9. Mike Trout maintain strong pace as Angels flounder
As he does every year, Trout is thriving. He entered play on Thursday slashing at .358/.452/.717 with eight home runs, 21 runs scored, 20 RBI and five steals. We’re not expecting any big drops in May. The guy is a machine.
With that said, it’s hard to be optimistic about his team.
The Los Angeles Angels closed play on May 3 with a 15-14 record, trailing only a strong Houston Astros team. But we’re not buying it.
First of all, despite Trout’s heroics the Angels are a mediocre to downright bad offensive team. They’re 20th in runs scored (112), 19th in batting average (.242), 20th in OBP (.311) and 28th in slugging (.341).
Take Trout out of the mix and those slash stats go to .228/.293/.325, good enough for 27th, 28th, and 30th in the league.
Los Angeles’ pitchers have posted a 4.08 ERA, which ranks 13th in the league. But as mediocre as that is, when we look at the actual pitchers on the team, it seems like they’ve overachieved.
The 15-14 record looks good, but we’re thinking that the -10 run differential is more indicative of what kind of team this is. It’s hard to imagine that not showing up in May’s record.