What I'd be worried about, as his manager or an Angels fan, is how he's planning to approach cutting down his strikeouts.  Any method of doing that has definite downside.  I mean, the options are pretty much:

A) Don't swing as hard with 2 strikes - obvious down side from a guy averaging over 70 XBH a season.
B) Swing at more borderline pitches - what guys like Dunn would have needed to do, but you risk lowering your success on balls in play when you swing at more marginal pitches.
C) Swing at fewer borderline pitches - what guys like Adam Jones need to do, but you risk getting yourself into bad counts and then having to swing.

The big issue is that I don't think Trout needs to do any of these things.  His swing rates in and out of the strike zone last year were pretty similar to his career averages.  His contact rate was down a little bit, but within the range where luck likely played a huge role.  It seems to me that almost any correction would probably be an overcorrection.  It looks like maybe he got a little unlucky last year, but given the same approach should strike out at a rate closer to the 2013 than the 2014 rate in the future.  His overall swing rates are still pretty low, and always have been, but they were actually up last year, and he struck out more.  Given his success rate when he does contact the ball, I wouldn't advocate swinging even more, but I definitely wouldn't advocate swinging less given that he already takes close to half the strikes thrown to him...

You'd really need to know the situation of those 70 xbh to make that judgement. 

Last year, he hit 19 doubles, 8 triples, and 14 HR with 2 strikes.  So there's that...

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/25/2015 8:38:00 PM (view original):
You'd really need to know the situation of those 70 xbh to make that judgement. 

Really doesn't matter.

Posted by dahsdebater on 2/25/2015 8:45:00 PM (view original):
Last year, he hit 19 doubles, 8 triples, and 14 HR with 2 strikes.  So there's that...

How does this stat line compare with his total stat line?

.215

.297

.432

.729

 

You can't just compare a 2-strike line to the overall line.  It's absurd.  With 0 or 1 strikes, a strike is nothing on the stat line.  With 2 strikes, it's a K.  The mere existence of 2-strike counts indicates strikes happened in other counts also, but don't count against him.  Take the Ks out of that and compare it.  Obviously Ks are going to take a huge chunk out of your AVG, and in turn from OBP and SLG.  A few guys manage to hit for ridiculous averages with 2 strikes, but it's pretty rare, and borderline impossible for high-K players.  Trout has always been high-K, last year was just higher.

I can do pretty much anything I want.

That said, do you think a hitter as good as Trout should have a stat line that poor?

It's a lot better than Cabrera did last year.  Probably better than Cabrera's career - .307 on base, but only .393 SLG.  That guy is presumably headed straight to the Hall of Fame.  Since you're one of the Yankees fans who can't stop licking Derek Jeter's taint, you'll probably love this one:

.228/.315/.314/.629

Exactly 100 OPS points behind Trout.  So yeah, I think it's a pretty reasonable line for Trout to have.

Frank Thomas just walked in for his hitting alone, during a more offensive era than what Trout's playing in.  Actually pretty much straight through the height of the Steroid Era.  His career OPS with 2 strikes was .713.

Posted by dahsdebater on 2/25/2015 10:19:00 PM (view original):
It's a lot better than Cabrera did last year.  Probably better than Cabrera's career - .307 on base, but only .393 SLG.  That guy is presumably headed straight to the Hall of Fame.  Since you're one of the Yankees fans who can't stop licking Derek Jeter's taint, you'll probably love this one:

.228/.315/.314/.629

Exactly 100 OPS points behind Trout.  So yeah, I think it's a pretty reasonable line for Trout to have.

Did I ask you to compare it to anyone?

Do you think he thinks it's a reasonable stat line to have?

The answer is "NO".  Otherwise, he's not worried about striking out less. 

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/25/2015 11:02:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 2/25/2015 10:19:00 PM (view original):
It's a lot better than Cabrera did last year.  Probably better than Cabrera's career - .307 on base, but only .393 SLG.  That guy is presumably headed straight to the Hall of Fame.  Since you're one of the Yankees fans who can't stop licking Derek Jeter's taint, you'll probably love this one:

.228/.315/.314/.629

Exactly 100 OPS points behind Trout.  So yeah, I think it's a pretty reasonable line for Trout to have.

Did I ask you to compare it to anyone?

Do you think he thinks it's a reasonable stat line to have?

The answer is "NO".  Otherwise, he's not worried about striking out less. 

To determine whether or not it's a reasonable stat line you have to compare it to other great hitters. Otherwise you have no context. It seems like all hitters (even Hall of Famers) hit signigicantly worse with two strikes.

He's worried about striking out less because he wants to increase his OBP. He wants to trade outs for non-outs. He doesn't want to trade strikeouts for ground outs, because an out is an out.

Posted by The Taint on 2/25/2015 11:43:00 PM (view original):
He's worried about strikeouts because when you strike out less, you win more.

Is that true?

I'm pretty sure there is no correlation between team strikeouts and team run scoring.