{"id":394217,"date":"2026-09-09T00:22:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/394217\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T00:22:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:22:25","slug":"mike-trout-and-the-angels-officially-miss-the-playoffs-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/394217\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Trout and the Angels Officially Miss the Playoffs Again"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Phillies
\n <\/a><\/p>\n


\n \"Matt
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"May<\/p>\n

Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Saw this tweet and it got me thinking about Mike Trout\u2019s career again:<\/p>\n

Mike Trout sure is a loser, huh. Not that this is anything new. We\u2019ve known this for a very long time. To refresh your memory: <\/p>\n

2026 is Mike Trout\u2019s 16th season with the Angels. Of those 16, only four have were winning seasons. <\/p>\n

The Angels\u2019 last winning season was in 2015. <\/p>\n

Mike Trout has played in just\u00a0three career postseason games (2014 ALDS). He won none of them. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s the only three-time MVP in baseball history to never win a playoff game. <\/p>\n

Mike Trout holds a sub-.500 career record of 865\u2013908 (.488)\u00a0in regular-season games played.<\/p>\n

What else? How else can we frame this level of loserdom? Here\u2019s a few more:<\/p>\n

Mike Trout has more MVPs than playoff wins. <\/p>\n

In his sole playoff series, he had just one hit in 12 at-bats. <\/p>\n

Trout and Hall of Famer Ernie Banks are the only players in MLB history with 400+ career home runs who have never played in a postseason victory. <\/p>\n

The Angels have finished .500 or worse in 11 consecutive seasons (2016\u20132026), the longest active streak of non-winning seasons in MLB. <\/p>\n

In 10 of his 16 seasons, the Angels finished at least\u00a010 games out of first place\u00a0in the AL West. They finished 20+ games back in six different seasons. <\/p>\n

Again, none of this is new. We all know about Mike Trout\u2019s resume. But still, it\u2019s pretty crazy to step back and really think about just how much he\u2019s squandered his career. <\/p>\n

And as the pointless seasons keep on adding up, the less I believe sentiments like this one:<\/p>\n

This man\u2019s loyalty to an organization that misses the playoffs every year is so impressive but so sad. He deserves an October run and it doesn\u2019t seem like he will ever get a chance.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Hoosier Truther (@TrutherHoosier) September 8, 2026<\/a> <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think loyalty has anything to do with it. I bet Trout would love for people to assume that\u2019s why he\u2019s stayed on the Angels \u2014 it makes his losing sound noble and honorable and cool \u2014 but I don\u2019t buy it. I just don\u2019t think Mike Trout cares that much about winning baseball games.<\/p>\n

I realize it may sound like a WIP-ass opinion, but I don\u2019t mean it that way. I\u2019m not even really judging him. I think Mike Trout is a guy who is exceptionally good at his job, but simply does not care all that much about his legacy as a baseball player. If he did, he\u2019d want to win a World Series, and if he wanted to win a World Series, he would\u2019ve entered free agency or asked for a trade. He\u2019s done neither. He didn\u2019t want to. <\/p>\n

From where I\u2019m sitting, Trout seems like a guy who just really likes living in his house with his family in LA and going to work and then going home. To him, the math appears to be: \u201cI can stay comfortable where I am and lose, or I can uproot my life to try to win.\u201d Over and over, he\u2019s chosen the former. He likes being comfortable. He likes his house. He likes to chill. <\/p>\n

Actually, I take back what I said before: I guess I am judging him. Now that I\u2019m typing it all out, I can\u2019t help but feel resentful about what his outlook cost us as baseball fans. Imagine how fun the last decade would\u2019ve been if Mike Trout was competing for World Series rings. Imagine if he were as obsessed with winning as Bryce Harper or Kobe Bryant or Tom Brady. Wouldn\u2019t that have been nice? To see an all-time talent do anything and everything he could to win? <\/p>\n

It\u2019d be one thing if Trout was just some regular guy and had this attitude. Like if he worked in IT and didn\u2019t really care about being remembered as one of the best IT guys ever. In that context, I\u2019d give him a big thumbs up. Sounds healthy and normal. But Trout is a professional athlete, and healthy\/normal professional athletes aren\u2019t all that entertaining. We don\u2019t love The Last Dance because Michael Jordan had a well-balanced relationship with winning. We loved it because he was an absolute lunatic about it.<\/p>\n

But alas, we\u2019ll never get anything close to that with Mike Trout. He\u2019s told us who he is and what he cares about for 16 years now. He\u2019ll clock in and perform well when he\u2019s at work \u2014 but that\u2019s all he\u2019s willing to do. <\/p>\n

At the end of the day, Mike Trout really just loves living in his house. Not moving out of his house is what\u2019s most important. Must be a sick house. <\/p>\n

\"Matt<\/p>\n

Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He\u2019s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O\u2019Brien\u2019s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don\u2019t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up\u2026)
\n
\nemail: M.Schultz@sportradar.com<\/p>\n

\n You might also like…\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phillies Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images Saw this tweet and it got me thinking about Mike Trout\u2019s career again:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-394217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}