Mike Trout, Baseball’s Best Hitter (Again)

Matt Martell is off today to jump into a much-deserved long weekend for Memorial Day. Emma Baccellieri has you covered in his stead.

There is a line that former ESPN writer Sam Miller used to say, in podcasts and in conversation, about when you could trust small-sample-size noise had disappeared from baseball statistics at the beginning of the season: The year had really started when Mike Trout was back on top of the leaderboards.

It was a joke, but then again, was it? For a few seasons, this seemed as reliable a measure as anything. Of course Trout could safely be assumed to be the best player in baseball year in and year out. It was not that his greatness was taken for granted so much as it…