Major League Baseball

After two disrupted seasons, can Mike Trout still finish as the best ever?

Published Aug. 4, 2021 11:46 a.m. ET

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

Two years ago, Mike Trout was lapping the field in the race to become the most valuable hitter ever.

All of his closest competitors had long since retired, but wins above replacement leaderboards allowed us to see with specificity how Trout compared to the all-time greats at the same juncture in their careers. Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Henry Aaron, Babe Ruth — Trout had been better than all of them, up to and including their age-27 seasons.

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Over the first eight full seasons of his career, Trout averaged 145 games played and, by FanGraphs’ measurements, more than 9.0 WAR per year. He was spectacular, and he was consistent.

Then came the pandemic, which limited Trout to 53 games in 2020, and a pesky calf strain, which has limited him to 36 games in 2021.

Suddenly, Trout no longer leads everyone in the race to become the most valuable ballplayer of all time. Granted, he has not fallen that far: He’s currently fifth, behind Rogers Hornsby, Cobb, Mantle and Ruth, with a chance to leapfrog Ruth by year’s end. (Of course, that would require him to get back on the field, which his calf has not permitted.)

WAR is no ultimate arbiter of excellence, but Trout’s performance by that measure was emblematic of his sustained success, and the fact that he has fallen behind demonstrates the misfortune that has come his way of late. This was to be the prime of his career, and he is hardly playing. He turns 30 on Saturday, and there is still no target date for his activation from the injured list. A strain that was supposed to sideline him six to eight weeks will end up costing him at least 12.

Angels manager Joe Maddon recently suggested that Trout might move to an outfield corner upon his return to reduce the demand on his body. That makes fine sense. But with rookie Brandon Marsh taking over center field, it’s fair to question when or if Trout will return to the position he has called home since 2013.

Age 30 is a normal time to transition out of center field these days. But very little about Trout’s career to date had been normal. He was infallible. Now he is not.

The aging curve comes for everyone, evidently even the outliers. But what makes this a particularly bad time is the emergence of one Shohei Ohtani as a superstar, the rare player who can match Trout’s output from any season over the past decade.

If you could somehow add this Ohtani season to the Angels’ ledgers between 2012 and 2019, the team would’ve made many more postseasons. If you could add any Trout season from between 2012 and 2019 to this Ohtani-led season, the Angels would be much closer to wild-card contention than they are today.

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As it stands, the Angels are hovering just below .500, with minuscule odds of qualifying for the postseason. They are turning their team over to young players Marsh and Jo Adell and pitchers Chris Rodriguez and Reid Detmers in hopes of sussing out who can help going forward. That, too, makes fine sense, at least as long as Trout is not playing. And even he could do only so much over the remaining slate.

What becomes of Trout’s record-breaking pace from here? It’s unlikely that he will ever be the most valuable player at his age again. It would require the best play of his career for him to overtake Hornsby at any point over the next five years — and Ruth beyond that. Then again, Trout has given us no reason to expect him, when healthy, to decline, and he was logging some of the best play of his career before he hurt his right calf.

Barring catastrophe, there is still no doubt that Trout will finish his career as one of the 10 or 20 most valuable players ever. But through the end of the 2019 season, you could plausibly dream of singularity for him. That’s a distant dream now.

Trout is so, so far from being an albatross, but the Angels owe him $334 million over the next nine seasons. For his first nine seasons, he was baseball’s biggest bargain. Going forward, health — and luck — will play a large role in determining the return he can provide on the upcoming investment.

Two years ago, there was no reason to think an interruption in Trout's standout performance was coming. Now, there is no way to know when it might resume. He has come close and then slowed down. He reportedly isn’t with the Angels on their trip to Texas this week, and when doctors deem him healthy, he’ll require at least a brief rehab assignment to regain his timing at the plate.

Meanwhile, the clock continues to tick on the Angels’ chances, no matter how many homers Ohtani smashes.

Before Trout can get back to chasing Cobb and Ruth, he must get back on the field.

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He most recently covered the Dodgers for three seasons for The Athletic. Previously, he spent five years covering the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. More previously, he covered his alma mater, USC, for ESPNLosAngeles.com. The son of Brazilian immigrants, he grew up in the Southern California suburbs. Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.