Mike Trout

4:48 PM: The Angels are breathing a sigh of relief as X-rays on Trout’s hand have come back negative, per the team. He is being considered day-to-day for now.

3:15 PM: Mike Trout was removed from the Angels game today after being hit on the left hand by an 81 mph slider, per Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com (via Twitter). Jeff Fletcher of the SoCal News Group provides video of the hit-by-pitch here.

It’s too early to speculate about the severity of the injury, but it does not bode well that Trout had to come out of the game. Needless to say, it would be a devastating blow for the Angels to lose Trout for any significant amount of time this early in the season.

Trout, long considered the best player in baseball, missed most of last season with a calf strain that seemed to worsen the longer he was out. He ultimately played just 36 games, slashing .333/.466/.624 over 146 plate appearances, good for a robust 190 wRC+.

There’s fear enough that Trout might be slowing down now that he’s entered his thirties, and another extended absence would only exacerbate the concern. When healthy, the bottom-line numbers certainly haven’t suffered.  The Angels, for their part, would have a difficult time making up for the loss of Trout, even with Brandon Marsh on the roster and capable of stepping in defensively. Offensively, there’s simply no replacing a talent like Trout. Hopefully, the injury turns out to be minor.

Mike Trout officially confirmed what has been looking more and more obvious for some weeks now — he won’t play again in the 2021 season.  The decision was actually made a few weeks ago, Trout told MLB.com’s Rhett Bollinger and other reporters, as Trout was never able to fully recover from the right calf strain that first sent him to the injured list back in May.

“My body wasn’t allowing it.  It’s been a grind and it’s been tough for me….My mind and what I wanted was telling me one thing and my body was telling me something else,” Trout said. “I was feeling really good in workouts and then [the calf] would get sore on me.  It’s been a tough September for me.  If we were in the race, it might be different and maybe I could play through it.  But it got to the point where I needed a rehab assignment and had two weeks left and just looking at the bigger picture, it was smarter to get it right and get ready for Spring Training.”

After suffering the injury on May 17, Trout was initially projected to miss six-to-eight weeks — a lengthy absence to be sure, but nothing that appeared to be season-threatening.  On multiple occasions, Trout appeared to be on the verge of beginning a minor league rehab assignment, though as he noted, continued soreness in his calf prevented him from taking the field in a proper game environment.

In something of a bitter irony, Trout said his calf is “almost 100 percent, if not 100 percent” in the two weeks since he was shut down.  He fully expects to be ready for Spring Training, and is “looking forward to having a healthy offseason.  Keep that same routine.”

Since the Angels were also hampered by an injury-plagued year for Anthony Rendon, mediocre defense, and another year of subpar pitching, it’s hard to say whether or not a healthy Trout would have been enough to get Los Angeles into the postseason race.  However, it’s safe to assume that the Angels would have more than just 73 wins with Trout providing his usual level of superstar production.  Trout was hitting an absurd .333/.466/.624 with eight home runs over 146 plate appearances, and one can only imagine the offensive fireworks that could have been generated with a healthy Trout and Rendon joining MVP candidate Shohei Ohtani in the lineup.

Trout does expect big things from the Angels in both 2022 and in the coming offseason, noting that “We have a lot of money to spend.  Hopefully we go out there, get some good guys.  I trust Perry [GM Perry Minasian], I trust the top guys in this organization….I’m very confident with the group up there.  They’re working hard every day.  They’re trying to put a winning team on the field.”

Mike Trout continues to feel soreness in his right calf, and after almost three and half months on the injured list, it remains to be seen when or if the Angels superstar might return to action in 2021.  Angels manager Joe Maddon told The Los Angeles Times’ Jack Harris and other reporters that “it’s a possibility” that Trout might be shut down for the remainder of the season.

“We’re probably getting closer to having to say something like that,” Maddon said.  “But he still wants to continue to fight, and we’re going to honor his wishes.  However Mike sees this, we’re going to go with it that way.”

As one might expect, neither Trout or the Angels want to move forward with a minor league rehab assignment while the outfielder continues to deal with lingering discomfort in his calf.  Trout hasn’t been able to get to that next step of being entirely pain-free, as his calf soreness has persisted after Trout has taken part in baseball activities for several weeks now.

The Angels are all but officially out of the playoff hunt, with a 65-67 record and 9.5 games back of a wild card berth.  It isn’t as if Trout is trying to rush back for a pennant race, though Maddon implied that Trout simply wanted to clear the hurdle of his return now rather than wait until Opening Day 2022 to appear in his next big league game.  “The biggest thing about it right now is his mental well-being, how he feels about now and going into the offseason.  That’s the most important thing, and then how it plays into next year,” Maddon said.

As much as Trout might want to return, however, Maddon noted “there’s got to be that moment where we have to start being realistic about it, where we may just have to say, ’That’s it.’ ”  Considering all the time Trout has missed, it would certainly seem like he’d need at least a week of minor league rehab games to ramp up, and the Angels might require a few days of soreness-free workouts prior to such a rehab assignment just to ensure that Trout has fully put his calf injury behind him.

That would leave late September as the most optimistic timeline for when Trout might be able to return, giving Trout perhaps a week or two of games to put a coda on what was shaping up as another huge season.  Trout was hitting .333/.466/.624 over his first 146 plate appearances, with a 192 wRC+ that stood as the highest of his incredible career.  If Trout indeed doesn’t play again this year, 2021 will go down as the shortest season of his career, with only 36 games played.

Mike Trout’s return from a calf strain has had a slight setback,  Joe Maddon told reporters, including Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register. On July 19th, Trout himself said he was “really, really close” to beginning a rehab assignment. One week later, that rehab assignment still hasn’t begun because he still “feels something,” Maddon says. “He just feels it a little bit in that area, when he really tries to move quickly.”

The health of their superstar outfielder is tremendously important for an Angels club at an important inflection point of the season. As noted by Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, they are “trying to decide course”, with the July 30th trade deadline fast approaching. The team is currently straddling the .500 mark with a record of 49-49. They are 11 games back of the Astros in the AL West and 5 1/2 back of Oakland for the second wild card spot, but with four other teams between them. FanGraphs pegs their playoff odds at 8.8%, with just over two months left to gain ground on their competitors.

Any sort of delay to Trout’s return could further deflate the team’s playoff aspirations. Trout has been considered among the most elite players in baseball for a decade now. And before getting hurt, his 2021 numbers were somehow even better than his own otherworldly standards. In 36 games, Trout produced a slash line of .333/.466/.624, good enough for a wRC+ of 193, a few notches above his career mark of 172.

Although the club recently called up top prospect Brandon Marsh to try to cover center field in Trout’s absence, it’s almost impossible for anyone to match the level of production that a healthy Trout can provide.