A common trope on Twitter has been “Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani do something amazing as Angles lose 5-3.” Once again the “stars and scrubs” approach to building a roster has failed the Angels’ hopes of making the playoffs for the first time since 2014. The disappointment fans felt this year was similar to taking a fastball to the ribs. The Angels came out of the gate with a strong promising start that seemed to be a sure sign that this was a playoff team. Those dreams ended when the team lost 14 games in a row and manager Joe Maddon was fired. “How could this happen again?” is the question that surrounds fans of Mike Trout and the Los Angeles Angels.

Mike Trout’s 2020 season ended with MLB’s playoffs once again lacking the best player in a quest for a championship. A shortened season caused by a global pandemic casts a sense of proportion on the disappointment, but in baseball terms. . . this is getting old.

The 2020 season offered a lot of promise for the Angels to reach the finally reach the playoffs for the first time since 2014. Anthony Rendon signed a free-agent contract and would provide sufficient lineup protection for Trout. Shohei Ohtani would be able to rejoin the meager pitching staff. Top prospect Jo Adell would be waiting in the wings to join the team, and the league would open up the playoff structure so that half of the total teams would make the playoffs. For the Angels to miss the playoffs in that situation the team would have to seriously underperform. Sadly, that is exactly what happened.

After signing a career forming contract that will likely leave him in an Angels uniform for the rest of his career, Mike Trout sets out to lead his team into the playoffs. Most pundits and projection systems have the Angels as a slightly improved team from 2018 that is one of the last teams to miss the playoffs. While there is some chance that the Angels out-perform these predictions a lot will ride on players not-named Mike Trout. Most notably the starting pitching staff will have to exhibit greater resilience to injury than it has shown in the last several years. Other players such as Justin Upton and Shohei Ohtani will need to return from injury with the power to impact the offense in ways that prevent teams from intentionally walking Trout.

Mike Trout wrapped up his sixth season once again sitting atop MLB as baseball’s best player and unfortunately once again sitting out of the playoffs. Despite his stellar play the thing that will most be remembered about 2017 was the period of just over 6 weeks in which he did not play.

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Trout started the season off with a bang being named the American League Player of the Month for April. It was the best start of his career to date and the fourth time he has received the award. His all-around stats continued to build as he surpassed all of the expected career plateaus during the year. He passed 150 stolen bases, 500 RBI, 500 walks, 1,000 hits, 200 doubles and reached 200 home runs just as the season came to a close. He once again found a way to lead the league in on-base percentage (.442) and was able to couple that with the simultaneous lead in slugging percentage (.629). That naturally made him the league leader in OPS, a remarkable 1.071. He finished the season with a 187 OPS+. At an early stage in the season he had an absurd OPS+ over 200.

All of these feats would seem to make him a shoe-in for his third MVP award, but then May 28th put a serious dent in Trout’s season and the Angel’s playoff chances. Continue reading The Speedbump – Mike Trout’s 2017 Season Review →