Angels' Mike Trout to Take Final Steps Ahead of Return During Yankees Series

Trout continues to progress in his return from the left knee contusion he suffered April 30, but still hasn't checked off everything on his to-do list before he can begin a minor league rehab assignment.

According to Jeff Fletcher of the Southern California News Group, Trout still needs to run the bases, and he's scheduled to do so "sometime during the Yankees series (more likely toward the end of it)."

The Angels host the Yankees each of the next two days, then have an off-day Thursday before playing in Cleveland on Friday.

"They’ve got a routine for me every day, just building it up and hopefully to get running the bases here," Trout told reporters last week in West Sacramento, including Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com. "I think running the bases is a big hurdle. Just have to make sure I come in and don’t have any crazy soreness.”

Prior to the injury, Trout posted an uncharacteristic .179/.264/.462 slash line, well below his usual standard. The sum total of his offense and defense in right field netted out to a month's worth of replacement-level production, with slightly below-average 95 wRC+.

More encouraging: Trout's nine home runs in 121 at-bats, a sign of the typically prodigious power still in his bat. Once he's cleared to face live pitching, Trout can get to work on reducing his 29.8 percent strikeout rate, on track for a career high.

The Angels signed Trout to a 12-year, $426.5 million contract in March 2019, at the time the richest contract in baseball history. He still has six years and $212.7 million left on the contract, including this season.

Now, the Angels just need him to run the bases, a not-so-little detail for an outfielder returning from a knee injury.

Trout will have missed a month's worth of games by the time the Yankees series is over. He might need a minor league rehabilitation assignment to get his timing back at the plate. All of this points to a return in early June, though that's a squishy timetable for a player who has been slow to return from every injury he's suffered over the last five seasons.

As Fletcher cautioned: "you can extrapolate from there when he might come back."