Welcome back to Jorden on Moon Stamp Sports; I’ve been both busy and traveling and uninspired, so I haven’t been writing. I also feel like I don’t know enough about the NBA to comment on anything. And there is a Michael Penis Jr. (yes) blog I need just to publish. But one thing I do know a lot about is severe weather. I have long stated that if the Weather Channel wanted to hire me to go stand in hurricanes or follow tornadoes or even freeze in snowstorms (I am a Texan, I do not know snow), they would not have to pay me. Another person I know who shares that same passion is Mike Trout.
There is something about watching the weather just happen and being a passive observer across the country. I remember stumbling onto a Reddit post like 10 years ago about Mike Trout loving weather. Turns out the poster was right, because now Mike Trout does a better job of predicting weather than actual weathermen.
Now, there probably should be a bit of a disclaimer, because Trout always has come across as more of a snowstorm enthusiast. It probably has to do with growing up in New Jersey. Just like I don’t really care or know all that much about snowstorms, but I have it on lockdown for hurricanes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get incredibly interested in other types of weather events. And, I imagine Mike Trout does the same, where he has his chasers and reporters that he follows religiously. He also knows a fair amount about disasters after playing for the Angels.
If you weren’t aware, last weekend was a pretty significant weekend for the weather, mostly in the dubbed Tornado Alley. I know a fair amount of tornadoes, and was taught from a pretty young age the warnings and survival techniques (don’t go to an overpass). I’ve just never really experienced one outside of the tornado warnings that hit every once in a while. But, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t glued this weekend to watching coverage and seeing the outbreak happening around the Nebraska, Iowa, and Oklahoma areas. (Even though I was out of town for a wedding, I am just fascinated by the weather).
And this is where this blog stems from. Because if I, a guy whose biggest weekend accomplishment was beating Southwest and getting to a wedding on time, I can only imagine what a guy who actually needs to focus on was doing. So, I wanted to check if there’s any drop in Mike Trout’s performance this weekend. And the answer is – kind of.
Trout this season has been in a slump. Maybe he misses his friend, Shohei. Maybe he was really good friends with Ippei and is devastated by the news. There’s even a possibility that the spell put on him by ownership to resign with the Angels wore off and he realized how terrible this team is. But a batting average of .220 and a WAR 1.2 is just not the usual Mike Trout. Even then, going .111 for the weekend with a negative WPA shows he wasn’t up to his elite game.
So I’d like to imagine that Miike Trout was distracted this weekend. He, like me, was wishing the days of Periscope were back. He’s up there, facing Pablo Lopez and all he can think about is whether the Nebraska tornado is going to be rated an EF4, the first of 2024. Or (I’m not fact-checking the time of the game) he was thinking about the Oklahoma tornadoes (one of those was actually rated an EF4). There may have even been a thought about how the Enhanced Fujita scale focuses on damage and doesn’t do a great job of tracking the growth of tornadoes.
(I just want to take a moment to talk about the Enhanced Fujita scale. I think as we get better technology in tracking the subvortices of tornadoes, it’s only fair we change the EF scale. For those of you unaware, the EF scale is based on the damage tornadoes do, and not on the wind speed. That’s because the wind speed was, and kind of is, unreliable, so the best way to understand a tornado was by looking at the damage. But then you get something like the 2013 El Reno tornado, the widest tornado ever recorded, that’s officially an EF3. Even though its unpredictability and uniqueness killed 3 experienced storm chasers (the Twistex team), there wasn’t a lot of damage, because the tornado hit mostly fields. Some will say the scale is fine and we shouldn’t want EF5s, but I think to accurately understand tornadoes and Tornado Alley and its possible movement east, you need a more accurate scale).
There’s also a joke I’ve been trying to include about a picture called the Dead Man Walking Tornado from Central Texas and Anthony Rendon. Because Anthony Rendon has been a dead man walking for years. And Mike Trout has seen that tornado, and I think he hates Anthony Rendon.
So to answer the question, it’s hard to tell mostly because he hasn’t been good this season. But, he did fall off this weekend. I want to investigate and see if he does get distracted during weather events. Either way, I want to talk to Mike Trout about the weather.
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