The Angels have spent most of this season giving their fans very little to hang onto, but Mike Trout has been the one constant worth circling. Even with a hamstring injury that landed him on the injured list, the center fielder has done enough in the first half to be named to his 11th All-Star Game and to stand alone as the club’s obvious MVP.
That says plenty about Trout, and it says even more about where the Angels are right now.
Los Angeles opened the year with a little bit of life, winning 11 of its first 21 games behind a burst of offense and solid work from its top three starters. But that stretch didn’t last.
The Angels’ lineup has remained wildly streaky, built around power and often stranded when the home run ball isn’t there. The pitching has been just as uneven, and the club took another hit when right-hander Jack Kochanowicz underwent season-ending Tommy John surgery.
José Soriano looked like he might be on a Cy Young track after his first six starts, but the last couple of months have been rough. His season numbers still look strong on paper, yet since May he has been getting hit hard and allowing plenty of runs.
Reid Detmers has brought strikeout stuff, but the results swing from one extreme to the other - either seven shutout innings with eight or more strikeouts, or a night where he gives up five runs and misses on punchouts. Both pitchers have also started to look like trade candidates with upside, which is never a great sign for a team trying to move forward.
Trout, meanwhile, has looked a lot more like the player baseball fans have known for years. He has 17 home runs, 29 extra-base hits and 36 RBI, while hitting .234/.394/.472 with an .866 OPS and going 7-for-7 in stolen base opportunities. He’s expected back before the end of the first half.
ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle used the AXE rating system, which weighs bWAR, fWAR, win probability added and championship probability added, to sort out each team’s midseason MVP and All-Star-level performers. Trout came out on top for the Angels with a 122 AXE rating, the only player on the roster to reach 120 and clear the All-Star-caliber threshold.
“Even though Trout has spent much of the leadup to the All-Star break on the IL, it has been a resurgent season for him,” Doolittle wrote Wednesday. “He needs to stay relatively healthy for that to remain true, but he has managed to close the gap between his walks and strikeouts to a level we haven't seen in years.”
Doolittle also noted that Trout may never again post the batting average he once did, but that he still does damage when he puts the bat on the ball. Detmers finished at 117 AXE, while shortstop Zach Neto came in at 115 and Soriano at 114, just shy of the cutoff.
“It would be an exaggeration to say that Trout has been a one-man show. But his lone presence here is kind of symbolic for this era of Angels baseball,” wrote Doolittle.
For the Angels, the hope is simple: Trout gets healthy, stays on the field and keeps looking like himself in the second half.
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Angels Fans Have Seen This Crushing Collapse Far Too Many Times
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The comeback came in the seventh, when the Angels put together a rally to tie it and briefly made the finale feel winnable. Even with that surge, the margin for error never disappeared, and the game ended the way so many frustrating losses do for this club, with the Angels unable to protect the tie and left to wonder how a late push still turned into a defeat. [Read more 🡒]