/ STAFF WRITER
Last year, the only stain on Trout’s MVP season was that he struck out a league-leading 184 times, many of them on pitches up in the strike zone or above it.
In 2014, Trout whiffed at 31 percent of the pitches he swung at in the upper third of the strike zone, according to Pitch F/X data. When he put those balls into play, he hit .128.
This year, Trout has whiffed at 15 percent of those pitches, and when he’s put them into play, he’s hit .467.
On pitches that are up and out of the strike zone, Trout swung and missed at 5.