Mike Trout is the LeBron of baseball, only without the rings. And with just three postseason games in his entire career. But Trout remains the LeBron of his sport, its biggest star for several years and one of the best players of all time.
Last Friday he turned 29, a week after he and his wife welcomed their first child, a boy, into the world. Last week, on his first shift since becoming a father, Trout homered. He gave a couple more Monday night against the Athletics, the second to put his team up on the board in a game that the Angels would end up winning 10-9. The only time Trout seems to slow down on the ground is when he trots around the bases after a homerun.
Trout went 5-for-4 in that game, scoring four and dropping in three. What a night. The next morning, however, he rose again in last place in the AL West. And the Angels, let’s remember, have already played more than a quarter of their schedule this shortened season. And only the Pirates and Mariners, before starting Wednesday’s game, had more losses in all of MLB. If the 16-team playoff were to start right now – thank goodness it’s not – Trout would be out.
So you want what happened on Monday against the Athletics to be the start of something special. Of all the great things that could happen this season in the majors, if baseball manages to complete its schedule, the best of all would be that Mike Trout at least had another taste in October.
Trout needs to return to the big baseball stage for the second time in his career. It would be their first since 2014, when the Angels faced the Royals in the Division Series. Kansas City swept them that year. Trout ran out 21 at-bats in the series and had a hit, a home run. That was it. A LeBron who goes home every year before the lights come on and the biggest games are played. And most viewed. Even Willie Mays, who played ball with the same intensity and talent as Trout (and hit a single postseason home run, by the way), reached the World Series four times in his career and won one with the New Giants. York in 1954.
If you love baseball, you have to be making the Angels one of 16 teams still in the race when the 60-game schedule is complete. It’s different in LeBron’s case, of course, because basketball is a five-player sport, and the big star will have the ball in his hands whenever his team is attacking. By the time LeBron was Trout’s age, he had already gone to the NBA Finals three times – crowning himself once – and had become the most important figure in American sports. But Trout is as good at his business as LeBron is. Imagine what it would be like if you had a pair of rings on your hands.
None of this means that Mike Trout is some kind of lost baseball soul. He not only continues to bring his talent to the sport, but the joy with which he plays. He signed a $ 430 million, 12-year extension with the Angels. He’s just as good in his tenth season in the Big Top as in any other year of his career. And maybe even better.
Trout entered Wednesday with a .322 batting average. His OPS of 1,064. That looks well aligned with what he has done in the previous three seasons, when he had OPS of 1,071, 1,088 and 1,083. In 14 games in 2020, he has slugged .695, seven homers, 14 RBIs and 12 runs scored.
Trout is our Mays. If you’re looking for a more recent comparison, just in terms of talent, style and class, it’s our Ken Griffey Jr. He’s basically the player described by one of the guys he beat on Monday and Tuesday, Matt Chapman of the Athletics:
“You think you’ve seen it all, but he goes on and on. He can change your game with a swing. Playing against him is always awesome. He is, in my opinion, the best player in the major leagues and perhaps the best of all time. “
And what does Trout say? He smiled afterward and said that maybe there is something true about the whole “daddy strength” thing.
One day we might refer to him as the greatest of all time. If you are healthy, we may be only halfway through your career. There’s nothing Trout hasn’t done in baseball. Except succeed in October. In a crazy year like this, there isn’t much time for your team to change history. But there is enough. Right now, No. 27 is scheduled to play his last regular-season game on Sept. 27, against the Dodgers. In the best possible scenario for baseball, Mike Trout will continue to play after that day. (GG)(Taken from MLB.com)