Why Mike Trout still wants to win with — and only with — the Angels
-
Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
ON AN UNCOMMONLY crisp afternoon in the middle of December, new Los Angeles Angels manager Ron Washington arrived in Bridgeton, New Jersey, for his first meeting with his most important player. Washington, hired a month earlier, drove up to Mike Trout‘s sprawling, custom-built mansion alongside his two new outfield coaches, Bo Porter and Eric Young Sr. They toured Trout’s expansive basement workout room, put up some shots in the neighboring basketball court and settled into the den for a conversation that lasted close to four hours.
Trout, 32, was coming off a ninth consecutive playoff-less season and a third consecutive injury-shortened one. Less than a week earlier, Shohei Ohtani, who once provided Trout his best chance at the October runs that famously elude him, had left to join the crosstown Los Angeles Dodgers. But Trout, those who attended the meeting said, didn’t spend much time lamenting. He pushed forward. He prodded the new staff about its vision, talked constantly about a desire to run the bases more freely and emphasized what he has consistently said publicly:
That he not only yearns to win, but that he wants to do so with — and only with — the Angels.
“This man has a lot invested in here,” Porter said, “and it showed.”
The speculation around Trout playing somewhere other than the Angels seems to intensify with every irrelevant month of September. It isn’t just fans and pundits; it’s players, coaches, scouts and executives who regularly wonder why the three-time MVP won’t demand a trade from the organization that has thus far failed to capitalize on his prime. Trout, however, remains unwavering in his commitment. Some have taken it as an indication that winning isn’t enough of a priority, a suggestion those who know him scoff at. Nobody, they say, is more competitive. Nobody is more hellbent on changing the narrative.
“He wants to stay,” said Torii Hunter, the longtime major league outfielder who once played with Trout and is now an Angels special assistant. “For the people that say he should get traded — it’s not their decision. It’s Trout’s decision. For people to say that he doesn’t want to win a championship — that’s 100% false. This guy’s always had fire and a desire to win.”
Since their initial meeting, Washington, Porter and Young have seen a man resolute on proving something, to both himself and those around him. In their first spring training together, they talked about him being first in drills and never shy about speaking out and consistently projecting joy. They noticed him setting a tone for everybody else.
“He’s been the one leading the charge out here, every single day — getting after it, having fun in the clubhouse, talking to the players, enjoying the work that we’ve been doing out here,” Washington said from Tempe, Arizona, last month. “His enjoying the work is making everyone else enjoy the work.”
A dozen years ago, Hunter mentored Trout during the historic rookie season that put him on a path to potentially — before injuries slowed the trajectory — become the greatest baseball player who ever lived. Hunter still sees elements of the ebullient 20-year-old who peppered him with questions about center field and ribbed him about his Dallas Cowboys. Now, though, he also sees more fight. More edge. More urgency to not only prove he’s still elite, but that he can do what few believe he can: lead the Ohtani-less Angels into the playoffs.
In Hunter’s words, “His ‘why’ is starting to become bigger.”
IF THERE’S ONE thing almost universally known about Trout, it’s that he’s loyal. It comes from his parents, he said, “and how I was brought up.” It’s a loyalty shown through his family and his closest friends, many of whom date back to grade school, and extends to almost every aspect of his life, most notably, it seems, to his employer. “But it starts when you’re a kid,” Trout said.
Trout grew up idolizing Derek Jeter, the iconic New York Yankees shortstop who famously wore only one uniform. When Trout signed his record-breaking, $426.5 million extension in the spring of 2019, he said following in Jeter’s footsteps was “something — obviously not totally, but something in the back of my mind.”
Those who know Trout have noted over the years that there’s a certain comfort that comes with separating his home life in the Northeast from his baseball life in Southern California, adding that he seems disinterested in the hoopla that would come with playing for the Yankees or Philadelphia Phillies. Some bring up his perpetual optimism — that he always shows up to spring training believing the Angels are capable of winning around him, no matter the circumstances. Others — most recently current Angels closer Carlos Estévez — say Trout will never forget that the Angels drafted him after 21 teams passed on him in the 2009 draft.
As Young said, “I think he has that feeling of responsibility.”
Whatever the reason, Trout wants to stay. He promises. You don’t have to believe him, but he’ll keep saying it.
“It ultimately comes down to what I want, what Jess wants, as a family,” said Trout, referencing his wife and 3-year-old son, who will have a baby brother in a few months. “The overall, outside perspective doesn’t influence me one bit.”
Trout was by far the greatest player in his sport from 2012 to 2019, an eight-year stretch in which he finished within the top two in MVP voting seven times and accumulated 70.5 FanGraphs wins above replacement (second on that list is Max Scherzer, who put up 48.5 fWAR). During that span, the Angels did not win a single postseason game, a reminder of the depth required to thrive in Major League Baseball and the team’s mind-numbing inability to capitalize on such a clear head start.
Ohtani’s emergence as a two-way phenomenon from 2021 to 2023 coincided with Trout playing in only 237 of a potential 486 games because of injuries to his right calf, back and left hand. Anthony Rendon, the third baseman signed to a hefty contract before the 2020 season to be the team’s third star, played in only 30% of his games during that same stretch. The Angels never finished fewer than 17 games out of first place.
Their shortcomings, however, stretch much further. Trout’s only playoff appearance came in 2014, a first-round sweep at the hands of the Kansas City Royals. His last winning season came the year after. And yet his loyalty remains.
“He signed here, he knew what he was getting into, and he wants to stay here,” said former Angels ace Jered Weaver, Trout’s teammate from 2011 to 2016. “Like he said, it would mean even more to win here after people are saying he should leave. ‘We want to see you somewhere else.’ Well, that’s not what he wants. He wants to stay here; I think people should respect that. It’s going to make it even better when they do start winning and win something to be an ‘I told you so’ type thing.”
Trout pushed the front office to sign other stars this offseason, but instead the team scaled back payroll, from a franchise record of $212 million going into 2023 to $170 million in 2024. They lost Ohtani to a heavily deferred 10-year, $700 million contract that Angels owner Arte Moreno declined to match, largely, sources with knowledge of the situation said, because he’s categorically against the concept of deferrals. Pursuits of Blake Snell and J.D. Martinez did not materialize. Their biggest offseason expenditure, $33 million, went to relief pitcher Robert Stephenson, who might have serious arm issues.
And yet Trout arrived in spring training and talked about how much more it would mean to win with the Angels. It was an unintended acknowledgment of the arduous task in front of him, but it seems to have been appreciated.
“Knowing that your best player wants to be here and earn it and win a championship, and that’s been the message and the drive — I just think that really helps everything,” Angels left fielder Taylor Ward said. “It fires me up knowing that stuff.”
Trout struck out against Ohtani and fell just short of a title during last year’s World Baseball Classic, but Team USA’s stirring run energized him, reminding him of what he’d been missing. On the bus ride back from the ballpark after the championship game, Trout sent a text message to his manager at the time, Phil Nevin. “I needed this,” he wrote.
Since then, and probably before it, winning has been Trout’s only driver.
“He’s chasing dead people,” Porter said. “When you look at Mike Trout’s career — if he was to retire today, he’s a first-ballot Hall of Farmer. So, the accolades, I don’t even think that’s a driving force anymore. I think his No. 1 goal is to be the last team standing in the middle of the diamond at this point in his career. And he wants that to happen in an Angels uniform.”
TROUT’S EXPRESSED DESIRE to stay isn’t all that’s preventing him from moving. He entered 2024 with seven years and nearly $250 million remaining on a contract that will pay him through his age-38 season. Couple that with recent injuries, and there are very few teams, if any, that would be willing to take on the money and provide promising young players in return, which the Angels would probably demand if they’re parting with an icon. Trout’s ability to block any trade only limits the market further.
Before any trade is even possible, rival evaluators say, Trout needs a healthy and productive season.
Trout wants to get back to the full version of himself.
Young noticed that during their first meeting four months ago, when he kept hearing one phrase over and over again from Trout — that he wants to get back to “playing baseball.” It means he wants to run again. More specifically, he wants to get back to stealing bases.
“He just wants to be set free,” Young said. “And so I kept hearing that and hearing that, and I go to Wash and I say, ‘Man, I hope you don’t put no damn handcuffs or anything on him. Just let him be free.'”
There isn’t just a single aspect of Trout’s game that makes him great. It’s all of it — the lightning-fast hands, the 80-grade power, the astute strike-zone awareness, the propensity for highlight-reel catches and the elite, game-changing speed. The latter skill has not shown up as prominently in recent years. Trout stole 196 bases from 2012 to 2019, ninth most in the majors. From 2020 to 2023, amid a more conservative game plan, he amassed just six.
Trout spent a lot of time in spring training working with Porter on pitcher tendencies in hopes of creating more opportunities to run. He wants to steal at least 20 bases this year, a pursuit he doesn’t believe to be in conflict with his desire to remain healthy.
“If you’re out there holding back, sometimes it puts you in a worse position,” Trout said. “I’m not saying that’s what happened, but I feel like — if I want to steal a base, I’m going to steal a base.”
Amid the optimism for all that was new, one thing kept nagging at Trout dating back to when he first started seeing live pitching in the middle of February: His head kept moving in the batter’s box. He couldn’t keep it still, a big reason, he explained, for his struggles against fastballs last season. Finally, during a cage session from Miami on April 1, something clicked — if he loads only halfway, rather than all the way back, he remains more still and his head stays locked in, putting him in a better position before unloading his swing. Trout has taken off ever since.
“When I feel like myself at the plate,” Trout said, “no one can stop me.”
Through the Angels’ first 17 games, Trout is slashing .284/.360/.672 with seven home runs and, yep, three stolen bases, already his highest total in five years. Beyond the numbers, though, teammates have noticed a different level of intensity.
“He’s just mad,” Estévez said. “He couldn’t stay healthy last year, and he’s just mad at that.”
ESPN’s ranking of the sport’s top 100 players at the start of the season listed Trout 19th, just below another center fielder, the 23-year-old Julio Rodriguez. Trout’s standing in the game has never been in question like this.
“That’s what happens when you get injured,” Trout said. “If I was out there a full season, I think it’d be a different story. That’s just the way I feel.”
A conservative offseason means the Angels’ best chance at the playoffs lies in-house. They’re hoping that Trout and Rendon can stay healthy. That Washington, two weeks away from his 72nd birthday, still has some magic left in him. And that a promising young nucleus — headlined by catcher Logan O’Hoppe, shortstop Zach Neto and starting pitcher Reid Detmers — will emerge quickly enough to contend within a difficult American League West.
This year will help determine whether the Angels have a winning foundation.
Will it determine whether Trout wants to stay?
“I’m not putting it on one year — this year, that year,” he said. “I have six [years on my contract] after this. I told a lot of people this — if something, I don’t know what it is, but if I feel some type of way, you guys will know.”
So you’ll know when you know?
“Yeah. And it hasn’t even crossed my mind yet.”
-
Bradford Doolittle
Which version of the 2025 Atlanta Braves is the real version of the 2025 Atlanta Braves?
The first few weeks of the season were quite a journey, one akin to a roller-coaster ride that, like the amusement park attraction, ended more or less where it began — at the beginning.
Entering the season, the Braves were considered the biggest threat to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ supremacy in the National League. While the Dodgers (preseason over/under of 103.5 wins at ESPN BET) were in a tier of their own, the Braves (93.5) topped the next tier, just ahead of a pair of division rivals in the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets.
Then Opening Day arrived, with the Braves starting off on a tough seven-game road trip against the San Diego Padres and Dodgers. Atlanta lost all seven games, scoring no runs or one run in four of those defeats.
That is not the way to knock the Dodgers off the mountaintop. Indeed, the old adage about early-season baseball has always been that you can’t win the pennant in April, but you might very well lose it. In becoming the 30th team since 1901 to begin a season with seven straight losses, the Braves flirted with some discouraging history.
Still, the Braves’ April story was as much defined by how they eventually responded to that early slump. Atlanta continued to flounder into the middle of the month, but then reeled off nine wins in 11 games, nearly leveling the ship.
The Braves haven’t yet reached the .500 mark this season, but it seems inevitable they soon will — and they already pushed their run differential out of negative territory. All in all, Atlanta can at least exhale after the initial stumbles.
To sum it up: Atlanta entered the campaign anointed as the Dodgers’ prime challenger — 2025 Braves version 1. They proceeded to put up one of the 30 worst starts in 125 years — 2025 Braves version 2. And before April was over, they’d already climbed back to break-even (or thereabouts) which, in effect, resets their near-disastrous season — 2025 Braves version 3.
Three very different versions of the same team. Which leads back to our initial question: Which Braves are the real Braves?
The 0-7 Braves make ugly history
As mentioned, the Braves are now one of 30 teams to begin a season 0-7, and it’s the fifth time a Braves club has appeared on that list, joining 1919, 1980, 1988 and 2016. That ties the Detroit Tigers for the most of any franchise.
Historically speaking, a start that bad and that prolonged rings the death knell in terms of pennant contention. None of the first 29 teams on the list made the playoffs. Indeed, only two managed to finish over .500, and none of the 29 ended with a positive run differential.
Thus, if the Braves complete their rapid climb back to .500 and keep that run differential in the black, they will have already subverted every other team on the 0-7 list. This really is not that surprising, because the 2025 Braves are way better than those other 29 teams.
In my historical database, among the various team measures I have are three-year power ratings, used to identify how strong (or not strong) teams were in multiseason windows. If we use Atlanta’s season-opening over/under figure as a proxy for their 2025 level, we can estimate their three-year power rating at 95.6 (or 95.6 wins per 162 games).
Only two of the other 29 teams on the 0-7 list had three-year power ratings of 81 or better — the 1945 Boston Red Sox and the 1983 Astros. Boston had a 86.6 three-year power rating, but it was a special case because of the sudden change in rosters across baseball tracing to players returning from military service. The 1945 Red Sox did not have Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr or Johnny Pesky. But the 1946 Red Sox had all of them, and won the pennant. A very different case than the 2025 Braves.
The 1983 Astros were more akin to these Braves, and were one of the two 0-7 starters that climbed back over .500 by the end of the season. (The other was the 1980 Braves, who finished 81-80 while being outscored by 30 runs.) Houston ended up 85-77 after its terrible start, which actually stretched to nine straight season-opening losses. The Astros finished three runs in the red in differential, however, and had a three-year power rating of 81.4, more than 14 wins shy of the current Braves.
So, of the 30 teams that started 0-7, the Braves were the most likely of them to bounce back from such a terrible beginning. They spent the last half of April proving that to be the case.
How the offense has helped fuel their turnaround
We’ve already noted how anemic the Braves’ offense was during their opening road trip. Atlanta averaged just two runs per game and batted .151 as a team during the skid. The Braves’ collective team OPS (.485) was the worst in baseball.
It took a while, but the Braves’ bats have heated up. Heading into their series with the Dodgers, Atlanta had scored 4.9 runs per game (10th in MLB) and posted a .779 OPS (fifth) since their slump. They’ve done this even as they continue to wait on Ronald Acuna Jr.’s season debut after last year’s knee surgery.
The drivers of the offensive uptick have been a little surprising. Sean Murphy had clubbed seven homers in 17 games since coming off the IL, one season after he hit 10 in 72 contests. Young catcher Drake Baldwin had a 1.009 OPS since April 3 and 30-year-old Eli White was at 1.012.
Those surprising outbursts, along with the expected contributions of Marcell Ozuna and Austin Riley, have helped the offense recover even as Matt Olson (.767 OPS), Michael Harris II (.614) and Ozzie Albies (.664) were still seeking to reach their career levels.
Still, issues linger
The Braves’ pitching still rates as roughly league average for the season as a whole. Last season’s NL Cy Young winner Chris Sale has been inconsistent so far, leaving Spencer Schwellenbach as the only rotation member producing at league average or better.
Sale should be fine, but the Braves very much need their big two to become a big three because of what looks like a lack of high-quality rotation depth. In other words, after getting just one start out of Spencer Strider over the season’s first few weeks, they need him to get healthy and stay that way. Strider (Grade 1 hamstring strain) is expected to return later this month.
In the bullpen, the Braves have been so-so, mostly because of the struggles of star closer Raisel Iglesias to keep the ball in the yard. After surrendering just four long balls in all of 2024, Iglesias coughed up five homers in his first 11 outings. Because the pitching has underachieved, the Braves’ bounce-back has been more warm than boiling.
But the recovery has been undergirded by pretty strong indicators. Atlanta’s run differential during the recent 14-9 stretch is equivalent to a 94-win team over a full season, putting the Braves on par with preseason expectations during that span. The problem of course is that 0-7 start.
The other problem is that the National League is full of really good teams.
Have you heard the NL is stacked?
The Braves sat at 14-16 through 30 games. Let’s say they maintain the 94-win quality they reached during their recovery over their remaining 132 games. That’s a .580 winning percentage, which gets Atlanta to 90 or 91 wins by the end of the season.
If all the teams in the NL were to maintain their current paces (which is admittedly unlikely), there would be five teams that finished with 96 wins or more — the Mets, Dodgers, Padres, Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants.
You can see the Braves’ dilemma: Only one playoff slot would be up for grabs. If Atlanta is able to get to 90 or 91 wins, it would be in the mix, but would need to hope that neither Philadelphia nor the Arizona Diamondbacks (both on pace for 88 wins) catch fire, or that one of the top five fall off.
The forecasts don’t rule out anything. At FanGraphs, the Braves are making the playoffs in about 70% of simulations, as their model sees the NL East contenders as better than the non-Dodgers contenders in the NL West. Baseball Prospectus has the Braves getting to 92 wins but reaching the playoffs just 54% of the time.
Finally, at ESPN BET, the Braves’ over/under for wins has fallen to 88.5, the same as Arizona but less than the Mets (94.5), Phillies (91.5) and Padres (89.5). The upstart Giants are at 84.5.
The Braves are back in the running, but those seven games, along with the strength of the top of the NL, have reduced their margin of error considerably.
How well will they play in May — and beyond — and will it be enough?
Atlanta’s season might depend on, well, May, or these key upcoming weeks before Strider and Acuna rejoin the team. However they got here, the Braves are currently a middle-of-the-pack team at the bottom line, both in the win-loss column and by run differential. If they continue at this level while waiting for their stars to return, the strong upper tier of the NL could move away from them.
The upcoming schedule, beginning with the current series against the Dodgers, is tough in ways both obvious and sneaky.
After L.A. departs on Sunday, the over-.500 Cincinnati Reds visit, before Atlanta travels to play the Pittsburgh Pirates. There are two series against the Washington Nationals, one at home and one away, and if you’re still thinking of the Nats as pushovers, you haven’t been paying attention.
There’s a return match with San Diego, a trip to Boston, a visit from the Red Sox, and a key three-game set on the road against the Phillies. It’s not an easy docket for any club, but especially for one missing two of its biggest stars.
The Braves have mostly righted their teetering ship after their stunning start. Since those seven opening losses, they’ve been what we thought they would be. Chances are, as the season progresses, players find their level and the roster gets healthier, that will continue to be the case.
The real Braves weren’t the team that started 0-7. They might be the team that’s played much better since. Now, in what’s shaping up as a crowded and strong upper tier in the NL playoff hierarchy, they have to hope that even if they maintain their expected level, it proves to be good enough for another trip to October.
BOSTON — Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas suffered what manager Alex Cora called a “significant” left knee injury after he awkwardly fell near first base in the bottom of the second inning against the Minnesota Twins on Friday night.
Speaking after Boston’s 6-1 win, Cora said Casas was taken to a local hospital, where he was undergoing more tests on the knee. He said the team would have more information Saturday.
Casas sent a slow roller up the first-base line that Twins starter Joe Ryan bobbled before making an underhand throw to first baseman Ty France. Casas, who was ruled safe on the Ryan error, collapsed to the ground holding his knee as he crossed the bag.
He was carried off the field on a stretcher and replaced by Romy Gonzalez.
“Seemed like he was in shock, to be honest with you,” Cora told reporters. “He said it right away that he didn’t feel it. …. It’s tough.
“He put so much effort in the offseason. I know how he works. Everything he went through in the offseason getting ready for this. He was looking forward to having a big season for us. It didn’t start the way he wanted, but he kept grinding, kept working. And now this happened.”
Casas entered Friday hitting .184 with three home runs in 28 games.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway