The Angels Are About To Lock Down Mike Trout With A 12-Year, $430 Million Contract Extension
HOOOOOOO BOY! So much for Bryce Harper recruiting Mike Trout to Philly! The Angels are reportedly on the verge of making the best baseball player on the planet the richest athlete in the history of professional sports. Yup, a motherfucking TWELVE-year, four hundred and thirty MILLION dollar contract extension.
Two years away from Trout’s free agency, we watched guys like Harper get $330 million and Manny Machado get $300 million. But with Trout’s free agency looming, that number was always on the minds of baseball fans, players and executives because Trout doesn’t just set the bar; he is the bar. With other young stars in this game coming up on free agency, having guys like Harper and Machado as bench marks sure is nice, but until it’s established what the best player in this game is truly worth, then there’s no way to figure out the true market value of everyone beneath him. Now we know. An average annual value of $35.8 million per year over 12 years.
And what’s crazy is that he’s actually still underpaid. Yep. He is. We’ll get to that in a second. But there was just no way that he was ever going to be paid what he’s truly worth, as we’re literally watching one of the best baseball players of all-time, while there’s never been a precedent set for such a talent at the same time that Major League Baseball was raking in record revenue numbers. The numbers, when you stack them up against active players in the league, is one thing, but for a player who has only been in the league for eight seasons, they’re mind-blowing when you stack them up against the greatest players in the history of the sport.
The average wins above replacement for a Hall of Fame position player is 69. Trout’s career WAR going into the 2019 season is 64.3 and he’s only going into his age-27 season, which is considered to be the first of a hitter’s peak seasons. That’s right. Eight years in the league, an All Star in all seven of his full seasons, an MVP or a runner-up finish in six of his seven full seasons with the only season outside of that being the one where he was injured and still finished fourth.
His career WAR is already higher than Dave Winfield (64.2), Jackie Robinson (61.4), Harmon Killebrew (60.4), Mike Piazza (59.6), Yogi Berra (59.4), Vladimir Guerrero (59.4), Hank Greenberg (57.6), among a number of other of Cooperstown’s finest. Again, he passed all of them by his age-26 season.
According to FanGraphs, Trout was worth $78.6 million last season, his best season ever. In total, Trout’s production at the major league level has been worth $494.5 million, while he’s been paid a total of $78.3 million. There’s no way that Trout could ever be compensated fairly for his on-field play. It would simply break the system. But perhaps a $430 million contract extension to stay with the Angels is a good place to start.