Los Angeles Angels: Mike Trout is an Angel for life

The Los Angeles Angels have had the luxury of playing the best player in baseball, Mike Trout, in center field and will continue to do so for another 12 seasons.

As soon as Bryce Harper signed a 13-year, $330 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies the attention immediately turned to Mike Trout and the Los Angeles Angels.

Although Harper’s contract was the largest in baseball history (and the largest of its kind, only getting beat by Canelo Alvarez, who was getting paid directly from streaming service DAZN),  everyone expected Trout’s future deal to dwarf it.

That future deal has come much quicker than anticipated and it did indeed dwarf if. ESPN’s Jeff Passan was the first on the news, reporting that Trout and the Los Angeles Angels agreed to a 12-year, $430 million contract extension.

So much for Mike Trout being a Phillie in two years, something every fan in Philadelphia was getting excited for after signing Harper and his subsequent comments about Trout were made.

Instead, Trout is going to remain in Orange County and is going to tack on an extra 10 years to the remaining two seasons that were on his deal. This deal also gives Trout the largest AAV ever at $35.8 million.

This is huge for the Angels, who leading up to this news, seemed like the underdogs to sign their very own player. Because of the team’s limited success (has not won a single playoff game since 2009), it was assumed that Trout might want to gauge his options and go to a winner.

At the very least it appeared as if he would play out the next two years and go from there. Nope. Trout is avoiding free agency altogether, which also removes the possibility of a free agent freeze out, similar to Harper and Machado this year.

It is also insane how good Trout it where $430 million seems like it is underpaying for his services. I would be willing to pay $500 million for Trout.

A half a billion dollar contract might have restricted the team’s moves moving forward, this should not have negative repercussions, as Albert Pujols‘ contract has.

The Angels are going to have a lot of work to do to build a contender around Trout with Pujols coming off the books in 2021 and Justin Upton coming off the books in 2022. Those are the two largest contracts aside from Trout.

If the Los Angeles Angels cannot find playoff success with another dozen years of Mike Trout then it would be one of the most disappointing runs in sports history. Luckily, Angel fans get the chance to actually see that play out.