Does Mike Trout's Lost 2021 Season End Any Possible MLB GOAT Debates?

Zachary D. RymerSep 29, 2021

What had been a long time coming finally came Saturday: Mike Trout, Major League Baseball's most decorated prime-age superstar and venerable GOAT candidate, won't return to the diamond until 2022.

When the Los Angeles Angels first placed Trout on the injured list with a strained right calf May 18, the three-time American League MVP and nine-time All-Star was expected to miss eight weeks at most. But as hard as he tried to recover, he just never could and was forced to accept that, in his own words, "my body wasn't allowing it."

The 30-year-old center fielder continued to produce when healthy. Through 36 games, he was hitting .333/.466/.624 with eight home runs and 1.9 rWAR, the latter of which had him on pace for about a characteristically excellent 8.6-WAR season.

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In tandem with the 53 contests he played amid last year's shortened campaign, however, it's hard to sugarcoat the fact that Trout has played only about a half-season's worth of games (89, to be exact) over the last two seasons. Because these are prime years we're talking about, it's likewise hard not to think about all the production he's lost.

What does this mean for his trajectory as one of baseball's all-time greats? Does he still have a chance to become the greatest of them all? Or have the last two seasons irreparably sidetracked him toward lesser greatness?

Why Trout Won't Be the GOAT

It wasn't that long ago that it was easy to look at Trout and say, "Yup, that dude's gonna be the GOAT when he's done."

Power, speed and overall hitting know-how generally don't go together as easily as Trout made it look, and the numbers backed up the eye test. By the time he wrapped up his age-27 season in 2019, he was sitting on a .305/.419/.581 slash line and a 176 OPS+, as well as 285 home runs and 72.5 rWAR.

Among all-time players in that age group, he held some rather distinct ranks:

*Minimum 5,000 plate appearances.

This is not to mention that Trout became the youngest player to reach 200 home runs and 200 stolen bases in 2019. That year also began with him becoming baseball's first ever $400 million star and eventually saw him become only the fifth player to hit as many as 45 home runs despite playing in 134 or fewer games.

Hence all the GOAT talk. Even if it could seem hyperbolic at times, there weren't any good arguments that Trout wasn't deserving of such consideration. The only real question was how long he could keep being, well, Mike Trout.

This is where nobody could have predicted that a pandemic would force him and the rest of MLB into playing a 60-game season in 2020. And while the thumb, wrist and foot injuries he sustained in 2017, 2018 and 2019 conjured a specter of injury-proneness, there was little reason to suspect that another injury would limit him to six weeks of action in 2021.

Regardless, the damage has been done.

Though Trout's rate stats—he also hit .281/.390/.603 with a 166 OPS+ in 2020—have remained excellent over the last two seasons, the lost games have cost him valuable counting stats in relation to full 162-game slates. For instance, he potentially could have hit 52 homers in 2020 and another 36 this year, as opposed to the 25 actual homers that he hit across the two seasons.

The disclaimer here is that Trout probably wouldn't have played in all 162 games in 2020 or 2021, but these figures nonetheless capture the scope of what he's lost. It especially hurts to think that he's missed out on as many as 63 home runs. Take that many homers away from Barry Bonds, for example, and he goes from first on the all-time list to third.

These losses alone could diminish Trout's standing among the all-time greats whenever his career ends, so it's on him to make up the difference in future seasons. Preferably through offensive mega-seasons like the ones he had from 2016 to 2019.

Even setting aside the injuries, however, Trout is at an age when the possibility that his prime production could fade has to be taken seriously.

There's plenty of literature out there—Neil Paine of FiveThirtyEight had a good piece in 2019—about how baseball's star power has shifted toward the young in recent years. It becomes apparent when one simply divides the league's overall offensive production between the under-30 crowd and the 30-and-over crowd during the 30-team era:

Data courtesy of FanGraphs

Though the rise and fall of baseball's steroid era is a factor, these lines paint a clear picture. These days, players peak in their 20s and decline in their 30s.

Granted, the upward tick in production that 30-somethings have experienced in the last two seasons will bode well for Trout and other veterans if it continues. If not, he'll effectively be rowing upstream as he looks to recoup what he lost in 2020 and 2021.

In the meantime, there's bound to be discussion as to whether Trout is even still the best player on his own team when he returns in 2022. Because he's chasing arguably the greatest season in baseball history with both his bat and his arm, slugger/ace Shohei Ohtani will have a strong claim to that crown after this year.

Why Trout Could Still Be the GOAT

Now comes the part where everyone is advised to chill out. Because even if the last two seasons have sidetracked Trout, he still has a path to baseball's inner circle of all-time greats.

Sure, he's no longer outpacing his historic peers in WAR. But he also hasn't fallen off the pace by as much as you might think. His 76.2 rWAR through his age-29 season is tied for fifth in that department, alongside some guy named Babe Ruth.

Small sample size be damned: Trout has also been perhaps the best hitter in baseball over the last two seasons. His .301/.419/.611 line works out to a 177 OPS+, the second-highest mark for anyone with at least 380 plate appearances after Juan Soto.

So at least until there are red flags in Trout's offensive performance, the Angels only need to worry about how to keep him on the field in 2022 and beyond. To this end, they have an idea that's as good as it is obvious: move him off center field.

“You would think giving him less ground to cover might be wise,” manager Joe Maddon said in July, according to J.P. Hoornstra of the Orange County Register. “So we’ll see how that plays out. I’ve already broached the subject with him. His thought was originally that he was going to be OK once his leg feels fine, but we’ll wait and see.”

The Angels last experimented with Trout as a corner outfielder in 2013. Though that didn't last, it was through no fault of his own as defensive wiz Peter Bourjos just couldn't stay healthy enough to be a viable regular in center.

Should the Angels circle back to this experiment in 2022, it could have benefits beyond simply sparing Trout's legs from wear and tear. It could also mean a defensive boost, as his excellent speed (29.3 feet per second in 2021) should allow him to cover more ground than the standard corner outfielder.

Moving Trout off center field might ensure that his future contains not only additional All-Star and MVP honors, but also maybe even a Gold Glove or two for a trophy case that lacks a defensive award.

Lastly, a Crucial Reminder

We can spend all the live-long day talking about Trout's merits as the greatest to ever come through Major League Baseball, but it's all academic to at least one extent.

Even if he hangs up his spikes right now, he'd still be in the Hall of Fame in five years' time.

Once he acquired the requisite 10 years of major league experience in 2020, Trout pretty much had all the boxes checked for his future induction into Cooperstown. Most notably, he already had more career WAR than fellow center fielders Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones and even Hall of Famers Derek Jeter, Barry Larkin, Tony Gwynn and Ivan Rodriguez.

Factoring in how Trout is also one of only 11 players to win at least three MVP awards, he's had a none-too-shabby career for a player who only turned 30 on August 7. So even if he doesn't end up being the GOAT, the only thing that will keep him from being one of the GOATs is if he slips into irrelevance after 2021.

On this much everyone should be able to agree: That won't happen.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.