There is a time in every generation of baseball that a player comes through and wows everybody. They are a phenom in whatever position they play and their statistics immediately rank among the finest the sport has produced. Mike Trout is one of those players. But at the moment, his talents are being squandered on an Angels team too proud to blow it up, but not talented enough to be competitive. This puts both the player and club in a precarious position. Do they trade a once in a generation player or continue to salt away the prime of a surefire multiple time MVP? Does Trout himself demand an exit and be vilified or does he plug away in hopes that he can help lead a franchise revival at the potential cost of valuable prime years? It is quite the conundrum both parties have and it doesn’t have many palatable solutions.
The Angels currently sit rock bottom in the AL West. They’ve been there the majority of the young 2016 season. Their starting pitching has been atrocious. It has been made worse by the loss of Garrett Richards for the year to Tommy John surgery and potentially a similar fate for breakout candidate Andrew Heaney. Closer Huston Street is also once again sidelined after a solid start, bringing a cloud over an improving bullpen. The offense has been sporadically better, but not to the point in which it offsets the putrid pitching. Their defense has gone south with the injury to Andrelton Simmons. The one shining light has been Trout. He leads the team in every statistical category and has been the entire offense on more than one occasion this season. It is sad looking at an Angels box score these days to see a flood of zeroes surrounding Trout’s production.
But what are they to do? They were proactive with Trout in the sense that they bought out his arbitration years with a $144.5 million extension. That deal will make him the highest paid player in the Majors come 2020. For now he remains underpaid and under-assisted in Anaheim. He can continue to produce at a legendary level in red and white, but it may be prudent for GM Billy Eppler to at least explore his options while Trout is not making north of $30 million a year on a horrendous team.
His price is only going to drop as time goes on. The Angels can demand a king’s ransom at this moment, and they have every right to do so as Trout should bring back the most lucrative trade haul in MLB history. With each year that goes by though that price will significantly dwindle. Not to the point where they’ll be getting a couple of trash relievers and a mid-level prospect for him, but outside of Trout putting up Ruthian numbers his value will never be higher.
Trout should have three MVP trophies in his proverbial cabinet by now. The voters unanimously selected him two years ago for his lone win. The thing is though that MVP voters are becoming more and more gun shy about voting a guy for a last place team for the award. With the Hank Aaron Award and various other accolades to shower on a player, the MVP is now more for the best player on the best team. But that is kind of how it should be, you know with the word “valuable” in it and all. A player of Mike Trout’s caliber deserves to be in the echelon of multiple time MVPs like Barry Bonds and teammate Albert Pujols among others. He won’t do that in an Angels uniform.
So there is the conundrum. Both are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. If they trade Mike Trout, the Angels are admitting failure in one of the biggest markets in the country. If they don’t, they lose out money with each passing year and could lose a star in their prime, a la Greg Maddux and Barry Bonds, for absolutely nothing at the end. For Trout himself, he makes himself either into a martyr or the epitome of “what is wrong with today’s athlete” in many’s eyes. He can trudge away as the good soldier for the Angels, putting up empty numbers and not getting the just due for his undeniable talents. On the flip side he can demand, or even just politely request, a trade and be tarred and feathered in the media. It is a shame that it has come to this point so quickly in Trout’s career, but it has undoubtedly come to this unsavory ultimatum, one that will need to be acted upon very soon.