In a season that already included the longest hitless streak of his profession, and the revelation of a chronic back injury, Mike Trout is now having fun with top-of-the-line stretches of his life.
Trout’s two-run home run on Monday made it seven consecutive games by which he had gone deep — one wanting the main league record. Over those seven games, Trout, 31, has hit .393, has nine extra-base hits and has driven in 11 runs.
The streak has Trout as much as 35 home runs for the season and back to looking like his most dominant self. And it has done wonders to erase any doubts created by his career-worst 0 for 26 streak, which resulted in May, or his announcement in July that he had a rare back condition, which led to a 30-game absence and the fact that it could affect him for the remainder of his profession.
On Tuesday, Trout could have a likelihood at tying the record of homering in eight straight games, which was first achieved by Dale Long of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1956 and was matched by Don Mattingly of the Yankees in 1987 and Ken Griffey Jr. of the Seattle Mariners in 1993.
“That’s good company to be in,” the understated Trout told reporters after Monday’s game. “I’m just putting swing on the ball they usually’re going out.”
Unfortunately for Trout, the superhuman feats that he and Shohei Ohtani, his team’s two-way superstar, provide don’t appear to be enough. The Los Angeles Angels are 3-4 within the seven games, putting them 19 games below .500 for the season and 30 games out of first place within the A.L. West.
In contrast, Long’s Pirates were 7-1 during his streak, while Mattingly and Griffey’s teams each were 5-3.
Trout would very likely trade some home runs for a win, but even when his streak were to finish on Tuesday, he’s already one among only nine batters to homer in seven straight. In a mirrored image of this homer-friendly era, three of the streaks have are available in the last five seasons: Joey Votto of the Cincinnati Reds did it last season, and Kendrys Morales of the Toronto Blue Jays did it in 2018.
Opinions seem to differ on how impressive it’s to have an extended streak of games with a house run. Such feats may very well be labeled simply as hot streaks in a sport known for its ebb and flow. However the argument was made after Mattingly matched Long in 1987 that his streak was among the many more impressive accomplishments in major league history.
In his Sports of The Times column, days after Mattingly’s streak ended, Dave Anderson asked Seymour Siwoff and Steve Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau to rate an eight-game streak of home runs against other sorts of hot streaks. The official keepers of baseball’s statistics put Mattingly and Long behind only Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in 1941 and the 44-game hitting streaks put together by Willie Keeler (1897) and Pete Rose (1978).
Siwoff noted that Mattingly’s feat was maybe even more impressive than Stan Musial and Nate Colbert having each homered five times over the course of a doubleheader, specifically due to its start-and-stop nature.
“That’s what makes what Mattingly did so tremendous,” Siwoff told Anderson. “After he hit a house run, he’d should go sleep on it, then rise up and go get one other.”
There is no such thing as a query that Mattingly was dominant during his homer binge. Of the three eight-game streaks, Mattingly’s did essentially the most damage, with a complete of 10 home runs and 21 runs batted in. Long had the very best average, hitting .500 in 30 at-bats, while Griffey’s streak was more like Trout’s, with a .400 average and one home run in each game.
But for those who include streaks of seven games, and permit for all of the couching related to baseball’s steroids era, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants had by far essentially the most dominant homer streak. In 2004, when nearly every team was doing whatever it could to pitch around him, Bonds had a seven-game stretch by which he was 13 for 18 (.722) with eight home runs, 16 runs batted in and 10 walks. He kept the streak going despite averaging only 2.6 at-bats a game.
In his bid for an eighth straight game with a homer, he struck out in his first at-bat — the ultra-patient Bonds was caught strike three — and didn’t see one other pitch within the strike zone for the remainder of the sport.
Trout, on the very least, should see just a few more pitches to hit on Tuesday. Particularly if his Angels are losing yet again.
