Angels' refusal to build adequate depth may put Mike Trout's season in peril

While it seems that the Angels have avoided calamity after Mike Trout left April 30th's game against the Seattle Mariners, he and the team are not out of the woods yet. It was his surgically repaired left knee that was feeling sore as he busted it down the first baseline, the same knee in which he suffered not one, but two meniscus tears last year.

The hopeful near-miss highlights the flaws in the Angels' process that put him in this predicament to begin with. Sure, injuries can happen to anyone at any time, but for a player like Mike Trout, who has averaged just 66.5 games played over the last four seasons, extreme caution must be utilized.

That's why it has been extremely curious that he has played every single one of the Halos' 29 games this season, the exact same number he tallied in all of 2024, with 22 starts in right field and 7 at DH. One has to wonder why no off days for Trout in the early going?

Clearly, Trout is one of, if not the most important, Angels' players if they are to achieve their goal of playing competitive baseball in 2025; however, being competitive means playing meaningful games with a healthy Trout beyond April.

The team wisely made the decision to move him off of center field just ahead of spring training, but the process in how they came to that decision and the way they've managed his playing time since should raise question marks.

The Angels have repeatedly refused to build adequate depth, putting additional pressure on Mike Trout to play every day

The opening salvo for the Angels' offseason was the October 31st swap of Griffin Canning for Jorge Soler, a player who has always been a primary DH and won't play more than a handful of games in the outfield., limiting the club's ability to protect Trout by keeping him off the field while having his bat in the lineup.

Next, one of their most hotly pursued free-agent targets was Anthony Santander, a poor defensive corner outfielder with eyes on a full-time DH role who ultimately spurned the Angels' advances, signing with the Toronto Blue Jays instead.

In that context, the move to move Trout to right field was unexpected and seemed reactionary instead of well thought out. The club then faced the prospect of a pair of disappointing top prospects, Jo Adell and Mickey Moniak, battling it out for the starting center field role before Moniak's surprising release.

Elsewhere on the diamond, the club was in dire need of an infield solution to handle either second or third base, depending on where the preferred alignment would be for the versatile Luis Rengifo. Rengifo is an injury-prone player in his own right, and thus, maybe more than one infield reinforcement would have been prudent.

The Angels settled on Yoan Moncada to fill the hot corner role, a player who was limited to just 12 games last year and is currently on the injured list for the past few weeks so far this season.

As a result of the Angels' decisions, their primary backup outfielder, Kyren Paris, has become their starting second baseman, leaving just Trout, Adell, Taylor Ward, and the occasional defensive appearance for Jose Soler as options to roam the outfield.

The not-surprising but underwhelming performance of infield depth options like Kevin Newman and minor league free-agent signee Tim Anderson has necessitated Paris's claiming of second base, although even he has come crashing down to earth after a scorching hot start.

The bottom line is the Angels' penny-pinching ways and lack of an overarching offseason plan left them without adequate depth, and therefore have had to rely on Trout to play every single day in order to have any hope of remaining competitive.

The ironic part is that the more they lean on Trout, the higher the likelihood is that the season gets flushed down the drain as his aging and injury-ravaged body is asked to shoulder more and more.

It comes as no surprise, but failing (yet again) to adequately build depth is just another in a long line of organizational missteps that have squandered the career of one of baseball's all-time greats. This latest incident may be nothing more than just a scare, but next time they might not be so lucky.

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