Projecting Mike Trout's Career: Can the Angels Star Make the Hall of Fame?

Maren Angus-Coombs | Aug 6, 2024

Kiyoshi Mio-USA TODAY Sports

Mike Trout isn't playing in another game for the Los Angeles Angels this season after tearing his surgically repaired meniscus.

The center fielder will require surgery — again — and once again, Angels fans are heartbroken to see their superstar's season come to an end way too soon.

Trout was once on pace to join the ranks of baseball's greatest outfielders such as Willie Mays and Barry Bonds but now, in his 30s and battling injuries, his career is looking more like that of Ken Griffey Jr.

With the injury, Trout has now played just 266 games over the past four seasons. When this season ends, he'll have played in just 41 percent of the Angels’ schedule for the last four years, and 59 percent since the start of 2017 — the equivalent of 96 games in a 162-game season.

Trout has lost more than three full seasons of playing time in an eight-year span.

With that being said, is Trout still headed toward the Baseball Hall of Fame?

According to Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs, Trout doesn't have anything to worry about with his three MVP awards and 11 All-Star selections.

“I can’t really imagine looking at what’s happened to him over the past several years and judging him so harshly that he would be deprived,” Jaffe said. “I could see him not being a unanimous selection or not being a 99.9% selection — maybe a 95% selection, because there are always some who think they should withhold their blessing, just as they do for anybody this side of Derek Jeter.

“But I don’t think it’s going to be a real obstacle to his selection.”

Trout and Griffey are on parallel paths. Griffey got in because of what he accomplished in his 20s.

“His attendance was sporadic in his 30s,” Jaffe said, referring to Griffey’s injuries, “but everything he did in his 20s really got him in that position.”

Griffey finished his career with impressive counting stats: 630 home runs, 2,781 hits, and 83.8 WAR. Trout has 1,648 hits and 378 homers through his age-32 season, a point at which Griffey had 2,039 hits and 468 homers. Trout's WAR is already beyond Griffey, at 86.0.

Jaffe noted that BBWAA voters have elected high-WAR players with more modest counting stats in recent years such as Larry Walker, Scott Rolen and Todd Helton, none of whom came anywhere close to 3,000 hits or 500 home runs.

Given the length of his contract and his drive to compete, Trout has enough left in the tank to get him over the 2,000-hit mark and 400-home run hump and as the upcoming ballots tell, there could be some sub-2,000 hit players like Andruw Jones (1,933), Chase Utley (1,885) and Buster Posey (1,500) who get in. All of these indicators suggest Trout will be giving a speech in Cooperstown some day.