Can Mike Trout break the all-time home run record?

This past Saturday, Mike Trout hit his 300th career home run.

Trout’s milestone home run was significant on two fronts. One, he became the Angels franchise leader with #300, surpassing Tim Salmon and his 299 career home runs. Salmon, one of the franchise greats, held onto the title of franchise home run leader for two decades after surpassing Brian Downing with his 223rd home run in August of 2000. Trout managed to achieve this milestone in 1500+ fewer plate appearances than Salmon.

Secondly, Trout achieved his 300th home run just after turning 29 years old. Achieving these historic milestones at a young age is no surprise for Trout. Through age 28, Trout had the highest WAR (71.7) of any player in MLB history. Trout is just one of 11 players with three MVP awards, a group consisting of 7 Hall of Famers, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Albert Pujols. But Trout’s 300th home run raises another question: can he break the all-time home run record?

Let’s dive in.

The home run leaders

Even though Trout hit a milestone home run at a young age, he has a long way to go to get into the conversation for the home run king. There are plenty of factors in play to get to that point. Trout needs to continue producing, continue hitting for power, stay healthy, etc. The first question to explore, however, is what some of the home run legends did after they reached age 29 (Trout’s age).

As you can see, all of the home run legends produced gaudy home run totals even into their 30’s. Even Albert Pujols, who Angels fans have watched decline rapidly in the past decade, has nearly hit 300 home runs in his post-prime playing days. In addition, all of these players stayed healthy enough to accumulate enough opportunities. To join this company, Trout will need to maintain his health and sheerly be on the field enough to obtain the opportunities to hit more home runs. Alex Rodriguez, at 5822 plate appearances, is the only player on that list who didn’t rack up 6000+ plate appearances. For reference, Mike Trout has 5440 plate appearances to date so he’ll likely need to both replicate and surpass that total in the latter part of his career.

Now we know what other peers did to get to this level. The next question: is Trout trending in the right direction?

Trout’s power trends

Trout was already one of the game’s premier sluggers through the first part of his career. Through his first 5 full big league seasons (2012-2016), Trout’s 163 home runs trailed only Chris Davis, Edwin Encarnacion, Nelson Cruz, and Miguel Cabrera. Trout’s power, however, has soared to an even higher level over the last handful of seasons.

Over the last four seasons, Trout leads baseball with his 132 home runs and .632 slugging percentage. Trout was already the arguable best hitter in baseball heading into 2017 but there is no question about it now. Since 2017, there is an enormous gap between Trout’s MLB-best 183 wRC+ and Aaron Judge’s second-best 159 wRC+. Trout is doing it all: he’s drastically cut down his strikeouts, ramping up his walks, and is crushing baseballs harder than ever. The latter (crushing baseballs) is what’s important for this conversation.

Trout is trending in a positive direction in terms of batted ball authority. After a slight dip in 2017, his power has surged to new levels over the last three seasons. Since 2018, Trout’s 16.6 percent barrel rate trails only Aaron Judge and Joey Gallo. In other words, only two other players are better in terms of producing more hard-hit baseballs at the optimal launch angle to produce big results. Surely, we have to factor in the juiced baseballs for any player in this era but Trout is still at the top of the leaderboard regardless.

Unfortunately for Trout, his upward trend in power has also coincided with more time on the injured list. From 2017-2019, Trout missed a combined 98 games. Add in the shortened 60-game 2020 season and there was a huge chunk of Trout’s prime years wiped out due to injuries and a global pandemic. The injuries are notable both in terms of time missed that Trout can’t have back and projecting his injuries as he enters into his 30’s. Still, Trout has positioned himself quite well at his current age.

The question is can Trout pull this off and break the home run record?

What Trout needs to do from here on out

If you look at the entire scope of Trout’s career, you’ll see that Trout has homered once every 18.13 plate appearances. That number will probably be lower in the next handful of years but a tad higher in his latter years. If he can maintain that 18.13 figure for the rest of his career, he’s in pretty good shape to approach some of those aforementioned home run kings. An 18.13 HR/PA rate would put him square in the middle of the list of greats, not quite Bonds-ian or Ruth-ian but also better than Mays, Rodriguez, and Pujols.

Let’s try to run the math on this. Over Trout’s first eight big league seasons (2012-2019), even accounting for the injuries, Trout averaged 642 plate appearances a season. It might be ambitious to expect that for the rest of his career but it’s possible that he can maintain that with a shift to a less prominent defensive position. 642 plate appearances feel like the high-end of possibilities. 600 feels like a more conservative measure. 550 might be a pessimistic guess. Trout’s contract runs through 2031, giving him 12 potential full seasons to accumulate plate appearances. Let’s see if we can project what his numbers would look like if Trout maintained his 18.13 HR/PA over the course of these different scenarios. The following table shows what Trout would do based on an 18.13 HR/PA ratio in each scenario, his projected plate appearances in the rest of his career (including roughly 70 for this season), and his projected home run output.

This is just a base-level projection of what Trout could do based on his overall track record. Trout could drastically outperform these projections or underperform these projections. Players are aging better than they used to and Trout isn’t the ordinary player so utilizing normal aging curves for him may not work. To account for both extremes, let’s utilize two separate charts. First, a best-case scenario in terms of power output. This following chart assumes that Trout will maintain his 2017-2020 power (14.25 HR/PA) over the rest of his career.

Second, here’s a worst-case scenario in terms of power output. This chart assumes Trout will revert back to his old power (21 HR/PA from 2012-2016) for the rest of his career.

Again, these are rough estimates of projecting what an inner-circle, generational talent will do for the rest of his career. I don’t claim to be a numbers expert in terms of statistical projection nor do I claim to have magic powers predicting how Trout might age. But based on Trout’s resume, his interconnectedness to all-time greats, and the potential best and worst-case scenarios for Trout, there’s a good bet that he’s on track to approach 600+ home runs.

Can Trout do this?

If there is one thing I have learned while watching Mike Trout over the past decade, it’s to not underestimate the new levels he’s capable of reaching. At this current juncture, Trout has turned into the best hitter on the planet. Over the last four years, he’s cut his strikeouts back in a major way while walking more and hitting for more power. He’s about a complete of a hitter as you can find in today’s era (perhaps besides Juan Soto). Trout will not be immune to the aging process but, as the first table in this article showed, the inner-circle greats tend to age very well compared to their counterparts. Add in the fact that Trout has maintained his athleticism (his sprint speed is in the 95th percentile this year) and there’s reason to believe he’s going to age gracefully.

Once Trout moves off of center field, which could happen soon based on his ugly defensive metrics, there will be less emphasis on his defense and less wear-and-tear. If Trout settles into a role in left or right field, or even first base eventually, Trout’s offensive production could decline slower and prop up his overall production late into his career. Couple that with Trout’s already historic offensive production and you have the ingredients for a graceful aging curve. Trout’s career 173 wRC+ is tied for the third-best in MLB history with Barry Bonds, Lou Gehrig, and Rogers Hornsby. Even a drop-off from that level makes for an incredible hitter.

Mike Trout is incredible. He’s already a surefire Hall of Famer at the age of 29. He could retire today and find himself in Cooperstown a half-decade from now. But Trout’s career is far from over. When it’s all said and done, Trout could make a legitimate run for the all-time home run title.