Matt York/Associated Press
It feels like the same song and dance every year in Anaheim. With baseball’s best player, Mike Trout, the Angels should be considered serious contenders.
Then, by summer, it’s clear the Angels do not factor into the mix. With each year, it’s another wasted opportunity.
The last time he played the majority of his team’s games over a 162-game season, Trout won the 2019 AL MVP and had a 7.9 WAR. The Angels didn’t make the postseason. They haven’t done so since 2014, or won a postseason game since 2009, which was before the Trout era.
Let that sink in for a second. Not only has Trout been to the postseason just once, but he’s never experienced so much as one victory after the regular season in his 11-year career.
That’s jarring to think for someone who’s been the game’s top player for nearly a decade.
At some point, his individual legacy has to be on the line, just as much as the organization’s reputation for failing to maximize his talent. This is what brings us to the importance of the 2022 season, which is the most pressure Trout has faced in his entire career.
The Angels have two of the last three AL MVPs after Shohei Ohtani’s breakout year in 2021. Baseball Prospectus expects the Houston Astros to win the AL West, but it has the Angels with the second-highest win total among non-division winners, which would land them a wild-card spot.
Of course, there is now an extra wild-card spot to claim, just for good measure.
This is the year for the Angels to do it.
They have question marks in the rotation, but don’t tell that to any of the starting pitchers who are a part of it. As Patrick Sandoval and newcomer Noah Syndergaard recently told The Athletic, the group is sick of hearing about the Angels’ rotation being a question mark.
The addition of Syndergaard, two years removed from Tommy John surgery, is risky but comes with enormous upside. Offensively, the Angels get Anthony Rendon back after a hip injury limited him to just 58 games in 2021.
Most importantly, though, they get Trout back. At least that’s the plan.
Matt York/Associated Press
The last half-decade has told a much different story about the three-time MVP’s health than the first half, when he never missed more than three games in a row or landed on the injured list.
In 2017, Trout had a torn thumb ligament that cost him 39 games. He missed 19 games in 2018 due to wrist inflammation and was out another 19 games in 2019 after foot surgery.
The shortened 2020 was a healthy year for Trout, but it will get lost in the historical shuffle as a somewhat inadequate season for the sport.
Last year, the ZiPS projection system had Trout as the game’s most irreplaceable player, and sure enough he missed 4.5 months with a calf strain suffered jogging the basepaths last May.
His replacements didn’t even rack up a 1.0 WAR, compared to Trout’s 7.9 in his 2019 MVP year. In theory, if he had a similar season last year, a healthy Trout would have put the Angels right in the mix for a playoff berth as they rode the Ohtani wave.
If the 2019 version of Trout returns, and Ohtani continues to be the unicorn he was a year ago, this would be the most exciting team in the league.
It would vault Trout back to the top of the hierarchy of MLB stars, which is where he undoubtedly belongs. No pitcher should be looking forward to seeing some mix of Trout, Ohtani and Rendon.
Yet, what if he is not the same? What if he is a lesser version of himself after mounting injuries, or worse, if he suffers another debilitating injury that keeps the Angels from reaching their full potential?
In the background of it all is Ohtani’s future. He was vocal at the end of last season that while he loves the Angels, their fans and the atmosphere, winning is the utmost priority.
Winslow Townson/Associated Press
Ohtani and Trout have not played together at full strength since 2019, when the former had yet to emerge as one of the most feared players in the game. If they do so this year, and still don’t see progress, the Angels risk losing Ohtani when he becomes an unrestricted free agent after the 2023 season.
That would be on top of what at that point would have to be considered diminishing returns on Trout’s 12-year, $426.5 million contract signed just before the 2019 season and Rendon’s seven-year, $245 million contract signed prior to the 2020 campaign.
To Trout’s credit, he’s said to be taking a much larger leadership role in this first season starting without Albert Pujols since 2012.
“He wants to lead,” Joe Maddon told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. “To me, that means, on a daily basis, when you walk in the building to put everybody else before you. He’s definitely got that in him. He’s very empathetic. He wants to win. He’s willing to share his knowledge. He’s got all the ingredients. He just needed the opportunity.”
Well, this is it. The pitching staff is motivated—and healthy for now—and there’s an extra wild-card spot to boot.
The further he gets from the excellence established through 2019, the more complex his legacy becomes as one of baseball’s all-time icons, especially if the Angels keep losing.
Now is as good a time as any for Trout to shake the notion that he’s the best player to never win anything.
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