Do the Angels owner and general manager disagree with Mike Trout's rehab methods?

Mike Trout will return in 2025, and expectations are low. Well, they're not low, as the Angels cannot accomplish anything without their star. The Trout injury history is a delicate situation that's caused much consternation throughout the Angels organization. The Angels want to slowly bring Trout back-up-to-speed, but also have him make up for lost time. They want him available, but also playing hard. They want vintage Trout, but also just any version of him. Perry Minasian and Arte Moreno are onus on Mike Trout now.

“We don't need Mike Trout to be an MVP. We just need Mike Trout to get on the field,” Moreno said. “Because whether he's a DH or playing a corner, whatever he's doing, when Mike Trout comes up to bat, it really protects the other guys and he can change the game with one swing.”

This quote is a tad confusing. Is Moreno insinuating that Trout is not playing through his injuries, and should be? Saying he just needs to get on the field might be implying that he does not return to the field unless he is the best version of himself. He's saying that even if he's a diminished version of himself, and needs to DH or play a corner more due to injuries, he should play anyway.

“It comes back to the players we’re spending on,” Minasian said. “We need our best players to play. They know that, there’s no secret. They’ve been told that. “Mike, he’s missing an average of 96 per year? That’s not going to work."

Moreno and Minasian use a lot of charged language when discussing Trout. "JUST PLAY ALREADY!" is maybe not the best way to communicate with your superstar who clearly does everything he can to be out there, and wants to get back to the best version of himself. Trout's not choosing to get injured.

Sam Blum and Andy McCullough wrote a long piece on Trout's baseball mortality due to his injury history and relative ineffectiveness in recent years. They asked Trout to his face about how long he takes for rehab. They refer to him as a perfectionist, and flat-out say that he could have returned to the field earlier than he did.

And at times, he has eschewed chances to return when, at least in theory, he could have played — though, crucially, he might not have been at his best. In April, he was given the option to DH all year instead of getting surgery for his torn meniscus. “It was an option they put out there,” Trout said. “I felt the best option for me was to get it right.” And last season, Trout returned for only one game after breaking his hamate six weeks prior, instead opting to shut himself down for the season. Both instances would have required playing at less than 100 percent. And in both instances, the team was not in the playoff race.

Trout flatly denied that his elongated recoveries from injuries had anything to do with a hesitancy to play if he couldn’t perform up to his own expectations.

“Nah,” he said, then repeated it quickly seven more times.

It's frustrating that the Angels top brass is now pointing fingers at Trout when he's given them better production than 99.9% of baseball players throughout history. Stop blaming Trout, and start blaming yourselves for not building better depth. The Atlanta Braves, Perry Minasian's previous club, just made the playoffs without a full year of Spencer Strider or Ronald Acuña. They compete every year despite losing players like Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson. They also won a World Series without Acuña. Minasian knows what it takes to build a winner, he sees it with his former club, so stop scapegoating Trout. Moreno no longer knows what it takes to build a winner, so he certainly needs to put more respect on Trout's name.