As if losing injury-prone third baseman Anthony Rendon to a partially torn hamstring wasn’t bad enough, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim were dealt a bigger and more unexpected blow with the latest injury to superstar Mike Trout.
It was announced this week that Trout will undergo knee surgery to repair a torn left meniscus, and the timetable for his return in the field is not yet known.
For Trout and the Angels, this is the fourth straight season he will have to spend an extensive period of time on the IL due to a severe injury and for the third time in those four years it involves his lower body.
Trout was in the middle of a bounce back season to re-establish himself as an elite talent in the MLB. Despite a .220 batting average, he had 10 home runs, 14 RBIs, 17 runs scored, six stolen bases and a triple through the first month of the season. Even though the Halos were sputtering, falling well-below .500 yet again, Trout was doing all he could to keep his team competitive.
“Just frustrating but we’ll get through it,” a visibly frustrated and emotional Trout said to the media after the news broke about his injury. “It’s crazy because when I look back, I don’t even know when I did it.”
The question now is where the Angels go from here, not just as a team, but with Trout as the face of it.
The answer is simple. They will go nowhere. The Angels won’t move on from Trout, at least not right now, because his trade value has taken a hit, and he doesn’t really have the leverage to ask for a trade.
There has been and will be several articles and videos of people criticizing Trout for sticking with the Angels and more criticism for the Angels and their inept ownership that continues to slide deeper into mediocrity.
However, the facts are the facts. The situation is what it is. Trout decided to take that 12 year extension worth $426 million back in 2019. He could’ve waited it out for another year or two and held the Angels’ feet to the fire to go out and build a better squad around him and Shohei Ohtani.
Given all the injuries he’s had since that time, it turned out to be a brilliant move on Trout’s part, although he probably still would’ve gotten a big extension at some point.
On the flip side, the Angels’ ownership could have had serious discussions with Trout and given him an out (alla Damian Lillard with the Portland Trail Blazers in the NBA); saying that it’s best for him and the organization if the two parted ways, and sought a deal that suited both him and the team.
However, none of that happened and likely won’t happen, at least not this year. When asked about this before, especially on the heels of Ohtani’s departure, Trout said with sincerity that he didn’t want to bail out and wanted to make it work in Anaheim with the organization that drafted him, developed him, and gave him an opportunity to grow into stardom.
In the majority of his 13 years with the Angels, Trout has done that. He’s won three AL MVPs, an 11-time All-Star, Rookie of the Year, nine-time Silver Slugger, and three-time All-MLB First Team.
Nobody would blame him for asking for a trade, he’s proven his worth many times to this team and the fans. However, he shouldn’t get criticism for wanting to stay, not demanding a trade, and staying loyal amidst a decade of rough years in Anaheim. He made his bed, and he probably knew it could go this way with this ownership when he signed that mega-contract in 2019.
What he also has to come to terms with is he’s not quite the same superstar as he was five or six years ago. He’s older now (about to be 33 in August), more injury prone now, more vulnerable, and in a league with young, rising stars, falling into a tier-2 class of the game’s elite; still great, still an All-Star but not quite the top of the heap anymore.
At the end of the day, both Trout and the Angels aren’t going to get better any time soon. All they can do is build themselves up again and try to improve internally. Like an old married couple, Trout and the Angels have their flaws, but realize the best move is to stick together and continue to go down this bumpy road together.
