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.

Read more:Angels struggle at the plate against red-hot Mariners in loss

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.

Read more:Royce Lewis homers twice as Twins blow out error-prone Angels

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.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

The Yankees wasted no time generating offense on Saturday night, as a three-run rally in the first inning was ample damage to defeat the division-rival Orioles, 6-1, at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

While the magic number to clinch a postseason berth is now down to five, the chase for a division crown hasn't ended just yet. The Blue Jays fell to the Royals on Saturday, narrowing their first-place lead over the Yankees in the AL East standings to a mere two games. Two back with seven to go.

Here are the takeaways...

-- Giancarlo Stanton's hopes of producing the 450th home run of his career were spoiled on Friday, as his deep flyout in the second inning landed a few feet shy of the left field wall. But the veteran slugger summoned just enough muscle to achieve the milestone in his first at-bat on Saturday, connecting on a two-out sweeper from Orioles starter Tomoyuki Sugano that traveled just over the elevated wall in right for a three-run shot. The Yankees' first-inning rally was sparked by a pair of two-out singles from Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger. 

-- Stanton became the 41st player in MLB history to register 450 career homers, and the fifth-fastest player to accomplish the feat (1,719 games). If the 500-homer mark still separates Hall of Fame contenders from pretenders, there's a chance that a healthy Stanton flirts with a legitimate pursuit over the next few seasons. Again, call it a chance. The historic blast was No. 21 on the year for Stanton, who's now hitting a respectable .269 with a .920 OPS.

-- Stanton's behemoth teammate showed off his esteemed power two innings later. Facing a full count, Judge won an eight-pitch leadoff matchup with Sugano by demolishing a sweeper down the right-field line for a leadoff solo homer. The 370-foot blast was No. 49 for the Yankees' captain, and he's now one homer shy of producing the fourth 50-homer season of his career. The Orioles trailed 4-0 after three, and didn't allow Sugano to return for a fourth inning of work. The Yankees roughed the right-hander up -- he threw a whopping 87 pitches and allowed six hits and one walk.

-- Carlos Rodón reached 87 pitches, too... but not until recording one out in the seventh inning. The Yankees' southpaw resembled an ace, lowering his season ERA from 3.11 to 3.04 with seven stellar frames of one-run ball. He retired 10 straight at one point, struck out eight for the first time since Aug. 1, and logged 18 first-pitch strikes to 26 total batters. Rodón's lone blemish came in the seventh, when he allowed an RBI double to Coby Mayo that cut the Yankees' lead to 6-1. The sharp performance was acknowledged by his teammates in the dugout -- he now has a career-high 17 wins.

-- Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Trent Grisham provided Rodón with more breathing room during the fifth and sixth innings by collecting RBI singles against Orioles relievers Jose Castillo and Yennier Cano. The eighth inning belonged to Luke Weaver, aiming to regain further confidence after an ugly relief appearance on Monday. Much to the Yankees' delight, the veteran right-hander looked sharp for a second straight game, inducing a pair of swinging strikeouts (Jackson Holliday and Jordan Westburg) on 15 pitches. David Bednar took over the ninth, and needed just six pitches to retire the side.

Game MVP: Giancarlo Stanton

Stanton's momentous three-run homer in the first inning was all that the Yankees needed. The next name to chase on MLB's all-time homers list? Carl Yastrzemski (452).

Highlights

GIANCARLO STANTON'S 450th CAREER HOME RUN! pic.twitter.com/g8sq0Kc1XH

— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) September 20, 2025

AARON JUDGE'S 49th HOME RUN! pic.twitter.com/pz8oeBW1T6

— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) September 20, 2025

Jazz Chisholm Jr. makes it 5-0 🎷 pic.twitter.com/Xjn0rPbkSD

— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) September 21, 2025

Trent Grisham with an RBI single! pic.twitter.com/LFwodDtm8B

— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) September 21, 2025

What's next

The Yankees (87-68) will look for a series win over the Orioles on Sunday afternoon, with first pitch scheduled for 1:35 p.m.

RHP Cam Schlittler (3-3, 3.41 ERA) is slated to take the mound, opposite RHP Kyle Bradish (1-1, 2.45 ERA).

The Mets did a great job of plating two runs in the ninth to send Saturday's matchup with the Washington Nationals into extra innings, but could the outcome have changed if manager Carlos Mendoza had left Edwin Diaz for a second inning?

Diaz pitched a seven-pitch, scoreless 10th inning, but Mendoza went with Tyler Rogers -- pitching for the third straight day -- to handle the 11th. While Rogers was close to pitching a clean inning, Daylen Lile hit a two-run, inside-the-park homer to put the Nationals ahead. We'll never know if Diaz being on the mound would have changed the outcome, but it's a fair question to ask the Mets skipper.

So when Mendoza was asked if he considered using Diaz for a second inning, the second-year manager said he didn't.

"He pitched two nights ago, got hot yesterday," Mendoza explained. "We're only tied. One inning today."

Diaz tossed 15 pitches, striking out two batters, on Thursday to finish off the Padres and pick up the series win. He was warming up in the ninth inning of Friday's series opener against the Nats when Chris Devenski started to pitch into trouble. Diaz did sit back down once Devenski righted the ship. 

After pitching 53.2 innings in 54 games last season -- the first since returning from knee surgery -- Diaz has eclipsed that, tossing 59.1 innings across 57 games. 

Mets spoil chances to win

In the ninth, the Mets were in prime position to walk off the Nats and their closer, Jose Ferrer. 

Ferrer had allowed two runs to allow the Mets to cut their deficit to 3-2 in the eighth inning, but Nationals interim manager Miguel Cairo asked his closer to try and get three more outs in the ninth and couldn't. 

The Mets had bases loaded with one out when Brandon Nimmo came to the plate. The lefty Ferrer got Nimmo down swinging on a 1-2 slider in the dirt to pick up the important second out. Starling Marte followed, striking out swinging on a 1-2 sinker that went 100 mph away from the veteran slugger, stranding the winning run at third.

"He made pitches, we had some really good at-bats, had the bases loaded with a guy up, you feel good about your chances, even though Ferrer can be tough left on left, you take your chances with Nim putting the ball in play," Mendoza said of the situation in the ninth. "He got him that time. He executed, then he got Marte with two outs. All the way to that point, the guys took some really good at-bats there."

The Mets would have another chance to win in the 10th with runners on first and second and no out, but Francisco Alvarez grounded into a double play and Ronny Mauricio lined out to left field with the winning run again at third base. 

New York finished the game 3-for-16 with runners in scoring position and left 13 on base.

Defensive inconsistencies

After officially making an error with a few defensive miscues mixed in during Friday's win, the Mets batted the ball around again during Saturday's game.

The biggest miscues came in the third inning. Down 1-0, Riley Adams hit a bloop single to left field that Juan Soto tried to play on a bounce, but it skipped over his glove and rolled to the wall, allowing one run to score. The next batter, Pete Alonso threw the ball high to Nolan McLean, giving the Nats an extra out and the team's second error of the inning. With two outs, McLean threw a wild pitch, allowing an unearned run to score from third base.

"We’ve been inconsistent," Mendoza said of the team's defense. "We go through stretches where we play clean and then go through stretches where that happens. We don’t have too much time, but the one thing we can do here is turn the page because we have a 1 o’clock tomorrow. Even though we didn’t play a clean game early, guys battled back and we were in the position to win that game, just didn’t do it."