Hallowed Out: Mike Trout Stands Alone

The Angels haven’t changed. It’s Mike Trout who is worse.

The Angels are bad. It’s the truest thing about them. Their hitting is bad, their pitching is bad, their fielding is bad, and everything else is bad, too. This isn’t breaking news. They’ve finished below .500 each year since 2015, the only team not to make the postseason in that time. But expectations have reached a new low as we enter 2026:

I was initially skeptical of these figures, or at least the direction of them. How could the Angels possibly be going backwards? They don’t seem to be rebuilding, and their depth chart looks the same as ever: a few truly good players, a few players who would be good if they were playing a different position (or perhaps in a different organization), a few players who were drafted far too recently, a few aging veterans who were nearly All-Stars at one point, and Trout.

Then it hit me:

Trout established himself as the league’s top player by the end of 2012. Alongside several once-great-now-32 batters, the 2012-14 Angels had the best lineup in the majors by wRC+. I wouldn’t describe their standing as bountiful by any means, but it wasn’t too surprising to see them win 98 games in 2014. There was something there.

Then they got steamrolled by the Royals in the ALDS. On the other side was a novel take on mediocrity.

Trout was still a titan from 2015 to 2019. Those years remain the five best preseason player projections ever spit out by Steamer. He backed it up on the field, too, setting a new standard for greatness in an increasingly measured game.

But the Angels’ roster shifted around him in questionable ways. Familiar veterans aged out and gave way to lesser models of the same ilk. Prospects were rushed through the system to fill in the gaps. These rosters weren’t quite bad on paper — the Angels were 10th by Steamer’s preseason projections over this period — but they lacked a coordinating logic, an esprit de corps. You couldn’t count them out; you wouldn’t dare count them in. As it happens, no team underperformed their projections more over these five seasons. They aimed low and missed.

Still, there was momentum into the 2020s, even if it might be described as “hurtling violently.” Trout remained superlative, Shohei Ohtani wanted to play with him, and Anthony Rendon initially appeared immune to the ills of Anaheim. Doubt was high, but the team’s relevance was undeniable. So, once again, they hustled their prospects to the majors and returned to the junk drawer of free agency, fielding increasingly bizarre lineups for fantastic sums of cash.

You already know it didn’t work. Ohtani was sensational, but Rendon’s deal became an albatross. Trout struggled to stay on the field, with the flashes of greatness suddenly fewer and farther between. The rest of the roster? It was the same as it ever was.

Angels in the OAAtfield

That brings us to today. Ohtani is gone. Rendon is gone (though his ghost just signed an extension). Trout is no longer the best player in baseball — he’s not even the best player on his team:

That distinction belongs to Zach Neto. He just turned 25 and is coming off back-to-back 3-plus WAR seasons. His quick competence is so rare in Anaheim that fans are already wondering when he’ll leave. He lead all shortstops in ISO last year and was a great baserunner to boot, making him a valuable power-speed option at a premium position, even if a poor approach limits his ceiling.

Further limiting his ceiling is his defense: Neto finished 2025 among the bottom five shortstops by OAA, and it’s unlikely he’ll find the necessary instruction to improve; last year, the Angels posted -54 OAA, the worst season ever recorded. Leading the downward spiral was Yoán Moncada, who posted -13 OAA at third base, tying him for the second-worst fielder in baseball (he played just 76 game in the field). Moncada and Neto will again team up for the leakiest left side in baseball in 2026.

The outfield is no better defensively. Yes, a legitimate tip of the cap is owed to Jo Adell for figuring it out at the plate last year. He swung tremendously hard and made great contact, even if his approach turned a near 40-homer season into a mere 112 wRC+. It’s a win, if a regrettably small one. But it was made even smaller when Adell found himself as the team’s regular center fielder. It didn’t go well, and he posted -12 OAA as the worst outfielder in the majors. He’s likely to be out there again in 2026, unless the team is serious about letting Trout roam.

This dynamic exists across the Angels’ depth chart: batters who strike out too much, walk too little, and aren’t particularly equipped for their position, whether that be Jorge Soler or Josh Lowe or Logan O’Hoppe. The only instance where that doesn’t appear to be the case is with Nolan Schanuel at first base — the one place where such brazenness might be justified.

None of this is good news for the Angels’ pitchers, who happen to be the relative strength of this roster. The status of the infield is of particular concern for José Soriano, who led the majors with a 65% groundball rate last year. Soriano throws a visually impressive 98-mph sinker, a hard splitter, and a big ol’ curve. He gives up lots of hard contact and walks, but all those grounders (when they’re caught) make him generally immune to implosions. Soriano is the org’s most promising pitcher since Garrett Richards in 2014.

I don’t know if I’d call Yusei Kikuchi “promising” at nearly 35 years old, but he was solid again last year, even if he didn’t quite live up to his 2024 performance. (It’s possible he’ll be even better in 2026 with working air conditioning in the clubhouse.) I am, however, willing to extend the “promising” label to Grayson Rodriguez, whose acquisition might represent the best process move the Angels have made in recent years. I could even see myself getting excited about Reid Detmers and Alek Manoah, and potentially even Tyler Bremner (the latter two recently sat down with our David Laurila, conversations you can read here and here). Heck, I don’t even hate the premise of their old-is-new bullpen. It’s not outrageous to think this staff could finish outside the bottom 10.

That’s all to say, the Angels still have a few solid players who would be relevant to more competitive organizations. They’re nowhere close to contention on paper, and I expect they’ll again be worth less than the sum of their parts. But this doesn’t feel like true vacancy. This feels like the Angels.

Mike Trout, Fin.

Trout these days kinda feels like the Angels, too.

Expectations for Trout have adjusted down over the last few years as injuries have kept him off the field. We’ve seen him forfeit his status as the best ever, then the best in baseball, and now the best on his team. What’s remarkable about this moment, however, is that for the first time in his career, Trout’s not even expected to be all that good. He had a top 50 projection as recently as last year. This year? Our Depth Charts projections consider him the equivalent of Chase Meidroth. If you’re wondering why the Angels of the late 2010s felt more, shall we say, plausible than the Angels of today, the answer, quite frankly, is Trout.

That said, we’re far from the end of Trout’s days as a big league-caliber player. His 120 wRC+ in 2025 was a career low, but it was still enough to make him one of the 100 best hitters in the league. If you’re feeling down about Trout, just know that it’s still the same swing you’ve seen burry your team a dozen times:

His contact quality was tremendous last year, placing him the top 10 by xwOBAcon. He hit the ball hard, and he lead the league in sweet spot rate. The plot below shows that he had a flawless launch angle distribution, making nearly all of his contact competitive in some way:

The plot also shows he didn’t cover pitches… I want to say “like he used to,” but we don’t really know; the data is too new. What we can say is Trout ran one of the lowest squared-up rates in baseball in 2025. We can also say he swung hard and deep in the zone, and often came up empty. His strikeout rate ballooned to 32%, though it was closer to 40% for most of the second half. Despite the quality of contact, Trout posted -20 runs on pitches in the “heart” region of the plate, whiffing his way to a bottom-15 mark (and a 40 run difference from a decade ago). Pitchers attacked him down the middle, and he proved incapable of punishing them.

Still, on pitches that weren’t down the middle, Trout was one of the best. His elite choosiness returned in 2025, and his walk rate was the highest it’s been since 2019. I don’t hate this pick-n-power approach going forward, especially for someone on the elite end of the skill set. It’s easy to see him serving out the remaining five seasons on his contract as a good or even great DH, continuing to compile achievements as the best of a generation.

But that doesn’t seem to be enough for Trout. He wants to play center field again, after moving to DH for his health. He wants to run fast again, after losing a chunk off his sprint speed in 2026. He believes in this roster. He wants to win. Is this eyewash, from a notoriously diplomatic veteran? Denial, from a former star refusing to accept his age? Or legitimate goal setting, from an all-time tinkerer?

I’m not sure that it matters. The Angels have been explicit in their apathy towards the present, and it’s not clear how they plan to add another 10-15 wins either now or in the future to make this roster competitive. They are simply, perhaps intentionally, a stage for Mike Trout. An encore, or a fadeout — it’s here all at once.