It’s yet another step in the brilliant career of Mike Trout

ANAHEIM, Calif. – The words, like the game, seem easy enough for Mike Trout. Here, on the eve of his first playoff game, they were the same as they were when he arrived in the big leagues, then as he embarked on his first full season, and then when he was asked if he possibly could duplicate that, and when he went off to play in his first All-Star Game.

He’s gonna play his game. He’s gonna have fun. He’ll live with what comes.

Days before, his idol, Derek Jeter, had retired, and the word around baseball was Trout, at 23 years old, had next. Hours before, George Brett – the George Brett – had sat in the other dugout, right over there, and said, “I think he’s probably the best player in the game.”

If that kind of stuff registers with Trout, you’d have to read it in his shrug, in his lazy smile or in the way he instinctively studies his shoe tops. A man does not carry himself on a ball field the way Trout does, however, if being next, being the best, had not already occurred to him.

A little more than three seasons in, he also is 572 hits, 98 home runs, 373 runs and 307 RBI in. Four hundred and ninety-three games in, already he’s led the American League for a season in runs (three times), RBI, walks, strikeouts, steals, total bases and other, more complicated, things. Those three years in, he comps out with people like Mickey Mantle, Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron and Al Kaline. He’ll probably be the league’s Most Valuable Player.

That’s him playing his game, having fun, living with what came. That’s him shrugging and looking at his feet, and that’s apparently not going to change with the calendar.

“You always want to play good,” he said. “You try to think of it as another game. You can’t put more into it. You know, have some fun and play some baseball.”

The Kansas City Royals were in town, fresh from their game the night before in K.C., the win – and spectacle – manager Ned Yost called “a giant step forward” for a franchise that had shuffled for the better part of three decades. They arrived well after 5 o’clock in the morning, after they’d played 12 innings and partied until they swayed and then flew west. Still, they moved around in batting practice without the sogginess you might expect, and into a best-of-five series that won’t see James Shields until Game 3, that will see Matt Shoemaker on 17 days’ rest, and that has Angels manager Mike Scioscia presenting a three-man rotation.

So, yeah, maybe an offensive series, maybe Royals running without conscience on the base paths and Angels pushing their runs from the batter’s box, and along comes Trout, whose postseason life starts Thursday. In 22 at-bats this season against the Royals, he’s batted .409 with three home runs. Over his three-plus seasons against the Royals, so often against other pitchers in other times, Trout has batted .361 with seven home runs. In fact, against teams he’s played more than three times, Trout’s highest OPS – 1.154 – is against the Royals.

Whatever that means. Maybe something, maybe nothing.

“Trout is such a weapon,” Yost said. “He’s such a threat every time he steps up to the plate. So, I mean, you have to make sure that you don’t make a mistake on him. He’s as good a low-ball hitter as I’ve ever seen, and can power a pitch down and away onto the rocks in center field.

“You’ve got to pitch him aggressively, but you’ve got to pitch him carefully too, because he can pop a ball out of the park at any time.”

There’s the issue, of course.

He did, however, strike out 184 times. He did hit .257 in the second half. He did hit .219 in the final couple of weeks.

He can be pitched to, and the strategy seems to call for pitches at the top of the zone. And the game is about to get bigger, a time when those letter-high pitches may look especially good to a jumpy hitter.

Albert Pujols has had a word with Trout about that. On the eve of his 75th postseason game and 322nd postseason plate appearance, Pujols said he told Trout to, yeah, play his game, have fun, and live with what comes. Thirteen years ago, Placido Polanco told Pujols the same thing. All these years later, Pujols is a career .330 hitter in the playoffs.

“Keep it simple and be you,” Pujols said he told him. “What got you here, that’s enough. You don’t have to be Superman.”

Trout has spent the past few Octobers, he said, “In the woods.”

“Hunting,” he said. “I like to hunt.”

Maybe, near the end of the month, he’d turn on the television and watch parts of the World Series. Now he’s playing to get closer to that, to come out of the deer stand, give October ball a shot, play a few games, see how that goes.

Easy enough.

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