Mike Trout is in the final week of a profoundly frustrating season. His numbers at the plate have been shockingly pedestrian amid regular struggles with his swing mechanics, and he misses playing in the outfield.<\/p>\n
Yet Trout remains optimistic and engaged \u2014 and the 34-year-old slugger says he still believes he can recapture his MVP form with the Los Angeles Angels.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I\u2019m very confident,\u201d Trout said Tuesday. \u201cI think it sounds funny, but I joke about it with all the guys in there \u2013 when I see the ball, I\u2019m good. When I don\u2019t see it, man, it\u2019s a battle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trout entered the final homestand of the Angels\u2019 11th consecutive non-playoff season batting .229 with 22 homers, 59 RBIs and a .772 OPS. Those totals are all the lowest of his career during a season in which he\u2019s played at least 100 games, and the OPS is his lowest since his first major league season in 2011.<\/p>\n
Trout reached two big career milestones this season, getting his 1,000th RBI on July 27 and hitting his 400th home run last Saturday.<\/p>\n
But after making baseball seem so joyously simple during his first decade in the majors, this 11-time All-Star admits he has been in a weekly fight for consistency at the plate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a grind this year, no doubt,\u201d Trout said. \u201cThat\u2019s what sports do to you. You\u2019re not going to go out there and just get a hit every time or feel good every time. I get that. But it\u2019s great to be able to get some confidence going into the offseason.\u201d<\/p>\n
At least the three-time AL MVP has stayed largely healthy this season after missing huge chunks of the past four years amid injury struggles that altered the substance of his baseball legacy.<\/p>\n
Although Trout missed nearly all of May with a bone bruise in his knee that still bothers him in certain situations, he has stayed in the lineup ever since. He will play more games this season than he has managed since 2019 \u2014 even if it\u2019s been mostly as a designated hitter.<\/p>\n
Trout said he \u201cdefinitely\u201d wants to play the field again in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he wants to put himself in a good spot in the last week to build off what, for him, was probably \u2013 I don\u2019t want to use the word disappointing, but a frustrating season,\u201d Angels interim manager Ray Montgomery said. \u201cHe fought through some things, (particularly) physically, to remain on the field, because we all know how good he is when he plays defense. He\u2019s not a DH, you know what I mean? He did it out of necessity. Hopefully he gets a healthy offseason, gets ready to come back in the spring and be Mike Trout.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the Angels faced Kansas City, Trout went into extensive detail about what he has meant by \u201cseeing the ball\u201d when he described his 2025 struggles at the plate. It\u2019s not an ophthalmological diagnosis, but rather a measure of his mechanics to make sure he\u2019s tracking pitches with both eyes \u2014 a necessity for his timing.<\/p>\n
Trout has struck out 173 times this season, the second-most of his career, with six games to play. That\u2019s a function of being unable to put together the series of reactions that used to come so easily to him, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a lot of at-bats this year when I\u2019d go up there and I knew what they were going to throw me, and I just couldn\u2019t pull the trigger,\u201d Trout said. \u201cSomething was just a tick off, and as much as I want to go up there and I try to put aside everything I work on in the cage and just go compete, it was tough for me, because the ball was moving. Nothing was slowing it down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trout repeatedly thought he had found a fix this season, only to lose it again. He believes he made another breakthrough in September, hopefully allowing him to finish strong.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore, it was just a Band-Aid,\u201d Trout said. \u201cI think it\u2019s more of a solution this time. To be able to confidently know what I\u2019m doing, and to be able to get to a spot and start early and be on time every single time, I think it\u2019s something to build on in the offseason.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trout has five seasons left on his $426.5 million contract extension, and he\u2019s still looking for his first career playoff victory. The Angels weren\u2019t close to postseason contention again this year despite a modest improvement from the worst season in franchise history in 2024, and Trout essentially said that he needs to sort out his own game before he can help to build a winner with shortstop Zach Neto and the team\u2019s young core.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw signs of good stretches,\u201d Trout said. \u201cWe\u2019ve just got to put a full season together. I think that\u2019s the key. For me, I think if I can get back to where I felt this last week-and-a-half, two weeks for a full season, it\u2019ll be different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beacham writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Trout is in the final week of a profoundly frustrating season. His numbers at the plate have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[42124,34975,1558,4553,5460,105782,23257,105614,363,105781,2590,18130,31306,5190,99,2384,2394],"class_list":["post-177984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-angels","tag-ball","tag-baseball","tag-career","tag-game","tag-injury-struggle","tag-last-week","tag-mike-trout","tag-mlb","tag-mvp-form","tag-offseason","tag-plate","tag-rbi","tag-season","tag-sports","tag-time","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}