Mike Trout

Angels outfielder Mike Trout’s recovery timeline seems to be growing. Earlier this week, Sam Blum of The Athletic relayed on X that the superstar says he still hasn’t started running and doesn’t have a target for his return date.

At the end of April, the Angels announced that Trout would require surgery to repair a meniscus tear in his left knee. They didn’t provide a recovery timeline but some reporters suggested a timeline of four to six weeks based on previous surgeries of this nature.

Trout’s surgery took place on May 3, seven weeks ago today. The fact that he’s still not running suggests that he’s nowhere close to a return. Even once he crosses that bridge, he will have to gradually ramp up activities and will likely need some kind of rehab assignment after such a long layoff.

It’s the latest frustrating setback as the recent period of Trout’s career has unfortunately come to be defined by injury absences. From 2012 to 2019, there was only one season in which Trout played less than 134 games. He also played 53 out of the 60 games in the shortened 2020 season. But he hasn’t hit the 120-game mark in any season since then and only got into more than 82 contests once.

The 2021 season saw Trout hit the injured list with a right calf strain that lingered and lingered, limiting him to just 36 games that year. The following year, Trout was healthy enough for 119 games but did deal with some back problems. Last year, a left hamate fracture capped him at 82 games. This year, he was only able to get into 29 contests before the meniscus surgery and it’s anybody’s guess how much he’ll be able to add to that number later in the year.

Those injuries have reduced the quantity of his playing but the quality has still been good. He has slashed .276/.376/.575 since the start of 2021 and has a line of .220/.325/.541 this year despite a .194 batting average on balls in play. But the mounting injuries are a significant problem for the organization.

The Angels had two of the best players in the world on the same team for six years with Trout and Shohei Ohtani both on the roster. But their attempts to build a winner around those two continually fell short, as the Halos haven’t even finished above .500 since 2015.

Now Ohtani is gone, having reached free agency and signed with the Dodgers, while Trout has become an ongoing question mark. The Angels are one of the worst clubs in baseball this year, with a 29-45 record that is ahead of just four clubs.

All in all, very little about the franchise is in good shape. In addition to the struggles at the major league level, most prospect evaluators rank their farm system as one of the worst. Owner Arte Moreno pared back the payroll this winter and it’s unclear when it will ramp up again. A lot of the money they are spending is tied up in Trout and Anthony Rendon, with each of them making more than $35MM annually while frequently injured. Rendon’s deal goes through 2026 and Trout’s through 2030. Trout will reach his 33rd birthday in August of this year.

Angels general manager Perry Minasian spoke to the media at the Winter Meetings today, emphatically declaring that a Mike Trout trade is not happening, with Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com among those to pass along his comments. “Mike Trout is not getting traded,” Minasian said. “100 percent.”

There was never really any concrete reporting to suggest that a Trout trade was actually being considered, just speculation from outside observers. The argument for contemplating a trade was essentially that the club hasn’t been good enough in recent years, despite having both Trout and Shohei Ohtani on the same team. They haven’t had a winning season since 2015, haven’t made the postseason since 2014 and haven’t won a playoff game since 2009. With Ohtani now a free agent and perhaps signing elsewhere, it was suggested by some that the club should look to blow up the roster and start over.

But that is clearly not how the Halos are viewing things. Last month, Minasian made it clear that the club is not rebuilding and is actually planning on being aggressive this winter in adding to the roster. That may involve luring Ohtani back to Anaheim or perhaps pivoting to other notable transactions, but trading Trout doesn’t make sense in any scenario where the club is still trying to win in the short term.

Even if the club were to decide to make Trout available at some point down the road, there would be challenges in doing so. For one thing, Trout has a full no-trade clause and would therefore have to give the green light to any deal. Back in September, he spoke about how he intended to play for the Angels in 2024.

It’s also fair to wonder how much trade value he actually has at this point. Various injuries have limited him to 237 games played over the past three seasons, less than half of the club’s 486 contests for that time frame. He was able to get into 82 games in 2023, with a left hamate fracture wiping out much of his second half, but had diminished production when on the field. His batting line of .263/.367/.490 was still well above average, translating to a wRC+ of 134, but he had never previously had a wRC+ below 167 in a full season. He also hasn’t reached double-digit steals since 2019 and the advanced defensive metrics have been split on his glovework in recent years.

That’s not to say Trout isn’t still a very good player. FanGraphs still pegged him as being worth 3.0 wins above replacement in 2023, even with the drop from his own ridiculous standards and only playing half the year. But he’s now 32 years old with his health becoming a growing concern and he is still being paid at an elite level.

Trout’s contract still has seven more years on it with $248.15MM still to be paid out, a rate of $35.45MM per year through 2030. Even if the club decides to change their plans a year from now, he will still have six years and $212.7MM remaining, going into his age-33 season. Using MLBTR’s Contract Tracker to look at data going back to 2010, we can see that the largest guarantee secured by a player going into his age-33 season or older is Jacob deGrom’s $185MM deal from last offseason. Among position players, Josh Donaldson’s $92MM tops the list.

Unless Trout can suddenly return to total health and MVP-caliber production, there’s likely not any surplus value in the deal. Though he’s still a valuable player, it would be hard for him to secure this elite-level salary if he were on the open market. That means the Angels would either have to settle for a middling return to clear the money off the books or eat some cash in order to secure a more notable return. That figures to put the club in an awkward spot on terms of public relations with Trout having been the face of the franchise for so long, and that goes double if Ohtani also ends up leaving for another club this winter.

Ultimately, with the Angels set on competing, keeping Trout and hoping for a return to form is the most sensible option. The rest of the offseason will determine if his supporting cast will be stronger than it has been in recent years.

The Angels are completing their eighth consecutive losing season, and might lose one of the game’s iconic players in Shohei Ohtani to free agency.  Ohtani’s potential departure adds extra sting to this latest disappointing year in Anaheim, and it has led to some questions regarding the club’s other icon in Mike Trout.  The outfielder said in early September that he was planning to speak with upper management after the season about “the direction of everything and what the plan is,” and Trout shed some more light on those post-season discussions when speaking with reporters today, describing them as routine.

“I go through this every year,” Trout told the Los Angeles Times’ Sarah Valenzuela and other reporters.  “There’s private conversations I have with Arte [Angels owner Arte Moreno] and John [team president John Carpino].  And like I said, I’m doing the same thing I did the last, what, 13 years?  Going into the offseason, clearing my mind and getting ready for spring and wearing an Angels uniform in spring.”

Specifically noting his Spring Training plans seemed to be Trout’s way of downplaying talk that he could request a trade.  The Angels’ lack of success has led to plenty of speculative trade buzz around Trout for the last several years, and yet there has never been any indication that the club is open to moving the outfielder, or that Trout himself would welcome or seek out a deal.  Trout has some control over his fate via the full no-trade clause included in the ten-year, $360MM extension he signed with Los Angeles in March 2019, so the Halos wouldn’t be able to deal him without his permission.

“I got seven years left on the contract.  I know there’s a lot of speculation out there….Nothing’s changed,” Trout said.

Beyond the Angels’ losing records, the last few seasons have been doubly challenging for Trout from a health perspective.  A series of separate injuries have limited Trout’s playing time to some extent in each of the last seven seasons, though since Opening Day 2021, he has played in only 237 of a possible 486 games.  A nagging calf strain cost Trout most of the 2021 campaign, he played in just 119 games in 2022 due to back problems, and a hamate bone surgery limited Trout’s 2023 tally to 82 games, and only one appearance after July 3.

“It’s tough. It’s been hard on me….I just want to be out there and injuries suck,” Trout said today.  “All the hard work and stuff and just freak stuff happens.  But [I’m] trying to stay positive.”

“Coming into this season, I think the biggest thing was trying to be healthy and that was my goal.  Went into the offseason with a plan, hired a lot of people to work on my body.  My body felt great and a freak thing happened.  Broke my hand.  Came back probably sooner than I should have, but I wanted to be out there with the guys.”

With a .283/.382/579 slash line and 66 homers in 1007 plate appearances from 2021-23, Trout is still clearly one of the game’s best players when he has been able to stay on the field, which only adds to the frustration for Trout himself, the fanbase, and everyone in the Angels organization.  Over six seasons with both Ohtani and Trout as teammates, there hasn’t been very much time when both players have been healthy and in top form.  Of course, even if Trout and Ohtani had been firing on all cylinders, it is fair to wonder if that still would’ve been enough to get the Angels into contention given the consistent issues throughout the rest of the roster.

The Angels are expected to bid on Ohtani to some extent this winter, though it remains to be seen if Ohtani will leave for a larger offer and/or simply a team that can offer a better chance to win.  Should he indeed leave, it remains to be seen if the Halos would consider a rebuild for the first time in Moreno’s two decades as owner, or if Moreno would order the front office to reload for another shot at contending in 2024.

Moving Trout would only seem like a reality if Los Angeles will attempt a full teardown, and such a deal would be tricky to manage even beyond Trout’s no-trade clause.  On the one hand, there would undoubtedly be interest in a superstar like Trout, and some teams might feel their training staffs might be better equipped to help him stay healthy.  On the other, Trout also turned 32 last month, is owed $248.45MM over the next seven years, and is coming off three injury-plagued years — these factors are red flags for possible trade partners, and obstacles for the Angels in finding proper value back.