Shohei Ohtani is officially an ex-Los Angeles Angel. If the internet gets its way, Mike Trout will be before long as well.

Pretty much as soon as news of Ohtani’s 10-year, $700 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers broke on Saturday, social media was flooded with angry demands for a Trout trade. And in defense of these demands, this is a moment when it’s easy to imagine the three-time American League MVP finally getting traded.

The Angels are mired in a nine-year playoff drought even though they had Trout, who’s an all-time great, for all nine of those years and Ohtani, who’s maybe the all-time great, for six of them. As things naturally look that much more hopeless without Ohtani, there should be a mutual understanding between the 32-year-old Trout and the Angels that he and the remainder of his 12-year, $426.5 million deal are better off elsewhere.

But should anyone actually be expecting the Angels to trade Trout? And if so, when?

Could It Be This Winter?

In theory, the Angels should want to trade Trout as soon as possible.

The Angels did, after all, lose 89 games this year even despite Ohtani’s MVP-winning efforts at the plate and on the mound. They now project to be one of the worst teams of 2024, and underneath them is a farm system that B/R’s Joel Reuter ranks as the fourth-worst in Major League Baseball. This is a team in need of a rebuild, clearly.

And then there’s the dearth of impact bats available on the free-agent and trade markets.

It was bad even before Ohtani and Juan Soto came off the board. That it’s now worse would hypothetically give the Angels more leverage if they were to shop Trout. And they need it, as it’s not exactly beneficial to his trade value that he’s owed $259.8 million through 2030.

It doesn’t take a keen eye to spot potential fits for Trout. The Millville, New Jersey, native’s quasi-hometown Philadelphia Phillies could use a center fielder, and so could other big-spending teams like the Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres. Heck, the Dodgers were even floated as a suitor in November.

But is such speculation pointless? Assuming his stance hasn’t changed since Dec. 5, Angels general manager Perry Minasian would probably say yes:

Just to end whatever speculation might have been out there, Perry Minasian said today “Mike Trout is not getting traded. 100 percent.”

— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) December 5, 2023

 

There’s also the question of whether Trout would be willing to waive his no-trade clause. Despite speculation to the contrary, he didn’t sound interested as recently as September.

“I go through this every year,” Trout told reporters. “These are private conversations I have with [owner] Arte [Moreno] and [president] John [Carpino]. I’m doing the same thing I’ve done the last 13 years. Going into the offseason, clearing my mind, getting ready for spring and wearing an Angels uniform in spring.”

So unless Minasian and Trout change their respective tunes, the latter probably isn’t going anywhere this winter.

Could It Be Next Summer?

Honestly, it wouldn’t be the worst idea for the Angels to wait anyway.

For all his accolades, Trout isn’t an especially valuable asset right now. A litany of injuries, including a rare back condition and a hamate fracture, have resulted in him playing in less than half of the Angels’ games over the last three years. And while he was 31 percent better than the average hitter when he did play in 2023, his .263 average, .367 on-base percentage and .490 slugging percentage were all low marks since 2012.

Hence the maybe/definitely scenario at play for 2024: maybe Trout will stay healthy and rake like the guy who used to be MLB’s best hitter while the Angels definitely end up in a selling position at the trade deadline.

But do you know how rare it is for superstar players to get traded when they’re in the middle of a long-term, nine-figure contract? It’s pretty rare, and even rarer for position players.

Really the only analogous deal for a midsummer Trout trade was when the Colorado Rockies traded Troy Tulowitzki, who still had five years and $94 million left on his contract, to the Toronto Blue Jays in 2015. And since José Reyes went the other way, even that was akin to a bad contract swap.

This doesn’t mean a Trout trade can’t possibly happen next summer, to be sure. But given the rarity of entries into this particular genre of trade, it’s best not to bet on it.

Could It Be Next Winter?

Offseason trades of superstar hitters on big contracts, on the other hand, happen all the time. Just think of Giancarlo Stanton. Or Nolan Arenado. Or Robinson Cano. Or Matt Kemp. Or Prince Fielder. Or…well, you get the idea.

Such history would surely bode even better for a Trout trade if he could see a return to form in 2024 through the end of the season. Even if he was staring down his age-33 season in 2025, recency bias would confirm it even if nothing else did: Mike Trout is Mike Trout again.

Ah, but the Angels won’t have the advantage next winter that they do now.

Whereas this winter’s market is short on impact hitters, next winter’s market is going to be loaded. Soto stands to be the big prize, and also slated to be up for bidding are Pete Alonso, Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve, Paul Goldschmidt, Willy Adames and Gleyber Torres.

No matter what he’ll have done in 2024, one would think that few, if any, teams will have an appetite for taking on an aging Trout and the $222.7 million he’ll still be owed while that much offensive talent is freely available.

Could It Be Sometime After Next Winter?

At this point, we’re looking too far into the future to see anything clearly. Press me for a solid answer, though, and I’d guess the chances of a Trout trade will only get better over time.

If nothing else, he’ll become more affordable as the years on his contract tick down and inflation dulls the edge of his $37.1 million annual salary. There may even come a point when he’s a low-risk add relative to his current star power, a la Manny Ramirez in 2008 or Carlos Beltrán in 2011.

Further, it could be that whatever desperation Trout has to add to his current postseason resume (i.e., all of three games) will only intensify if the Angels keep falling short.

“It’s getting to a point where we’ve got to win,” he told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic in March. “That’s where the organization is. The fans, they want to [see] some winning baseball to Anaheim.”

But can we really take it for granted that Trout’s star power is going to age well? Indeed, it’s already not aging well. Even setting aside the injuries and this year’s production dip, his increasing whiff rates and diminishing ability to hit the fastball loom as red flags.

As such, Trout may not become a Ramirez or a Beltrán. He might become more like an Albert Pujols or a Giancarlo Stanton: a once-great slugger whose trade value amounts to zilch.

Could It Be Never?

There’s also the possibility of Trout becoming the next Joey Votto.

For years, the combination of the Cincinnati Reds’ perpetual blundering and Votto’s ongoing greatness made it easy to imagine them offloading him and his $225 million contract. But it never happened, and it seems that has a lot to do with how Votto himself never wanted it to. He was comfortable in Cincinnati and committed to winning as a Red all the way to the end.

Only Trout knows what’s in Trout’s head, but he seems cut from the same cloth.

“This is my home,” he told reporters after inking his current contract in 2019, also adding: “We’ve been through some ups and downs but I’m really looking forward to the future. I really see us winning a championship here. I think if I waited two years, it wouldn’t have felt right moving to another team, going straight to a winning team. Teams go through ups and downs. I want to be a part of everything. Obviously, I want to win.”

Besides, the other key character in all this is Moreno. He’s a hands-on owner who isn’t above making the front office’s decisions for it, even personally nixing an Ohtani trade in 2022 even as his eventual exit seemed increasingly inevitable.

As to why Moreno was so dead-set on keeping Ohtani, one executive put it bluntly to Jayson Stark of The Athletic: “I’ll tell you why. Because that’s where the money comes from.”

With Ohtani now gone, Trout is all alone as the main draw for anyone who fancies a day or evening at Angel Stadium of Anaheim. And since he’s a future inner-circle Hall of Famer no matter what, this figures to be the case even if his star power does continue to wane.

So if you’re asking me, here’s where the smart money on a Trout trade is. Whereas all sorts of things have to break right for a trade to happen in the future, him staying in Anaheim is a simple matter of things staying the same.