Why Angels must trade Mike Trout before it’s too late

Two, the Los Angeles Angels need to trade Trout at the earliest possible opportunity.

It’s tempting, as a neutral observer, to continue yearning for a day when Trout can break through with his young team and go on a long-awaited postseason run. But this team needs a slow, painful rebuild and it needs to get out from under Trout’s and Anthony Rendon’s contracts to do so. It is a waste of whatever peak years Trout has left to stick around an Angels franchise that, frankly, is designed to be mediocre.

Why Angels won’t win anytime soon

If there were any hope that the Angels were either ready to contend now or at least within a year or two once the pieces fell into place, it would be entirely excusable for both sides to try and stick it out. But despite a 6-6 start, the roster is in a very bad spot and there isn’t much hope for it to improve.

This year’s Angels team was supposed to be the year the young, talented position players flourished with Trout as their tour guide, the superstar shouldering the burden in the middle of the lineup while the rest took advantage of the opposing pitchers’ mistakes. But, as is a familiar story, Trout is the only one doing the hitting.

Sure, that’s not entirely fair, because Taylor Ward and Logan O’Hoppe are having solid starts to the year as well. But Zach Neto, Mickey Moniak and Nolan Schanuel are a combined 13-for-95 (.137) on the year and all three were supposed to be breakout candidates. It’s clear that even if the lineup is going to be good eventually, it’s going to take some growing pains.

The Angels are a pitching development disaster

The real kicker, though is that it was never the lineup that the Angels had to be concerned about. This team hasn’t developed a quality homegrown starting pitcher since Jered Weaver debuted in 2006. It’s universally acknowledged that the team can’t draft a starting pitcher and can’t sign one in free agency.

Reid Detmers has strikeout stuff and Patrick Sandoval has shown flashes of brilliance, but both took steps backward in their development last season. Chase Silseth gets lit up like the Las Vegas Strip, while Tyler Anderson went from a 2.57 ERA with the Dodgers in 2022 to a 5.43 with the Angels in ’23. They have whatever the exact opposite of the Midas Touch is with pitchers.

But it gets even worse, because the farm system, as it usually is, is in shambles. The Angels are ranked 30th, dead fricking last, in all of baseball by MLB.com in terms of future prospect outlook.

The Halos spent all 21 draft picks in 2021 on pitchers (yes, seriously), yet they don’t have a single prospect in the Top 100. Of their top ten prospects, only four are pitchers, with two not expected to be starters and the other two not projected to be ready for at least two more years. There’s simply no hope on the horizon that the Angels can ever field a good pitching staff, especially since that Shohei Ohtani guy decided to leave town at the end of last season.

Why Angels can’t afford to wait to trade Trout

So now, having established that the Angels are destined for mediocrity, it becomes paramount that they trade Trout now, while some team out there still might be willing to eat most or all of the $247.8 million Trout is owed (figures per Spotrac).

Though he’s been hurt an awful lot (just 237 games played in the past three seasons), Trout has been incredible this season. He’s tied for the major league lead in home runs and has a 1.195 OPS, third in MLB. And the next injury has always seemed to be lurking around the corner for the last few seasons.

That’s the thing about owning a luxury asset like Mike Trout. He’s worth the money you pay him if two conditions are true: he’s on the field and the team has an honest shot to win. The Angels don’t have that shot to win now, so they need to unload him to a team that does while he’s still on the field.

It’s been floated as a possibility a million times, but it would make too much sense for Trout to end up with the Philadelphia Phillies. He’s from South Jersey, he’s already a huge Eagles fan and the Phillies have a World Series caliber roster with a gaping hole in center field. Seeing Trout win in Anaheim would still be the most rewarding feeling for baseball fans, but doing so in Philly would still be incredible.

Will Angels ownership make the move?

This has been the snag all along. Angels owner Arte Moreno lives in a constant fear of rebuilding, but also hasn’t been willing to spend over the luxury tax. With two of the top five salaries in MLB on his roster, that has left him unwilling to spend top dollar on free agents the past couple offseasons that could have pushed the Angels towards becoming contenders.

But on the flipside, whenever Moreno and GM Perry Minasian have been given opportunities to kickstart the rebuild, they’ve bristled at the notion of toddlers being served a heaping pile of broccoli. Though the team has hinted in the past that they are open to trading Trout if he requests it, per the New York Post, the move is almost certainly not going to be initiated by the Angels themselves.

So though the premise of this entire article was building the case why it is in all of the Angels’ best interests to trade Trout and to do it now, the real onus is on Trout. He has to be the one to force his way out and for his sake and everyone else’s, he should hurry up and get on with it.