Remember When Mike Trout Was Only Going To Miss 6-8 Weeks? Well Now The Angels Are Discussing Whether Or Not To Shut Him Down For The Season

If you're an Angels fan this has to frustrate you, right? On May 18th the Angels tweeted that they were putting Mike Trout on the IL with a calf strain and that it was expected he'd miss anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks. Today is exactly 15 weeks since that tweet. He's no where closer to returning than he was at 8 weeks. Just recently he started traveling with the team on road trips, but it doesn't seem like he's any closer to playing and at this point why would he? The Angels aren't in a playoff race, they're under .500 AGAIN and will yet again be home in October. Trout shouldn't want to come back, rest up and hopefully be 100% for next season. This just begs the question, how does a calf strain that seems pretty common put the best player in baseball out for 15+ weeks? The injury had to be much worse than what we were originally told, has to be right? Would he be pushing to play if the Angels were in a dogfight for the Wild Card? You'd hope so, but it's like we don't hear anything about Trout. You see him a little with the team, but thats it. This may go down in history as the worst calf strain EVER.

Now a strain is a tear, so was it a much worse strain than the Angels let on? Did he re-aggravate it somewhere in the rehab process?  No one knows and it's kind of strange. You'd think we'd get updates on the best player in the game, but nope the Angels are just quiet. He's done some on the field rehab stuff one the last 6 weeks but nothing too serious, just drills and it was reported that he "ran the bases" on August 27th, so is he that hurt where just simply running the bases is enough to shelf him for the season? If that left calf is still that sore after your run of the mill on the field rehab tests than you midas whale put a fork in him and see him next Spring. Maddon said the other day that Trout had some good workout days and then came up sore, so that's not a good sign. At this point you're probably better off getting surgery to fix it. 

This sucks, we all wanted to see a full season of him and Shohei Ohtani healthy. Could you imagine that? Both guys sprinting towards 50 bombs down the stretch? Talk about must see TV, it would have been insanely awesome. Instead we get shots of Trout and his strained calf in the dugout while Ohtani does things that would make Babe Ruth blush. He stayed relatively healthy in his early career, but since 2016 the games missed number has started to rise. Please god don't let this turn into an every year thing with him, these soft tissue injuries, muscle injuries, strains and all that. They tend to linger, they don't just go away. Lets hope Maddon does the smart thing and shut him down and we get a fully recovered and healthy Mike Trout in 2022.