The city of Philadelphia is the most buzzing sports town in the world right now. The Eagles are the last remaining undefeated team in the NFL while the Phillies are headed back to the World Series for the first time since 2009. There is no better feeling than being a sports fan in the same city where the teams are hot and successful, and the fans in Philly are living the sports fan dream.
Now, imagine you grew up in the area, went to the games as a kid, tailgated in the parking lot and donned the jerseys and apparel to show your unwavering support. Then, imagine being so talented that you reach the pinnacle of athletics and become one of the highest paid athletes of all time. It would seem like a fair trade to make, and I honestly think I could trade my White Sox fandom for hundreds of millions of dollars from the Los Angeles Angels. But, I think I still feel bad for Mike Trout.
Trout has been a model of consistency and success over the last decade plus, and his reward for his stellar play over the course of his tenure in LA has been one playoff appearance totaling three games. In fact, if we want to do the math on that, just .2% of all games Mike Trout has played in his career have been postseason games, and he has played 914 straight games without playing in the playoffs.
For comparison, Bryce Harper, with whom Trout was compared to for some time and has also had some difficulty getting into the postseason in his career, has 2.2% of all his career games played in the postseason.
That may not seem like much, but a two percent difference with a range of greater than 1300 career games played is significant. Harper, in his fifth career postseason appearance, has now gotten his chance to make his unforgettable moment in baseball history after years of his highly touted play had been unseen on baseball’s biggest stage. Unfortunately for Mike Trout, he hasn’t even gotten a sniff.
Trout has been the greatest baseball player on the planet for this generation, yet his lack of a postseason presence has left him off the list of most recognizable and popular names in the sport. The sad part is that it has nothing to do with Trout. Whether it be playing on the West Coast past the majority of the fans’ bedtimes or being a part of a team tied for the longest postseason drought of any MLB team (congrats Seattle, no longer your problem), Trout’s inability to be seen by the largest consortium of baseball watchers has little to do with anything he is in control of.
The other aspect of this is that Trout is now under his fourth general manager in 11 years with the reason being that none of them have been able to build a winning team around the game’s most consistent star. The ineptitude in the front office of the Angels has caused countless years of wasted production for Trout, and even with the addition of Shohei Ohtani, who has literally set records unseen in the sport, the club cannot win.
They have tried, and there is no question about that. The Angels have shelled out mega deals to stars such as Josh Hamilton and Albert Pujols, neither of which have worked out. They have spent big on hot names like Anthony Rendon and Justin Upton, neither of which worked out. They have even taken flyers on arms like Noah Syndergaard, Dylan Bundy, Alex Cobb and others, none of whom panned out the way they needed them too. All of these attempts to pair Trout with someone who could also propel the organization to the next step have failed, and have only set the Angels back further. Trout is the only reason the Angels have stayed relevant since the early 2010’s.
It has been a revolving door of below average play, money poorly spent, and end of the year disappointment for the Angels, and it has all occurred while Mike Trout continues to be the curriculum to modern baseball performance. I quiver as I await the same fate for Shohei Ohtani, as well.
Now, one could make the case that Trout should not have accepted his earth-shattering contract with the Angels, a deal that encompasses 12 years with a dollar amount that rides north of $400 million. This deal takes him through 2030, and at this point, he is getting paid to be as miserable as a super-millionaire could be. The reason for signing the deal is really simple though: Could you turn down 12 years of financial security that not only is enough to provide for you, but for generations of the Trout name to come? I would sign that contract in a heartbeat, and although the location and the organization may not be ideal, the numbers and the sense of safety are nearly impossible to turn down.
So, let’s bring this back to Philadelphia. Mike Trout has watched playoff baseball for the now eighth consecutive year, and this year should easily sting the worse. His Phillies are in the World Series, and his town of fandom is buzzing like a teenager at a house party. At the fault of everybody’s but his own, Trout is obligated to sit at home wonder what could have been. What if the rumors of Trout to Philly had been made to be true? What if he had put all his chips in and taken himself to free agency?
The world may never know, but I am sure of this: There is no current MLB player I feel for right now more than Mike Trout, because I am sure there is no place he’d rather be right now than in Philly, living the dream. Whether he would be at an Eagles tailgate getting ready to watch a seventh straight victory or at Citizens Bank Park ready to take the field in front of the sport’s craziest fanbase, Trout’s October will look eerily similar to the previous eight- somewhere he shouldn’t be.
