Mike Trout - Baseball's Ultimate "What if...?" Story
Imagining a world with a healthy Mike Trout
In sports, there are countless hypotheticals to consider. What if Babe Ruth had never been traded from the Red Sox to the Yankees? What if the Pistons had drafted LeBron instead of Darko Milicic in 2003? What if Bill Belichick hadn’t resigned from the Jets in 2000? It’s wild to think how moments that seemed insignificant at the time could have drastically altered the course of sports history. In modern baseball, one of the most compelling—and saddest—“what ifs” is, "What if Mike Trout had stayed healthy throughout his career?"
Mike Trout is a generational talent, despite the injuries that have plagued his career in recent years. Now nearly 34 and in his 15th season, he ranks 1st among active players with 86.5 WAR1 (50th all-time). He’s one of just four players to hit 200+ home runs, steal 200+ bases, and post an OPS+ over 160—joining Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez. Trout was also the fastest ever to reach both 300 home runs and 200 stolen bases. From 2012 to 2019, his 8-year peak saw him average 9.0 bWAR per season, a stretch comparable to the best years of Barry Bonds and Babe Ruth. Debuting in 2011, Trout appeared on track to carve out a spot on baseball’s Mount Rushmore through his first 10 seasons.
Then, the injury bug hit Trout hard. In 2019, he required surgery for Morton’s Neuroma in his right foot, costing him the final three weeks of the season. Despite this, he still won the AL MVP—a testament to how dominant he was that year. He returned for a subpar 2020 season (by his standards), but to be fair that whole 2020 thing was a bit wonky. Since 2021, a series of injuries—including a calf strain, costovertebral dysfunction (upper back/ribcage), a broken hamate bone (wrist), and chronic back/hamstring issues—have limited Trout to just 325 games over the past five seasons, about 44% of the possible games.
Mike Trout is a generational talent, potentially one of the most well-rounded players in baseball history. He is unquestionably a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but sadly, his full greatness may never be reflected in the record books.
What if Mike Trout had stayed healthy?
Estimating a Healthy Mike Trout Career
To better understand how truly great Mike Trout's career could have been, I set out to estimate his statistics if he had never experienced a major injury.
First, I analyzed how player statistics varied by age relative to their average. For example, I looked at how the average home runs per season for a 30-year-old player compared to their career total. In other words, what percentage more (or fewer) home runs would a player hit at 30 compared to their average? The table below shows how each age compares relative to their average for a variety of stats.
I used these percentages to estimate Mike Trout’s statistics for the years he suffered injuries that caused him to miss at least 25% of his team's games (2017, 2021-2025), adding +/- 2.5% of randomness to account for variability in the game. This allowed me to estimate what his stats would look like had he been healthy up to this point, and also project a full, healthy career, assuming he plays until age 40, with a final season resembling his 40-game debut (which was relatively underwhelming). Additionally, I projected the remainder of his career with a 25% regression in counting stats and a 10% regression in rate stats, reflecting his performance drop and considering the ~44% of possible games played over the past five seasons. While some of these estimates are admittedly arbitrary, but given the unpredictability of player health—especially with Mike Trout—this was the best approach I could come up with. The table below shows how each version of Mike Trout would rank all-time, both currently and in the future.
The full career of a healthy Mike Trout would be historic, and rank among the best to ever take the field. He’d be projected to rank 5th all-time in career WAR, 6th in Home Runs, and in the top 16 in both OPS and OPS+. Meanwhile, a Mike Trout with all the aforementioned injuries and estimated toll that would take going forward projects 10 spots worse in WAR, with more than 130 fewer Home Runs and nearly 100 fewer steals. Frankly, I think even this estimate is a bit favorable to Trout. It would be amazing if he could still amount this sort of production over the rest of his career.
Going a little deeper, I found the most similar players to each version of Trout by calculating the Euclidean Distances between each Trout and all other qualified players in history.2
Projected Healthy Mike Trout (Full Career)
Willie Mays
Barry Bonds
Henry Aaron
Healthy Mike Trout (To Date)
Mickey Mantle
Jeff Bagwell
Jimmie Foxx
Actual Mike Trout (Current)
Dick Allen
Larry Walker
Johnny Mize
By any measure, Trout compares to Hall of Famers, but we can all agree that there is a massive difference between the Mays, Bonds and Aaron group, and that of Dick Allen.
Bonus: Stephen Strasburg
Stephen Strasburg may very well be the pitching equivalent of Mike Trout.
I had the pleasure of watching him pitch twice with the Nationals’ AAA affiliate, the Syracuse Chiefs (now Mets), as he worked his way up to the majors. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a more dominant pitcher than what I witnessed those two nights in Syracuse. Unfortunately, like Trout, Strasburg was plagued by injuries that ultimately forced him into retirement last season after pitching just eight games since 2019. Just as I estimated various versions of Mike Trout, I did the same for Stephen Strasburg—this time using pitching stats, of course.
A healthy Strasburg would likely be Hall of Fame worthy, with just one less WAR than the average Hall of Fame starting pitcher, the 6th most strikeouts of all-time, and tied for the highest K/9 rate among all starters (along with current Braves pitcher Spencer Strider).
I also identified the most similar pitchers to each version of Strasburg, among starters (defined as those with at least two-thirds of their games pitched as starters) who accumulated at least 6 career bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR).
Healthy Stephen Strasburg (To Date)
Don Drysdale
Sandy Koufax
John Smoltz
Projected Healthy Stephen Strasburg (Full Career)
Max Scherzer
Pedro Martinez
Clayton Kershaw
Actual Stephen Strasburg
Corey Kluber
Zack Wheeler
Yu Darvish
The gap between a healthy Strasburg and actual Strasburg is truly enormous! On one end you have inner-circle Hall of Famers in Koufax, Drysdale, and Smoltz, and on the other you have “Hall of Pretty Good” players, who will be remembered as good in their time, but a bit below Hall of Fame caliber.
Injuries in baseball are inevitable given the physical demands of the game. But it is truly tragic when it strips the world of such generational talents. We will never know what the career of a healthy Mike Trout would have looked like. All we can do is dream.
For more on Mike Trout and what could have been, check out this article by Joe Posnanski.
All WAR stats in this piece refer to Baseball-Reference WAR.
I limited the scope to batters with at least 10+ bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR Calculation).