With the Major League Baseball trade deadline looming, and with there being an endless array of articles, hypothetical and proposed trades for uber-superstar Shohei Ohtani, the question has come up a lot recently, as well as being one of baseball’s more recent memories over the last decade: how have the Angels sucked?
Going back to 2012, when the Angels had acquired a prime-Albert Pujols, fresh off a World Series win, they also called up Mike Trout, who has for the better part of the last decade, been the best player in MLB, you’d think the Angels would have opened a window in which championships wouldn’t just be contended for, they would be expected.
Obviously, everyone knows that baseball is a team sport and that one man does not a championship win, but a guy like Mike Trout is a generational talent, and with someone the talent of at least five good players, success in theory should have come by a little easier for the Angels than it would for like, the Seattle Mariners.
And over the decade, the Angels would go on to win the signing rights and acquire Shohei Ohtani, who wasn’t just the next Babe Ruth, he’s light years better than ol’ Herman, with his homerun hitting prowess, as well as his ace-caliber power pitching.
Seriously, here are the AL MVP rankings over the last eleven seasons:
2012: Mike Trout, MVP
2013: Mike Trout, 2nd in MVP voting
2014: Mike Trout, MVP
2015: Mike Trout, 2nd in MVP voting
2016: Mike Trout, MVP
2017: Mike Trout, 4th in MVP voting
2018: Mike Trout, 2nd in MVP voting
2019: Mike Trout, MVP
2020: Mike Trout, 5th in MVP voting
2021: Shohei Ohtani, MVP
2022: Shohei Ohtani, 2nd in MVP voting
The Angels have had the AL MVP in five of the last eleven seasons, which is pretty unprecedented. With such abundance of talent, you’d think the Angels would have been at the very least, in the playoffs every single year or something, right?
Well of course not! Otherwise a brog post like this wouldn’t ever come to fruition, and these are the kinds of things that happen in baseball that make baseball such a wonderful sport to be a fan of, because logic doesn’t matter sometimes, and wacky shit happens every single day in a baseball season.