Mike Trout celebrated his 26th birthday Monday night with a double and a homerun, his 1000th and 1001st hits in a 6-2 win by the Orioles over the Angels. While the 26th birthday makes it a nice milestone night, it’s more proper to think of Trout playing his seasonal age 25 season, since birthdays fall randomly in a season. While he won’t make the top ten in hits through that age, he is already in the top ten in home runs, and has a shot at the doubles list with a strong finish to the season. He also should finish fairly high on the extra-base hit list. If Trout made an effort to cut down on his strikeouts, he could easily move to the 200 hit per season plateau.

Trout is in his sixth full season, and it’s easy to imagine him playing 12 more years. In his prime now, I would not be surprised if he reached 2000 hits faster than he reached 1000, which would give him plenty of time to coast to 3000. I actually like that while he hit a good number of home runs so far, he’s not at the top of that list by age. Barry Bonds, Henry Aaron, and Babe Ruth all started slowly and finished strong to hit over 700 homers. The ones who got off to fast starts tended to burn out, Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey being the latest examples.

Trout is a .300/.400/.500 player, and his best years are still ahead of him. When he reaches seasonal age 30, we’ll have a very good idea of just how historic his career will be. The sky is still the limit.