great hitter and player, though.

Did you lose just a tiny bit of respect for Ken Burns after seeing: Ken Burns: Baseball.

- Chris Dunne

I’m not sure what you mean, Chris. So instead I’ll answer a different question ... Upon the initial airing of "Baseball," way back when, I enjoyed the show. But I was also sensitive to the criticism, of which there was much. Keith Olbermann, for example, somewhat famously came up with a list of 125 errors – 60 factual errors, the rest mislabeled photos and film clips, etc. – in "Baseball." But I think the more interesting critiques were related to Burns’ reliance on academics over players, and his choice of John Chancellor as narrator. Baseball’s supposed to be fun, goddammit! And for all Chancellor’s talents, one doesn’t really associate his stentorian tones with fun.

All that said, upon reviewing one of the episodes last week, I was struck by just how lucky we are to have the series. Who else was going to give Buck O’Neil all that screen time? Not to mention other now-departed figures like Red Barber, Bob Feller, Curt Flood, Double Duty Radcliffe, Jimmie Reese, and Ted Williams. Yes, I wish there’d been more of them. Leo Durocher would have been so great! But he wouldn’t participate without getting paid. Whether that was true of others, I don’t know. But rather than complain about the people who weren’t there, I’m grateful for those who are. And you know, more than 20 years later nobody’s even attempted something like what Burns did.

Is Danny Duffy regressing to the mean with his walk rates going the way they are?

- Justin W. Grover

I have to be careful when I write about the Royals. Once I was utterly subjective about them, and then I became largely objective, but lately I fear that I’ve become subjective again ... but in the other direction. I spent so many years believing (and writing) that they were poorly run, and was right for so many years – I mean, the proof’s in the results, writ large – that I think it’s difficult for me to believe anything else. I understand this about myself, which helps. But I’m not sure it helps enough. All I can do is my best.

Anyway, you probably know that Duffy’s ERA last season was better than his other statistics would suggest; more than a run better, actually. Really, his fundamental performance this season is little different from last season’s, and in fact his numbers this season essentially peg his career numbers. So I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to suggest that after 340 major-league innings, we’ve got a pretty good idea about Danny Duffy. No, he’s not a budding star. He’s a competent back-of-the-rotation starter who will probably always walk too many guys to rank among the league’s 25 best pitchers. Last season’s ERA was a huge fluke, due almost entirely to an unrepeatable .240 batting average allowed on balls in play.

None of which means Duffy can’t surprise us. Pitchers are funny that way. But I see absolutely nothing in his history to suggest he will. Objectively speaking.

How do the Giants look long term? What rotation upgrades can they make to stay in contention? Does Casey McGeRhee survive the entire season?

- Michael Coholan

The Giants are largely bereft of exciting prospects, whether pitchers or hitters. Last winter Baseball America ranked them 26th, and that was with Andrew Susac, who’s now backing up Buster Posey with the big club. The Giants’ best pitching prospect in Triple-A is Ty Blach, who throws in the low 90s and has issued only two walks in 42 innings this spring. Which is incredibly impressive. His career strikeout walk rate is nothing special, though.

Anyway, it’s not likely they’ll turn to Blach this season, not for long. Chris Heston has pitched unexpectedly well, and both Matt Cain and Jake Peavy figure to come off the Disabled List before terribly long. Which would give the Giants six viable starters, not even including Ryan Vogelsong and Yusmeiro Petit. Count those guys, and the depth chart runs eight deep without involving any prospects at all. So the upgrades seem highly likely to come from within, absent a lot more injuries.

McGehee? Man, I dunno. He’s better than we’ve seen this season, but then again his batting line since 2010 – so we’re talking about five years, basically – is .256/.316/.382, hardly the numbers of an everyday third baseman for a contending team. I know the Giants do a lot of things well, but thinking McGehee would actually be good this season ... hey, we all have our weak spots. One assumes that Matt Duffy, a shortstop by trade, will keep getting real action at third base. And it’s hard to figure how there’s room for McGehee on the roster if he’s not playing regularly.