When Mike Trout first burst onto the scene for the Los Angeles Angels in 2012 as arguably the greatest rookie in MLB history, it looked like the Angels, which hadn’t won much since breaking through with their World Series triumph in 2002, had the franchise cornerstone that would take them to great heights. Alas, an individual can only do so much carrying in the game of baseball, so Trout, despite his greatness, has only made the playoffs just once in his professional career — and the Angels were even bounced in the ALDS when they got there.
Now in 2024, with the departure of Shohei Ohtani leaving the Angels one transcendent star short, the noise surrounding a potential Trout trade is reaching peak levels. After all, Trout has struggled through injury problems for the past few years, and at 32 years of age, he doesn’t have the most time to seek out team glory, thus leading many to believe that a trade may be his best shot to compete for a World Series.
Nevertheless, even though few pundits, if any, believe that the Angels can make much noise in 2024, Mike Trout is resolute in his belief that it would mean a lot more for his career to win with the team that drafted him, especially amid the trade rumors surrounding his name.
“It fuels me more,” Trout said last week, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. “The overall satisfaction, when we do win here, it will be greater than if I did go somewhere else. So when I hear, ‘Trout needs to get traded,’ or, ‘He’s happy to be there,’ they can say whatever they want. I’ve got one thing on my mind. That’s trying to win here.”
This resolve from Mike Trout is admirable, although the Angels’ roster-building around him hasn’t exactly been ideal. It’s quite the marvel how the Angels fumbled the bag when they had two of the greatest superstars of this generation of baseball players on their roster at the same time.
But in recent sports history, loyalty has been a bit of a lost art. For Trout’s sake, hopefully he reaps the rewards of wanting to stick with the Angels through thick and thin especially when he’s already in his 30s.
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