The Los Angeles Angels failed to do much of anything productive team-wise with Shohei Ohtani. The two-way phenom was with the Angels for each of his first six seasons in the majors. He won two MVPs, and it can be argued that he should’ve won three. Yet, the Angels finished with a grand total of zero postseason appearances. To take it a step further, the Angels never finished with a winning record when Ohtani was with the organization.
It was an epic failure on the Angels’ part to not field a winning team to surround Ohtani. One player who often gets lumped in these conversations with Ohtani is Mike Trout. The question “How does the team with the two best players in baseball not win?” was asked numerous times during Ohtani’s tenure in Anaheim, and will continue to be asked for a long time.
The Angels failing Ohtani can’t be denied as they did not field a winning team to surround him, but the lumping in with Trout never quite made sense. The two were rarely on the field at the same time, especially once Ohtani developed into the MVP-caliber player he is right now.
Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani played in 46.6% of the Angels games together over the last six years
Some final Trout-Ohtani numbers:
They were in the lineup together in just 46.6% of the Angels games over the past six seasons.
The Angels were 194-211 (.480) in those games.
They were 207-258 (.445) with one or neither of them in the lineup.
— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) December 13, 2023
The Angels record of 194-211 with Ohtani and Trout in the lineup together obviously is not good enough, and it speaks to the Angels not doing a good enough job with their team building. The Angels had arguably the top two players in the game in the last six years and failed to do anything good when they were on the field together. What should be pointed out, however, is they played less than half the time together.
Ohtani missed substantial time in each of his first three seasons before finally being fully healthy and winning the MVP in 2021. Ohtani never even became a full-time two-way player until that 2021 season.
Fittingly, the 2021 season is when Trout’s injury issues started to really take a turn for the worst. The superstar outfielder was limited to just 36 games that season as he watched Ohtani win the MVP. He was healthier in 2022, but was still limited to 119 games. He missed a lot of time in the middle of the season, and by the time he returned from a lengthy IL stint in late-August, the Angels were out of it.
This past season saw Trout remain healthy almost through the entire first half before a hamate fracture ended his season. He tried to come back and even played in one game before shutting things down. Overall, he appeared in 82 games for the Angels in 2023.
By the time Ohtani actually had turned into the player that earned himself a $700 million contract, Trout had missed more than 50% of the games the Angels had played in. It’s very hard to lump these two together when they rarely even saw the field at the same time.
Their overall record together backs up the fact that the Angels failed Ohtani. There’s no way these two MVP’s should have a losing record in the games they appeared in together. Still, it would’ve been nice to have seen them play together more. The record would’ve at least been a bit better, you’d think.
