Mike Trout introduced himself to Angels fans at the 2010 Futures Game. In his first performance at Angel Stadium, his magic was on display: beating out an infield single, turning a routine single into a double on sheer hustle, forcing two errors with his speed on ground balls that could have been scored as hits.
He was not selected the most valuable player of the game. Fifteen years later, does he remember who was?
He thought about it for a second. Then his eyes lit up.
“Hank Conger,” Trout said.
The Angels had drafted both in the first round: Conger, a catcher, in 2006; Trout, an outfielder, in 2009. Before the 2010 season, Baseball America ranked Conger as the 84th-best prospect in baseball, Trout as the 85th.
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Of the 29 position players in the 2010 Futures Game, Trout is the only one still playing. Conger, now a coach for the Minnesota Twins, last played in the major leagues nine years ago.
In 2012, when he and Trout each started the season at triple-A Salt Lake, Conger realized there were top prospects, and then there was Trout.
Trout was 20. He played 20 games, batted .403, and the Angels summoned him to the major leagues for good.
“He goes off, gets called up, misses almost a month,” Conger said, “and still becomes the rookie of the year.”
That vote was unanimous. Trout also finished a close second for American League MVP to Miguel Cabrera, who won the Triple Crown. He went on to win three MVP awards — only Barry Bonds has won more — and finish in the top five in MVP voting every year for nine consecutive years.
On Saturday night in a 3-0 win over the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field, Trout hit his 400th home run, a milestone the oft-laconic Trout readily put into perspective.
“Definitely one to sit on, just to look back and reflect how quick it’s gone,” he said last month. “It seems like yesterday I just got drafted. Now I have two kids, and I’ve been here 14 years.”
Trout is 34, deep into the second half of his major league days. The mere mention of his name commonly triggers twin laments from fans: how injuries have hampered his career, and how the Angels have hampered his career.
In the first nine seasons of his career, the Angels put Trout on the injured list twice. In the five seasons since, this one included, the Angels put Trout on the injured list six times. He has not played 130 games in a season since 2019.
“Is this our modern-day version of Mickey Mantle?” asked Tim Salmon, who ranks second on the Angels’ all-time home run list at 299. “They talk about Mickey Mantle: if he didn’t blow out his knee, what could he have been? Are we going to look back on Trout’s career and say the same things?
“He’s obviously a Hall of Famer in so many ways already, but will he get the typical benchmarks? Will he be in that category like (former Angels teammate Albert) Pujols? He could have been.”
If Trout had played as often since the pandemic as he did before it, he already would have topped 500 home runs.
He still hits for power. He still gets on base, tied for third in the AL in walks. He hits the ball hard, when he hits it.
However, of the 144 major leaguers with enough at-bats to qualify for a batting title, Trout has struck out the second-most (.320 strikeout percentage). After hitting his 398th home run on Aug. 7, he did not hit his 399th until Sept. 11.
With 400 home runs, Trout ranks among the top 60 all-time. Dan Szymborski of Fangraphs projects Trout will finish his career with 503 home runs. That would get Trout into the top 30.
With good health, Trout might well have gotten to 600. That could have put him into the top 10, ahead of Frank Robinson, looking up at the likes of Pujols, Ken Griffey Jr. and Willie Mays.
“I’ve always told myself everything happens for a reason,” Trout said. “I did everything I could to be on the field.
“If I look back, I can say, ‘It sucks I’ve been banged up,’ but I’m here now, and I’ve still got a lot of time left to enjoy.”
The first two names former Angels manager Joe Maddon dropped in a comparison with Trout: Bonds and Griffey.
“He’s just among the best athletes ever to play the game,” Maddon said. “He has strength and speed and agility and everything.
“If you’re going to scout the perfect player, it would be Mike Trout.”
Bonds did not win a World Series; the Angels denied him. Griffey did not play in a World Series.
No one denies their greatness. No one should discount Trout’s, no matter how interrupted his half-decade has been. He was the dominant player of the previous decade, all of it.
“He was the best player in the game for, what, eight, nine, 10 years?” Dodgers Hall-of-Famer-in-waiting Clayton Kershaw said. “We’re not just talking about being an all-star. It was unanimous.
“If you ever asked anybody who the best player was, they’d say Trout. It’s like right now with Shohei (Ohtani) or (Aaron) Judge. It’s pretty obvious that Trout was the best player back then, and it’s not like he’s bad right now.”
In 2018, amid questions about why baseball could not market its best player, commissioner Rob Manfred said the greatest obstacle in marketing Trout was Trout himself.
“Player marketing requires one thing for sure: the player,” Manfred said.
The Angels shot back with a scathing public rebuke of the commissioner and a hearty endorsement of Trout — crafted in part by owner Arte Moreno — that ended thusly: “We applaud him for prioritizing his personal values over commercial self-promotion. That is rare in today’s society and stands out as much as his extraordinary talent.”
The adult in the room was Trout, who followed the Angels’ statement with his own. It ended this way: "Everything is cool between the Commissioner and myself. End of story. I am ready to just play some baseball!”
The first two questions Conger always gets: You played with the Angels? What’s Mike Trout like?
Conger might not tell them about the group texts with long-ago teammates in which Trout still participates, or the random videos Trout sends, like the one of Conger breaking his bat and popping up. He will tell them about the one player that, even on a team with Pujols and Torii Hunter, got inundated with requests to go somewhere or meet someone or sign something.
“Seeing him do almost everything like that, with a smile and really making an effort, was the most impressive thing for me to see as a person,” Conger said.
“You hear the saying, ‘Don’t meet your heroes.’ He’s the complete opposite. I know he’s not outspoken or super flashy so people are like, ‘We need him to be more marketable.’ But, in this day and age, he is the role model citizen of what everybody should strive for in Major League Baseball.”
The private group chats with teammates past and present are what Trout is about, not commercial shoots or talk shows, not podcasts or YouTube channels. He’d rather be cheering on his Philadelphia Eagles.
“The story is, honestly, that he is who he is based on where he came from,” Maddon said. “He’s not been infiltrated by social media and any other new-age, new-wave method of expressing yourself.”
Trout came from Millville, N.J., a blue-collar town of not even 30,000 people, some 40 miles south of Philadelphia. His high school could have retired his uniform number, except that Trout returns to the school every year to present a jersey with his number — 1, of course — to the new team captain.
Salmon has spent his adult life around the Angels, as a player and broadcaster. Fans often press him for the scoop on Trout, he said, with some version of this line: “You guys share the same fishy last name, and he’s Mr. Angel just like you.”
Salmon would be a logical guy to ask. He chose “friendly” and “cordial” as adjectives to describe his relationship with Trout.
“Everybody expects me to know him,” Salmon said, “and I don’t, really.”
Said Kershaw: “I’ve always appreciated the way he goes about the game. There’s not a lot of flash. It’s just good baseball.”
The Angels have not played good baseball. Trout has played three postseason games, all 11 years ago, and the Angels lost them all. The Angels had Trout and Ohtani together on the roster for six years and never once managed a winning record.
That has led to a long, loud and frankly tiresome chorus of well-meaning fans across America crying to liberate Trout, so a great player could take the postseason stage. Come home and play for the Phillies! How about the Yankees? Demand a trade, at least!
“He’s never made a stink in a headline about being disgruntled,” Conger said.
“He’s never going to walk into Arte’s office and say, ‘Listen, we need to do better, what’s going on?’ ” Maddon said. “He wants to win, but he’s never going to influence or persuade anybody who is in charge, because that person is in charge, and his job is to be Mike Trout, the player.”
Even if Trout ever did ask to be traded, at this point Moreno might have to throw in $100 million or so to induce another team to assume the contract, and Moreno isn’t about to pay Trout to play elsewhere when the home fans still love him. And, really, should we not celebrate a star who honors his commitment rather than lobbies to escape it?
Trout has expressed measured frustration over the Angels’ poor performance, but loyalty is his north star. The Angels have treated him well, and he has returned the favor.
One year, the Angels gave every kid at their game a Trout T-shirt — every Sunday, all summer long.
He, not Salmon, is Mr. Angel now. I asked what being an Angel means to him.
“There’s a lot of teams that had a chance to get me, and a lot of teams passed on me,” Trout said. That draft was 16 years ago, and still it was the first thing he mentioned in his answer.
“The Angels took a chance on a kid from a little town in southern New Jersey. I enjoy putting the uniform on. I don’t take it for granted.
“They trusted me when they offered the deal — two of them.”
Trout twice passed up free agency to stay with the Angels. In 2014, three years before he could try free agency, the Angels guaranteed him $144.5 million. In 2019, two years before he could try free agency, they tore up the final years of the first big deal and guaranteed him a then-record $426.5 million through 2030.
Moreno celebrated that deal with more of a pep rally than a news conference, in front of a giddy gathering of fans, with Trout and his wife on a dais beneath an enormous red banner that said “LOYALTY,” with a halo adorning the A.
Tony Gwynn never won a World Series, but no one discounts his greatness, or his loyalty to the Padres. His statue, with the inscription “Mr. Padre,” looms beyond right field at Petco Park.
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To the loyal and long-suffering fans of Orange County, Trout is their Gwynn.
The Angels have put up two statues at Angel Stadium: one in honor of founding owner Gene Autry, the other in memory of Michelle Carew, the daughter of Hall of Famer Rod Carew, who lost her life to leukemia at 18.
Trout has five years left on his contract. Even so: The first player in the history of a 65-year-old franchise to earn a ballpark statue is Mike Trout.
Times staff writer Jack Harris contributed to this column.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
