All is good in Anaheim Mike Trout wins his third AL MVP Award

The big question last winter was whether Mike Trout would sign an extension with the Angels that would keep him in Angel Red for essentially the rest of his career.

On March 28th, 2019 the Angels announced that Mike Trout had agreed to a 12-year extension worth approximately 426 million dollars.  Halo Nation was overjoyed with the announcement, but some pundits wondered if Trout would produce at the same level after getting his big payday.

It didn’t take long Trout to show his big payday was well worth it.  In his first season under his new extension Trout set career highs in many categories, including home runs with 45, Slugging with a .645 average there as well.  If not for getting injured and missing 28 games he would have set career-highs in walks and RBIs. Those numbers were good enough to help Trout win his third AL MVP Award.

Trout’s WAR was 8.3 was second in the league and he almost won the home run title if not for Jorge Soler smacking two homers on the final day of the season to beat Trout out by two.

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The same argument against Trout winning the award was in play as it was in 2016 when Trout last won the award. Trout played for a losing team.  Second place finisher Alex Bregman was on the AL Pennant winning Houston Astros squad that had the best record in the majors and came within in a few innings of their second World Series title in three seasons.

It was a very close vote as Trout just edged out Bregman by 20 points 355 to 335 with the A’s Marcus Semien finishing third with 228 points.  Trout and Bregman collected all 30 first and second place votes with Trout getting 17 first place votes and Bregman getting 13 first place votes.

Mike Trout has now won three of the five MVP awards in Angels history. Don Baylor won the award for the first time in 1979 with a .296 average 36 homers and 139 RBIs.  Twenty five years later Vladimir Guerrero won the award in 2004 with a .337 batting average with 39 homers and 126 RBIs.

Trout also won the AL MVP award in 2014 and 2016 and finished second in 2012, 2013, 2015, and last season.  His only non-top two finishes was in 2017 when he missed 48 games due to a thumb injury and he finished fourth that season.

With Trout winning the AL MVP it completed a Southern California sweep of baseball’s top honor as earlier the LA Dodgers Cody Bellinger won his first MVP Award beating out the Brewers Christian Yelich and the Nationals Anthony Rendon.  This was the second time in five years that an Angel and Dodger garnered the MVP award in the same season as Clayton Kershaw and Mike Trout pulled the trick in 2014.  The Yankees and Dodgers pulled the trick numerous times in the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Congratulations to Mike Trout you are simply the best once again.  Now let’s win a pennant in 2020!!