Los Angeles Angels center fielder Mike Trout is healthy and looks like himself again. If he can stay on the field, he will have an elite season.
Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer when he is eligible to be inducted.
Trout has won just about every individual award there is to win in Major League Baseball. He won the American League Rookie of the Year in 2012, is a three-time Most Valuable Player, 11-time All-Star (with two All-Star Game MVPs), and nine-time Silver Slugger.
Trout has accumulated 87.5 WAR, 1,754 hits, 404 home runs, 1,018 RBI and 214 stolen bases in 1,648 games played. His career slash line of .294/.406/.570 gives him an impressive .976 OPS to go with a 169 OPS+. Not to mention, despite not winning a Gold Glove somehow, Trout is a terrific fielder and does have a Wilson Overall Defensive Player of the Year award to his name.
Unfortunately, Trout’s outstanding career has been overshadowed by a slew of injuries that have kept him off the field a lot since 2021. Trout’s 130 games in 2025 were the most he’s played since 2019 and he reached the 100-game mark just one other time since that season (119 in 2022).
During that 2022 season, Trout was diagnosed with a rare spinal condition called T5 costovertebral dysfunction. It’s a chronic degenerative back disorder that requires long-term attention and it has contributed to many of his 414 missed games since 2021.
However, as I mentioned, Trout played 130 games in 2025 and while he wasn’t his normal self at the plate, it was good to see him on the field for much of the season. He still crushed 26 homers with 64 RBI and slashed .232/.359/.439 for a .797 OPS.
“Trout was relatively healthy last year, but his .797 OPS represented his worst mark since his 2011 debut season and the limitation as a DH meant he only accumulated 1.8 WAR,” MLB.com’s Brent Maguire wrote Wednesday. “Yet, you can at least glimpse at the 2026 season and convince yourself that there’s another great Trout performance in store.”
That’s because Trout has been healthy in spring training and is running with the blazing speed he once had in his 20s. He reached 29.9 feet per second during a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks a few weeks ago and is poised to hit 30. That’s incredible to hear from a guy that has had part of his prime ripped away from him due to injuries.
Trout will be back to playing center field after playing right field a bit last year, another promising sign that he’s feeling like himself again. Despite his OPS dropping under .800 last season, Maguire pointed out that Trout has a lot left in the proverbial tank offensively.
He may have struck out a lot last season (178, second-most in his career), but his plate discipline ranked in the 92nd percentile. His 15.8 percent barrel rate was in the 93rd percentile and his 49.3 percent hard-hit rate was in the 85th percentile.
He’s still elite, he just needs to stay healthy. The Angels probably won’t contend for the playoffs this year, but if the team gets a textbook Trout season, who knows what it could accomplish.