Mike Trout Will Have Season-Ending Surgery, But He'll Win The MVP Anyway And It Won't Be Close

First Christian Yelich, and now Mike Trout. This one’s a little easier to take because A.) The Angels were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs in July, B.) Mike Trout could’ve had season-ending surgery in June and still won the American League MVP award, and C.) No one watches west coast baseball anyway, so nobody’s really missing anything.

Still, another amazing season in the books for Trout, who continues to build a case for what could eventually become the greatest statistical career of all-time. A career high 45 homers, a third straight season of an OPS north of a thousand (1.083) leading the league each year, a third straight season with an OPS+ north of 180 (184) leading the league in each of the last five years, a third straight year with a slugging percentage north of .600 (.645) leading the league in three out of the last five years, his fourth time leading the league in walks (110), and the fourth straight year that he’s led the league in on-base percentage (.438).

He’s just the best. Everybody knows that, because it’s been beaten into our brains over the last eight years, each of which he’s been an All Star. Trout leads the majors in both fWAR (8.6) and bWAR (8.3), so he’ll cruise to his third MVP award. In the last eight seasons, Trout has either won or finished runner-up for the MVP seven times. The only year he didn’t finish first or second was the year that he got hurt, only played 114 games and still finished fourth.