Unbelievably, Saturday morning there were things Mike Trout had not accomplished in a game of baseball. For example, he had never bunted for a home run, nor had he ever killed a dragon with a baseball bat. It turns out he had also never had a five hit game. You can now scratch that last one off the list:
Trout, who has maybe the prettiest righty swing I’ve ever seen, absolutely smoked the Yankees on Saturday. The five hits were a career high; so were the four extra base hits; so were the three doubles; so were the 11 total bases. Of his five hits, I find that I am most impressed by the last one, which was a single. Trout smoked the ball to the left side; Didi Gregorius fielded it cleanly without his momentum carrying him towards third, and transferred it cleanly to his throwing hand. That’s a routine play! A routine out on a sharp grounder. But because Mike Trout is one of the fastest players in baseball, in addition to being one of the strongest and also one of the most disciplined and also one of the most coordinated and also handsome and charming and every other goddamn thing, Gregorius had to rush the throw to first, and Trout beat it by a step anyway.
Trout now has at least a share of the MLB lead in dingers, walks, on-base percentage, and OPS+. He is a perfect baseball player. Put a damn dragon out there.