The Angels have agreed to a record-shattering contract with superstar outfielder Mike Trout, according to ESPN's Jeff Passan. Trout stands to earn more than $430MM over a twelve-year term.
It will not include any opt-outs, per Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times.
It’s a contract befitting Trout’s status as a player of historic excellence. The peerless center fielder was two years from free agency, playing on the remainder of his earlier six-year extension, but decided to commit the rest of his prime to the organization that drafted and developed him.
Trout was already due $66.5MM for the 2019 and 2020 seasons under the previous deal negotiated by agent Craig Landis. It seems, then, that he’s now set to take down an average annual value in excess of $36MM over the new decade of campaigns covered by this agreement. Trout will turn 40 during the final season (2030) of the deal.
There are some eye-popping figures in there, to be sure, but frankly they pale in comparison to Trout’s own productivity on the ballfield. Since his first full season of play, in 2012, Trout has vastly outproduced every player in the game with a tally of 64.2 fWAR and 63.8 rWAR. Others have approached and even bettered Trout in single seasons, but none of his contemporaries has maintained anything approaching his nearly unfathomably consistent level of top-end output.
Viewed in that light, there’s an argument to be made that this deal actually underpays Trout. It’s important to bear in mind that he was still two years shy of free agency, which he’d have reached at 29 years of age owing to his earlier contract. In that regard, Nolan Arrenado had more leverage relative to his own abilities. But it’s notable that Arrenado's new contract checks in with a $33.4MM AAV for the seven new seasons that it added to his existing season of control. Unsurprisingly, Trout’s new deal easily tops the previous record for total guarantee that was recently set by Bryce Harper and the Phillies.
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