Trout, Angels close to record $432 mil, 12-year deal

I am so happy about this! Phillies and Yankees act like they owned Trout since 2012. Next up, I hope Arte and Anaheim could work out a deal to keep the team in Anaheim. Moving the team to Long Beach would a mistake as traffic there has been getting hideous over the years.

Funny how people will get up in arms about a CEO making tens of millions a year, but express joy when a baseball player (or substitute your favorite sport) gets paid an equally obscene amount. I don't care if his arm's made of gold--no individual is worth that amount of money.

What an insane world we live in when one guy can get paid $100,000 a day for the next 12 years playing his hobby, while at the same time hundreds of millions of people are surviving on a dollar a day or a little more doing the most squalid jobs imaginable.

It is only an 8 percent raise over the next 2 years so money left on the table again. But as long as Trout gets a better contract than Bryce Harper and Manny Machado I'm good.

At least more people know the name now. Because if he stays healthy (and center field is tough) he could well turn out to be the best that ever played the game.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mike-trout-is-a-430-million-bargain/

*At first glance, about $36 million per year seems like a tremendous deal for the Angels. According to FanGraphs’ estimated market values based on wins above replacement (WAR), a player with Trout’s 2018 production should have been worth about $79 million last season. That’s nothing new for Trout: FanGraphs estimates that he was worth $55 million (in 70 percent of a full season) in 2017, $78 million in 2016 and $74 million in 2016. So if Trout continues his recent pace, the Angels will basically be paying him half of what he’d be worth on the open market over the next few seasons.*

*Of course, Trout is also 27 this year, traditionally the age at which baseball players peak. Trout’s new deal will take him through 2030, his age-38 season. Even though no player in baseball history has posted more career WAR through their age-26 season than Trout, it’s probably safe to assume that Trout won’t continue to be a 10-WAR-per-season machine throughout the entire life of this contract.*