The American League MVP Was Out All September, But It Doesn’t Even Matter

Mike Trout hasn’t played the final month of the pennant race, but he was never part of the race to start with. Is this your MVP??

REMEMBER SEPTEMBER 7TH? IT WAS A SEMINAL MOMENT OF THE 2019 MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL SEASON. Mike Trout’s Los Angeles Angels were leading the Chicago White Sox 8–7 as the game reached the final inning. Trout did not start but was inserted into the lineup to pinch hit in a key spot with two outs and a runner on second. He was promptly intentionally walked, at which point he left the game for a pinch runner. Brian Goodwin lined out, but Hansel Robles took care of the Sox in order in the bottom of the 9th to close out the game.

Remember it?

Of course you don’t. Who remembers a meaningless September game between two meaningless teams? Why would you remember a meaningless at-bat that wasn’t even an at-bat? That pivotal moment was always going to be an intentional walk. The Angels had an 82% chance of winning before the walk and identical 82% odds after it. It was an irrelevant play between two irrelevant teams. The Angels improved to 67–76 while the Sox fell to 62–80. Neither team has mattered for months.

That turned out to be Mike Trout’s final appearance of the season. The two-time MVP was shut down for the remainder of the season to undergo surgery to remove a neuroma from his foot. And why wouldn’t he? This final month of the season was irrelevant for Trout, for the Angels, and for baseball fans.

And yet, on every poll you read around the interwebs, one thing is unanimous: Mike Trout is the 2019 American League Most Valuable Player.

But how can a player so irrelevant be a sport’s MVP?

Mike Trout certainly had an excellent season; there’s no questioning that. He always has outstanding numbers, and some writers are already putting Trout’s name among the best to ever play the game.

Trout played only 134 games this season but leads the American League in homers anyway at 45. Though his .291 batting average is the second lowest of his career, Trout is predictably awesome at all the other three-letter advanced metrics we’ve created. His .438 OBP leads the majors. His .645 SLG is best in the AL. He’s got 1.083 OPS, 184 OPS+, 8.3 WAR, 145 RC, 64 ABR, 5.9 ABW, 5.2 WPA, and .813 OW%. He’s first in the American League in all those stats, and I only even made one of them up.

Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. We already know this, and we create new advanced metrics every year to prove it. Mike Trout is good. Make up a new statistic, and as long as Trout is at the top, the stat is probably okay.

And thus Trout must be the MVP.

Baseball is not baseball anymore. It’s just an equation we can solve. Take all the new advanced formulas, plug in the numbers, solve for X, and voila! Trout is MVP. It’s just that easy.

I actually didn’t even make up any of those numbers above. They’re all real, and they all say Mike Trout is the best at what he does. We finally solved the MVP award! Mike Trout is valuable. All the numbers say he has to be.

BUT JUST HOW VALUABLE CAN ONE PLAYER BE ON A COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS, TERRIBLE TEAM?

The Los Angeles Angels are 70–86 with a few games remaining in the season. They’re 32 games back in the division and haven’t been in genuine contention since the early part of summer, and even that might be generous. The Angels were never division contenders. They were never in the wildcard race. They never mattered this season at all, unless you were rooting for their opponent and they stole a sure win away.

If the Angels are 70–86, what would they have been without Trout at all this season? Something like 55–101? Maybe 50–106 instead?

Does it really matter? Irrelevant is irrelevant. There are no degrees of never mattering in the first place.

As it turns out, the Angels were 60–73 with Trout this season and 10–13 without him. They paced to a 73-win team with Trout in the lineup. When he wasn’t playing, they fell all the way off to… a 70-win pace.

So that’s how valuable Mike Trout was this season. He took an utterly terrible Los Angeles Angels team and made them… only slightly more mediocre.

This will be the fourth consecutive losing season for the Angels. Mike Trout finished top-4 in the MVP race in all of them. He even won it in 2016 when the Angels were so good they went… *checks notes*… 74–88, fourth in the division.

As good as Trout is individually, exactly how valuable has he been to a team that has only ever made the playoffs once in his nine seasons with the team?

Think about that. Mike Trout, presumed future baseball GOAT, has played exactly 1 postseason series. He has 0 postseason wins. In 12 career postseason at-bats, Mike Trout has precisely 1 postseason hit.

Wheeeee… valuable!

Just how valuable has Mike Trout been to the Los Angeles Angels?

The Angels have made the postseason once in Trout’s nine seasons, failing to win a single game. In the Angels’ nine seasons prior to Trout’s arrival, they made the playoffs six times. They advanced to the ALCS in three of those years and even won a World Series.

But! Mike Trout is valuable!

This will be Mike Trout’s eighth straight top-4 MVP finish. That’s all eight of his full seasons as a professional.

It will be his seventh time finishing top-2 in MVP voting. The only outlier was a 4th-place finish in 2017. Trout missed 48 games that year — and the Angels promptly had their best season in the last four years with him watching from the dugout.

But baseball is more than just one player!, you cry. Mike Trout can’t do everything on his own!!

Trout has played each of his eight full Angels seasons with Albert Pujols, a surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer on a $254-million contract. Lately, he’s had the help of Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, who pitches and hits and does everything else.

Three of baseball’s brightest and presumably most recognizable superstars play together in one of its biggest markets. And they’re utterly irrelevant.

Assuming he wins it, Mike Trout will be the first three-time AL MVP since Alex Rodriguez, who also got the award in 2003 in a meaningless season for an AL West team. The most recent three-time AL MVP before ARod was Mickey Mantle. The most recent three-time NL MVP is, of course, Trout’s teammate, Albert Pujols.

In fact, only 10 players in baseball history have won three MVP awards: Pujols, ARod, Mantle, Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, Mike Schmidt, Jimmie Foxx, Stan Musial, Roy Campanella, and Barry Bonds.

That’s it, that’s the whole list. Not Babe Ruth. Not Ted Williams. Not Willie Mays or Hank Aaron or Lou Gehrig or Ty Cobb.

Just 10. And that’s the hallowed list we are vaulting Mike Trout onto after this incomplete and ultimately meaningless year for the Angels. He’s about to be the eleventh three-time MVP, well on track to becoming only the second player in baseball history to win more than three MVPs. Barry Bonds, the actual baseball GOAT, has seven.

That’s the path Mike Trout is on now, despite only ever having played in a handful of meaningful professional baseball games in his entire career.

Hey remember that Mike Trout moment when…?

Hey remember that Mike Trout 20xx season?

Which Mike Trout season are you going to tell your grandkids about? Which Trout at-bat do you think of when you imagine his most iconic moments?

And shouldn’t it matter if you’re drawing a blank on both of those questions?

In other sports, the MVP season always matters. In the NFL and the NBA, the MVP almost always comes from a top-2 team in the conference. That’s because those sports see Most Valuable and it actually means something. It means Patrick Mahomes throwing 5000 yards and 50 TDs to lead the Kansas City Chiefs to the brink of a Super Bowl. It means Giannis Antetokounmpo averaging 28 points, 12 rebounds, and 6 assists a game, leading the Milwaukee Bucks to 60 wins and the best record in basketball.

For Mahomes and Giannis, these weren’t just elite stats and production. They were elite stats and production that mattered. Those seasons mattered because, when we look back at the 2018 NFL and NBA seasons, Mahomes and Antetokounmpo will be among the first things we think of. They had moments fans will remember forever. They defined that season.

When you look back at the 2019 MLB season, how many things will you have to list before you remember Mike Trout? How many Trout moments will you add to your list? Are there any?

The MVP is about more than numbers and baseball equations.

The MVP is about moments. It’s about narrative and story and greatness. The MVP should matter, and their team should matter.

Most Valuable Players are valuable because they help make a good team great, or a great team invincible. MVPs are valuable because we can see the tangible outcome of the value they’ve added to their team. We feel it in their biggest moments as the season comes to a climax, and we watch them attempt to carry their teams on their backs as the playoffs begin.

Mike Trout does none of those things.

Imagine the Houston Astros without Alex Bregman. Bregman’s 40 homers and 109 RBI at the center of the Astros lineup have been the heartbeat of the best team in the American League all season. Imagine the 2019 Yankees without D.J. LeMahieu doing his best Ben Zobrist impression, the one constant amidst a record-setting year of New York injuries, battling for the batting title while splitting his Gold Glove defense seamlessly between first, second, and third base as needed. Imagine the Oakland As making a wildcard run without Marcus Semien’s 42 doubles and 120 runs, or the Minnesota Twins winning the AL Central without Nelson Cruz battling through injury all year to smack 40 home runs on the greatest home-run-hitting team in Major League history.

Take one of those guys off their teams, and what happens?

The entire arc of the 2019 MLB season changes. Take Cruz’s bat out of the heart of the Minnesota order and maybe the team collapses late and falls to the Indians in the Central. Take Semien away from Oakland and their wildcard hopes are shot. Remove LeMahieu from the Yankees and watch the team crumble with all the injuries around them.

These guys mattered. They told the story of the 2019 season. They were valuable, and we know they were valuable because we can see it.

What would the 2019 season have looked like if Mike Trout had never played?

Would anything have even been any different? ■

All stats from Baseball Reference. Follow Brandon at @wheatonbrando for more sports, television, humor, and culture. Visit Brandon’s writing archives here.