If the Angels are smart, they’ll trade Mike Trout. If the Phillies are smart, they’ll resist the (understandable) urge.

The question isn't what it would take for the Angels to trade Mike Trout. It's what it would take for the Phillies to trade for him.

Mike Trout has seven years at $37.1 million per year left on his contract with the Angels.Read moreAshley Landis / AP

by David Murphy | Columnist

Published Nov. 29, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

I hate to be that guy. But, here we go again. Except, it’s different now.

For years, there was an easy rebuttal to the city of Philadelphia’s constant ooh-la-la-ing over the thought of Mike Trout in a Phillies uniform. Why would the Angels trade the best player in modern history while he is in the midst of an unprecedented prime?

General managers like to say that nobody is untouchable. But Trout may have been the least touchable player in baseball history. Phillies fans thought he was the savior of the world. And he was. Da Vinci’s.

Priceless.

Well, Trout, 32, sure has a price now. Seven years at $37.1 million per year. Plus, whatever potential future stars the Angels demand. All for a guy who has averaged 79 games over the last three seasons while seeing his strikeout rate balloon and his walk rate plummet at the exact age when the overwhelming number of superstars see a steep decline in production.

The framing of the question is all wrong. It isn’t, “What would it take for the Angels to trade Trout?” It’s, “What would it take for somebody to trade for him?”

It feels awfully weird to write that. Trout in a Phillies uniform makes so much sense on so many levels. A right-handed bat with one of the game’s most consistent swings and more home runs than Ronald Acuña Jr. over the last two seasons? And he loves da Birds? Damn the actuarial tables and do the deal.

There’s no doubt that Trout would transform this Phillies lineup. When healthy, he still looks a lot like the guy who will go down as the best all-around player of the post-steroid era. Only Aaron Judge has a higher weighted on-base average among right-handed hitters over the last two seasons. During that stretch, Trout has 58 home runs and a .941 OPS in 861 plate appearances. Compare that to Acuña’s 56 home runs and .908 OPS in 1,268 PAs.

Trout isn’t just a good hitter. He’s the exact type of hitter the Phillies have shown they need. It starts with his consistency. He reached base in 70 of the 82 games this season, or 85.3%. That’s better than Kyle Schwarber (81.8) and Trea Turner (80.6) and everybody else in the Phillies lineup besides Bryce Harper (86.5). It’s a heck of a lot better than Nick Castellanos (74.5), whom Trout would presumably replace.

Bottom line, Trout is still very good at baseball. One of the best. Put a healthy Trout into the Phillies lineup this past postseason and the city would still be recovering from the parade. If the only thing that matters is winning a World Series next season, there isn’t a move the Phillies could conceivably make that would make a bigger impact on that goal.

Problem is, that’s not the only thing that matters. It can’t be. And, frankly, nobody in this city should want it to be. Not if you really care about Mike Trout and his legacy and his love for all things Philly. Because if history tells us anything, it’s that Trout would be far more likely to spend most of his seven years with the Phillies as a drain on their ability to compete.

The red flags are already there. Trout is at a stage of his career where you can’t just compare him to his peers. You have to compare him to himself. That’s how aging curves work. Decline tends to be exponential, like radioactive decay. Doesn’t matter if you are Mike Trout or Josh Harrison. Father Time exacts his vengeance in equal doses.

Trout’s injury issues over the last couple of years have been coupled with significant regressions in his strikeout rate (from 21.3% of PAs in 2011-20 to 28.2% in 2021-23) and walk rate (from 15.5 in 2012-21 to 11.5 in 2022-23). He is hitting the ball to the center of the field far less often than he did during his first 10 seasons in the majors. Again, his numbers are still excellent. But there are signs of change, and those changes tend to snowball.

The thing about superstars is that their half lives are much steeper. The raw numbers disappear in bigger chunks. It’s a problem because they get paid in raw cash. The production quickly falls out of line with the salary. Over the last three years, Giancarlo Stanton has gone from a 31-year-old with an .870 OPS to a 32-year-old with a .759 OPS to a 33-year-old with a .695 OPS. Next year, he will be a 34-year-old making $25 million. Same goes for the next year. And the next year. And the next year.

Stanton is not an outlier. He is the norm. Since 2017, there hasn’t been a single outfielder who has posted an .850-plus OPS between the ages of 32-34 (minimum 1,000 plate appearances). The only two outfielders who have cracked the .800 threshold are Charlie Blackmon (.847) and Michael Brantley (.841). Matt Joyce and Andrew McCutchen are both in the top five.

McCutchen is a prime example of what happens to players once they exit their peak. He was never on Trout’s level, but he was in that next tier, posting an .866 OPS between the ages of 22 and 30. At 31-32, his OPS dropped to .804. From 33 to 36, it is .750.

It happens to everyone. That’s just life. The only question is when. The answer tends to be right around the age Trout is right now. Look at the hitters who won the MVP award from 2011-18. The guys who have already reached Trout’s age: Ryan Braun, Buster Posey, Miguel Cabrera, McCutchen, Josh Donaldson, Kris Bryant, Stanton. Look at where their careers went after the age of 32.

Problem is, the Phillies would be paying Trout to be a superstar through the age of 38. His current contract carries an average annual value of $37.1 million for the next seven seasons. Imagine if the Phillies had signed any one of the aforementioned players to a seven-year, $260 million contract at the age of 32.

Granted, all of this assumes that the Angels would not be kicking in any money. But they’d have to include an awful lot to make it worth parting with the sort of package the Phillies would presumably need to include in any deal. Taking back Castellanos would be a start, but that would only defray the real cost of Trout’s contract to seven years and $200 million. And the real impact on their disposable payroll would jump back up to $37.1 million in the final four years of the deal, after Castellanos’ current deal expires.

I’m just not sure there is a way to structure a deal where it doesn’t saddle the Phillies with an intolerable level of risk. Even if they were only paying Trout $25 million a year, that would still leave them with nearly $80 million committed to Trout, Turner and Harper through 2030. Harper is 31 and Turner will be 31 in June.

There’s a difference between prioritizing the present over the future and throwing away the future entirely. The Phillies simply cannot afford the risk of adding another seven years of late-stage superstar. That’s how you wind up with another seven years of famine.