• WEAK CONTACT ISN'T HIS THING: Nothing frustrates any pitcher more than making that perfect pitch -- and getting zilch to show for it. But Trout seems to have an innate ability to foil those perfect pitches, said Harang, who has faced Trout 21 times -- more than all but five other pitchers. "He'll waste a pitcher's good pitches," Harang said, "to get to the point where the pitcher makes a mistake, so he'll hit the pitch that he wants. Like I could throw him a good slider, and he'll foul it off. I'll throw him a fastball in on his hands, and he'll find a way to foul it off instead of putting it in play weakly. And that's like a lost art. Joey Votto does that, where he'll take a good pitch, one that he's not quite committed to swing at but knows it's a strike, and he'll just foul it off, so he can come back and wait for you to make that mistake he can drive. For his age, that's something you just don't see."

• HE'S A LOW-BALL HITTING MACHINE: "He doesn't necessarily have a weak spot," said Adams, another fellow whose AL West duels with Trout (back in Texas) didn't go so hot. "He's hard to figure out. He's a low-ball hitter, too. And that plays in his favor so much, because pitchers are told to keep the ball down. And that's where he does his most damage. He's also a five-tool guy. He can beat out an infield hit. He can drive the ball. ... Hopefully, you just make a good pitch and he gets himself out. Him and Miguel Cabrera -- they're the two guys you just hope get themselves out."

Since Trout's first full season in 2012, he's hitting .362 with a 1.044 OPS on pitches that can be defined as "down." That ranks No. 1 in the sport. The average hitter has batted .233 with a .656 OPS on those same pitches.

Dempster told another tale, about throwing what he thought was a perfectly located, 1-and-2, down-and-away fastball to Trout, and watching him turn it into a laser-beam triple off the right-center-field fence.

"If you were going to draw a box that you should throw it to, that's where you want to throw it," Dempster said. "But hey, great hitters, that's what they do. They take that pitch, down and away, and what do they do? They line it to right field. Derek Jeter made a career out of that. But Trout, he's driving that pitch. And that's so unique. And not just driving it, like obscenely driving it. It's not just gap power. It's a bomb the other way."

So why don't pitchers just start pitching him up, you ask? Ho-ho-ho. Easy to say. Hard to do.

"Because he doesn't swing at those pitches," Santana said. "So you'd be wasting a pitch. You're trying to make him swing when he's not going to swing."

Now we're not trying to claim this guy is slump-proof. Trout did, in fact, have a three-week period from April 29 to May 19 this year in which he hit .164 with 24 strikeouts and only 11 hits in 86 plate appearances. But then the light bulb flashed right back on, and he hit .387/.477/.766 over the next month and a half. Hey, of course he did.

"His 'really bad' slump lasts three weeks and not three months," said Dempster. "His 'little' slumps last two at-bats, not two days. ... He makes those adjustments, just like that [while snapping his fingers]."

So what we have is one of those rare members of the species who refuses to let the rest of the sport find any significant weakness to exploit. And how is that possible?

"I don't know," laughed Santana. "He's coming from another planet." But the truth is, Mike Trout isn't an alien. He's just ...

Vulnerable to pitches up and in, Mike Trout has learned to lay off the high ones and get the pitches he wants. Twenty of his 22 home runs in 2014 have come on pitches in the lower half of the strike zone. ESPN Stats & Information

Making adjustments faster than anyone else

So the pitchers have spoken. But we aren't through chasing perspective on what makes this man so impervious to the hitter-unfriendly forces that are sweeping the baseball universe.

Next, we'll turn to three men with a different viewpoint: (A) an advance scout; (B) an American League executive who is involved in data and video-based scouting for his club; and (C) Eddie Bane, the Red Sox exec who was formerly the Angels' scouting director who drafted and signed Trout in 2009.

The focus of their discussion was the most important question of all: Why can't the rest of the sport figure out Trout the way opponents seem to figure out pretty much everyone else with a bat in his hands?

Well, the answer, said the AL exec, is: The sport has actually figured him out. Kind of ... just not successfully.

Trout's speed might be more impressive than his power: "He's the fastest guy on the field," said former Angels scouting director Eddie Bane, who drafted him in 2009. Dominic DiSaia for ESPN

"In some ways, I think the league has adjusted," the exec said. "If you look at how he's pitched now, there's actually a pretty consistent pattern. Everyone tries to come up and in on him. ... But his skill set is so refined for his age that teams haven't had success [doing] that."

It's been established that Trout does have a hole -- up in general, and up and in, in particular. But it's not "a glaring hole," the exec said. And his "weakness" is just "a relative weakness" compared to how good he is everywhere else.

"He covers up and away and middle away so well, and he covers down and in extremely well," the exec went on. "So you just don't have a large margin for error. The scouting reports say to pound him in, and guys do pound him in ... But you need to really get it in, like in a 4-by-4 [inch] spot ... or he'll kill you.

"A lot of guys you pitch 'in' are swinging at balls so far in off the plate, that it's a reasonable strategy. But he doesn't do that. He has such a mature approach. It's so rare that he swings at balls off the plate. ... You'll see him take balls two inches off the plate, and have no interest in swinging at them."

Not surprisingly, the advance scout was singing the same operetta, even though we didn't give him any indication of how other teams saw Trout.

"He's the best low-ball hitter in the major leagues," the scout said. "He hits that pitch down, and down and away, as well as anybody I've ever seen. Most hitters have holes. He doesn't have much of a hole. Up and in would be about it. But you've got to get it in there, because up and middle usually goes out of the park."

Now remember, advance scouts stay employed by finding weaknesses to exploit in everybody. But what this scout sees is a player who is close to weakness-free -- with no indication that's going to change anytime soon.

"His knowledge of pitching is going to grow," the scout said. "He already knows the strike zone really well. So controlling the strike zone isn't going to be a problem. He doesn't chase much now. But as he figures it out and gets a better body of knowledge of how pitchers are trying to get him out, his mastery of the strike zone is only going to grow. He's something, man. You've pretty much got to make a perfect pitch on him, or he'll get you."

Asked if he saw anything at all that could undo Trout's path to greatness, aside from injury, the scout replied: "Really nothing." And Bane, the man who drafted him, is fully on board with that assessment.