Does the Angels owner and general manager disagree with Mike Trout's rehab methods?

Mike Trout will return in 2025 and expectations are low. Well, they are not lowly, because without their star the angels cannot achieve anything. The Trout injury story is a delicate situation that has caused great consternation throughout the Angels organization. The Angels want to slowly get Trout back up to speed, but also get him to make up for lost time. They want him to be available but also play hard. They want vintage trout, but also any version of it. Perry Minasian and Arte Moreno are now in charge of Mike Trout.

“We don’t need Mike Trout as MVP. We just need Mike Trout to get on the field,” Moreno said. “Because whether he's a DH or plays corner, whatever he does, when Mike Trout comes to bat, it really protects the other guys and he can change the game with one hit.”

This quote is a bit confusing. Does Moreno mean Trout isn't playing through his injuries, and should be? Saying he just has to get on the field might mean that he won't return to the field unless he's the best version of himself. He's saying he should still play even if he's a diminished version of himself himself and has to play more downhill games or play corner due to injuries.

“It depends on the players we spend money on,” Minasian said. “We need our best players to play. You know this, there is no secret. That's what they were told. “Mike, he’s missing an average of 96 a year? That won't work.

Moreno and Minasian use highly charged language when talking about trout. “JUST PLAY ALREADY!” may not be the best way to communicate with your superstar, who is obviously doing whatever it takes to be out there and wants to get back to the best version of himself. Trout doesn't want to get hurt.

Sam Blum and Andy McCullough wrote a long article about Trout's baseball mortality due to his injury history and relative ineffectiveness in recent years. They asked Trout to his face how long he needed to rehab. They call him a perfectionist and say outright that he could have returned to the field sooner.

And at times he has missed opportunities to return when, at least in theory, he could have played – although, more importantly, he may not have been at his best. In April, he was given the option to do DH year-round instead of having surgery for his torn meniscus. “It was an option they offered,” Trout said. “I felt like the best option for me was to do it right.” And last season, Trout returned for just one game after suffering a fractured hamate six weeks earlier, opting instead to pause for the season. In both cases it would have been necessary to play at less than 100 percent. And in both cases, the team was not in the playoff race.

Trout flatly denied that his long injury recovery had anything to do with his hesitation to play when he couldn't live up to his own expectations.

“Nope,” he said, then quickly repeated it seven more times.

It's frustrating that the Angels' brass is now pointing the finger at Trout, even though he's given them better performance than 99.9% of baseball players in history. Stop blaming Trout and start blaming yourself for not building better depth. The Atlanta Braves, Perry Minasian's former club, just made the playoffs without a full year of Spencer Strider or Ronald Acuña. They compete every year despite losing players like Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson. They also won a World Series without Acuña. Minasian knows what it takes to produce a winner, he sees it at his former club, so stop making Trout a scapegoat. Moreno no longer knows what it takes to produce a winner, so he definitely needs to give Trout's name more respect.