The Angels' former Big 3 is the greatest "what if" in baseball history

The Los Angeles Angels had three transcendent players on their roster. From the 2020 season through 2023, the Angels wanted to pencil future Hall of Famer Mike Trout, now-future Hall of Famer Shohei Ohtani and World Series champion Anthony Rendon into their lineups as much as possible. Trout had previously won three American League MVPs and Ohtani was showing naysayers that he could, in fact, succeed as a two-way player in MLB by the time the Angels signed Anthony Rendon to a seven-year, $245 million contract to leave the reigning champs in the Washington Nationals.

Based on Rendon's body of work at that point, the Angels thought that they were adding a bona fide star to their batch of stars. However, we all know what actually transpired after Rendon became an Angel...

The Angels' former Big 3 is the greatest "what if" in baseball history

A short time after Rendon became the Angels' big-ticket third baseman of the future, the pandemic happened. Trout and Rendon led the team in games played (53 and 52), while Ohtani managed just 44 of a possible 60 during one of the weirdest seasons in baseball history. Justin Upton, Albert Pujols, David Fletcher, Jo Adell, Taylor Ward, Luis Rengifo, Andrelton Simmons, Jared Walsh were all on that team, but the Angels missed the playoffs despite a solid-looking lineup.

Let's flash forward. "During the 4 years they were all on the Angels together, Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani & Anthony Rendon played a combined 89 games together" -- according to @swillysports of Jomboy Media. That's should be Angels fans' answer to any question regarding why Trout and Ohtani never could make the playoffs together. The 2021 season saw Trout play just 36 games, and Rendon 58. The next two seasons, Ohtani's last in Anaheim, was more of the same -- especially for Rendon, less so for Trout.

The COVID-shortened 2020 season could easily have been the year for the Angels to end their postseason drought. Rendon was good that season, Trout was healthy and Ohtani was finding his way. Ohtani, Trout and Rendon easily could have played 89 games together that season should there have been a 162 game regular season.

The Angels are to MLB what the Brooklyn Nets are to the NBA in many ways, but definitely in the sense that COVID-19 derailed what should have been a dynastic core group of players. For the Nets, they had such a theoretically elite core of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden but everything got messed up from the fall-out of the NBA's COVID season. The same goes for Trout, Ohtani and Rendon. A 60 game season does not indicate how good a team is, and that Angels team could really have become something.