Mike Trout, The Time IS NOW!
It is time the best player in baseball has some memorable October moments.
If someone asked who the best player in baseball is, I think most would think of the same name. Prior to 2021, the only possible answer was Mike Trout. In my opinion, the answer is the same heading into 2022 and it doesn’t need to be asked. Mike Trout has had about as good of an 11 year start to a career as any player has ever had in the history of the game. Trout will go down as an all-time great, no question about it. But there is a glaring hole on his resume. He will turn 31 this year and has only played in 3 postseason games in those 11 years. It’s time for Trout to put together a career in October and the time is now.
9 straight All-Star selections, 3 MVPs, and 4 second place finishes in the MVP voting puts Trout in an elite group. Trout and 9 of the game’s greats trail only the great Barry Bonds for the most MVPs in baseball history. If he happens to win another, he will take sole possession of second place. His personal accomplishments are incredible. But many of the game’s greatest players have also experienced team success. And one can argue, the team’s success is largely due to the fact that they have one of the game’s best players carrying them. The same cannot be said about Trout up to this point.
Athletes are judged by all of their performances but the greats are judged by their performances when the lights are the brightest, by how many rings they have won. It’s not always a fair judgment since only 1 team in the league walks away being crowned champion. But winning is the name of the game. LeBron James is the icon that he is in basketball not because he is 3rd on the all-time scoring list but because he has appeared in 10 NBA Finals and has 4 rings. Tom Brady is the GOAT because he has appeared in 10 Super Bowls and has won 7 of them. Mike Trout should be guaranteed to appear a few more times in the playoffs but it feels like he has wasted 11 years without impacting October. Time is running out.
Now, if you are anything like my brother, you will probably make the argument that baseball is a team sport and Trout can’t help that his team ERA ranked 22nd in the league with a 4.69 ERA. And although Mike Trout cannot face batters and is not responsible for giving up big innings, he is partially responsible for how the roster is constructed. Trout made up 19.4 percent of the Angels 2021 salary. Does Trout deserve to be paid like the top player in the game, 100 percent yes. But Mike Trout chose to stay in LA with a brutal Justin Upton contract (23 million in 2021, 28 million in 2022), a bad Dexter Fowler contract (14.5 million) and a bottom of the league farm system. And I would bet my bank account that Trout played a big role in convincing Anthony Rendon to join the Angels (245 million), who hardly played in 2021 due to injuries. There is not a lot of wiggle room to fill in some of the glaring holes in LA with their current contracts. And yes, Trout is definitely responsible for that.
I do not think Trout or Trout truthers should be able to use the “well the Angels are just bad” line when making excuses for Trout. The fact is Trout has played 11 big league seasons and has only been in the dance once. He has 1 postseason hit. I look at a player like Jose Altuve, who was on a brutal Astros team that was rebuilding and has been a cornerstone in the Astros dynasty. He has played 79 career postseason games and is second all-time with 23 home runs. Altuve has not only produced during the regular season but has put together an impressive playoff resume. 23 home runs coming from a second baseman would be a great offensive year and Altuve has done that in the Postseason. Incredible.
We can even look at one of the game’s youngest stars in Juan Soto. 2019 was the only season the Nationals have made the playoffs since Soto was called up in 2018. But he made that year count being a star on a World Series winning team hitting 5 home runs in the middle of the Nationals lineup. My reason for bringing up Soto is not to compare Trout’s 1 playoff appearance to Soto’s. But to state that Soto only had 1 playoff appearance and the baseball world knew who Juan Soto was after the 2019 postseason. It only takes 1 October for Trout to get rid of the “what have you done in the postseason” talk.
If Trout is going to make it happen, 2022 may be his best chance. It’s crazy to think about how the Angels have the game’s 2 most dynamic players and have been nowhere near a playoff game recently. Shohei Ohtani only has 2 years remaining in LA before becoming a free agent. With Trout and Rendon’s contracts, it is difficult to imagine the Angels having 3 massive contracts. The Angels need to take advantage of having Trout in his prime and Shohei in Anaheim. GM Perry Minasian has also added Noah Syndergaard and Michael Lorenzen, while also retaining Raisel Iglesias. The Angels still have questions on their roster, specifically SP, but this will probably be the most talented team the Angels have had since 2014, when they won 98 games.
If the Angels are going to have a breakout season in the AL West, Mr. Trout will need to be healthy. When Trout went down with a calf injury in the middle of May, no one expected him to miss the remainder of the season having only played 36 games. I am not quite sure if his injury just continued to be a problem for him once he started to attempt more high intensity workouts or if the Angels decided to rest him for the remainder of the year since they were out of contention by July. If a trip to the postseason is in store for the Angels in 2022, they will need Mike Trout to play a minimum of 140 games, something he has only done once since 2017.
Mike Trout is a once in a generation type of talent. If he did not play another game in his career, he would be a first ballot Hall of Famer. But Trout’s legacy leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to impacting meaningful games. There are very few “Mike Trout moments” because all of his work has been done in the regular season, when his team is far from contention. It is time he makes a name for himself in October. The time is now.