Earlier this week, Los Angeles Angels slugger Mike Trout went on the IL after tearing his meniscus in his left knee which will require surgery.
At the time of his injury, Trout was leading the AL in HR with 10. While Trout is expected to return to uniform before season's end it will mark the fourth consecutive season in which he has missed significant time due to injury:
Trout missed all but 36 games of the 2021 season with a strained calf that healed confoundingly slowly. He missed five weeks of the 2022 season with a back injury, although he still hit 40 homers.
Trout then broke a bone in his hand on a foul ball last July 3. He tried to return in August when it briefly looked like the Angels might make a postseason run, but he played only one painful game before shutting it down for the year.
Trout's string of injuries prompted ESPN's Stephen A. Smith to go nuclear:
How the hell is he always hurt? I don’t understand this. It drives me nuts when I see baseball players get hurt. What is it that you’re doing with yourself physically that you can’t stay healthy playing baseball? Now, you get hit by a pitch or something, that’s different, I get all of that. With these oblique injuries, you’re running around bases, catching one, then you’re running out for a fly ball, and all of a sudden, something gets tweaked. What the hell is going on?
Clearly, Smith knows nothing of baseball let alone that it is a 162-game season not including spring training and the post-season. It is physically grueling and becomes more so with age.
In this respect, Trout reminds me a great deal of Ken Griffey, Jr. Junior Griffey was arguably the greatest player to wear a baseball uniform during the 1990s while Trout was arguably the greatest player to wear a baseball uniform in the 2010s. By the 2000s, Griffey, Jr could no longer stay healthy and now in the 2020s it is Trout who struggles to play a full season.
Between 1990 and 1999, while in a Seattle Mariners uniform, Griffey, Jr. made 10 consecutive AL All-Star Teams, won 10 consecutive Gold Gloves, 8 Silver Sluggers, won the AL MVP in 1997 and finished in the top five in AL MVP four times.
Griffey, Jr. was traded to the Cincinnati Reds in 2000. After a good inaugural season in the Queen City, Griffey, Jr. was hit by the injury bug. Between 2001 and 2006, Griffey, Jr. missed more than 400 games due to injury never playing more than 130 games in a season.
As for Trout, between 2012 and 2020 he was named to 8 AL All-Star Teams, won the Silver Slugger 8 times and won the AL MVP thrice while finishing runner up four times with two additional top five finishes. Unfortunately, Trout's body is betraying as Junior Griffey's did.
Although Griffey, Jr. finished his career with 630 HR, he likely would have passed 700 HR if he had those 400 plus games back. Trout currently has 378 career HR. He would have far surpassed 400 had he had the chance to have played in 250 more games since 2021.
I'm not the only one who has been likening Trout to Griffey, Jr. in this way. Consider the words of Zachary D. Rymer of Bleacher Report who wrote on X, "Mike Trout vs. Ken Griffey Jr. through the age of 30 is a lot more fun to ponder than Mike Trout vs. Ken Griffey Jr. after the age of 31."
In the end time gets us all. It caught up with Ken Griffey, Jr. Now it is Mike Trout's turn not to bat.
No comments:
Post a Comment