Two ninth-inning collapses by the Angels’ bullpen have overshadowed Mike Trout‘s dominant performance in the Bronx this week. The veteran outfielder has slugged home runs in all three games of the series. He has four long balls in total against the Yankees, including three in consecutive plate appearances from Monday to Tuesday. Trout’s two-run blast in the fifth inning on Wednesday gave the Angels their first lead of the contest. Closer Jordan Romano would ultimately cough it up on a walk-off double by Jose Caballero.
The power is always there for Trout. Even in a “down” 2025 season that saw the three-time MVP post his worst wRC+ since his rookie year, he still socked 26 home runs in 130 games. The home run off Luis Gil yesterday was Trout’s sixth of the season through 18 games. Last year, it only took him 11 games to reach a half dozen dingers. Trout had a .926 OPS at that point in the year. He has a .945 OPS right now.
The main difference between last season’s strong start and this year’s early results is the contact. Trout has cut his strikeout rate to 21.4%. His swinging-strike rate is down to 6.0%. Perhaps most importantly, Trout has an overall 84.4% contact rate and a 93% in-zone contact rate. Those are the best marks of his 16-year career.
It’s a small sample, of course, but those are key indicators for aging hitters as they get deeper into their careers. Getting consistently beaten in the strike zone is usually a clear sign that a hitter can no longer compete against big-league pitching. The 34-year-old Trout has the 27th-best zone contact rate among qualified hitters this season. He had the 25th-worst mark in 2025.
One option for declining veterans is to sacrifice batted-ball quality in exchange for more contact. Trout has not gone that route. His strikeout rate improvements this season have come with an absurd level of impact on the ball. He ranks in the 100th percentile in barrel rate, expected slugging percentage, and expected wOBA. Trout’s 93.5 mph average exit velocity is his best as a pro, outside of the shortened 2020 season. He’s not beating the ball into the ground, either. Trout has a 69.4% air contact rate, right in line with his career mark of 66.6%. His split for that metric has leaned toward fly balls (42.9%) instead of line drives (18.4%), which could partly explain his meager .233 average on balls in play. Trout’s pop-up rate has been in line with career norms.
Trout’s opponent this week offers a pair of interesting comparisons from a career-arc perspective. Giancarlo Stanton and Paul Goldschmidt have taken two different paths as they’ve reached the tail-end of their MLB journeys, but ultimately ended up in a similar place. Trout seemed to be headed in the direction of the 36-year-old Stanton. The Yankees’ slugger delivered one of the more impactful campaigns of his recent New York tenure in 2025, crushing 24 home runs in just 281 plate appearances, but it came with a career-worst 34.2% strikeout rate. Stanton has never been an above-average contact hitter, though a 74.9% zone contact rate is a particularly low output. Rafael Devers was the only qualified hitter below 76% last year.
The 38-year-old Goldschmidt went the other direction. He pushed his contact metrics to career-best levels in New York. The first baseman struck out just 18.7% of the time, while putting the ball in play on more than 80% of his swings. The tradeoff was batted-ball quality. Goldschmidt had just a 7.9% barrel rate, his first year being in the single digits since 2016. The veteran’s 43.7% hard-hit rate was his worst mark since the shortened 2020 season. Goldschmidt got his batting average back up to .274 after it had slipped to .245 in his final year with the Cardinals, but he also managed just 10 home runs. The performance was enough for the Yankees to bring him back this year in a part-time role. Stanton also remains a semi-regular, given his defensive limitations and persistent health concerns.
Health is a factor with Trout as well. The main positive from his 2025 campaign was that he played 130 games, his most since 2019. That year happens to be the last time he brought home AL MVP honors. Trout already had an injury scare this season, though this one wasn’t exactly his fault. He missed a game in the first week of April after getting hit on the hand by a pitch. He’s been back in the lineup every game since.
After spending the majority of 2025 at DH, with the Angels hoping to keep him healthy, Trout is back in his familiar spot in center field this season. He has been around league average with the glove (1 DRS, -1 OAA). More notably from a health outlook, he ranks in the 90th percentile in sprint speed. That’s a huge improvement from last year, when he ranked in the 62nd percentile. It was his first time below the 90th percentile in the Statcast era.
A mid-30s resurgence for Trout would be a massive Angels boon not only for the obvious on-field benefits but also because a substantial portion of the team’s decreased payroll is tied up in Trout’s contract. He’s signed at $35.45MM annually through the 2030 season.
The Angels ran a payroll north of $205MM in 2025 but slashed spending in 2026. After accounting for Anthony Rendon‘s deferred/restructured contract, the Angels’ payroll is in the $150MM vicinity. If last year’s $200MM+ payroll was more of an outlier than the beginning of a new trend, it’ll be all the more critical for Trout to deliver on his contract. His current salary accounts for about 23.5% of the team’s payroll — a substantial hike from last year’s 17% mark.
For now, Trout will look to extend his homer streak against Max Fried on Thursday. It’ll be his first look at the Yankees lefty. Only one of Trout’s home runs has come against southpaws this season. From a bigger-picture vantage point, it’ll be telling to keep an eye on Trout’s contact metrics as the season progresses. He doesn’t need to continue posting career-best contact levels in order to return to true All-Star status, but the fact that he’s even been able to do so through his first 18 games — without sacrificing power — in his age-34 season is both remarkable and a sign of hope for Angels fans.
Photo courtesy of Brad Penner, Imagn Images
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