Los Angeles Angels

Health Check

“The idea that Mike Trout, the game’s best player, bar none, would someday leave the Halos for greener pastures is one that gives nightmares galore to anybody in the Halosphere — fans and teammates and f.o. executives alike. So that’s why keeping Mike Trout happy and making sure he’s not lumped in with a bunch of mediocre squares for the final years on his current contract is so high up on Billy Eppler’s to-do list.

Right now, Mike Trout is more than happy; he’s absolutely ecstatic. He has been vocal about his excitement over the team snagging Shohei Ohtani (or, rather, Ohtani snagging the Angels) and he was given some extra enthusiasm over some other recent Billy Eppler acquisitions, as well. More on those in a bit, but the plain and simple truth is that Eppler has put together what looks to be the best Halos team Mike Trout has ever been a part of, and that makes him all smiles out in Tempe.

Those smiles are huge, not in a literal sense, but in the sense that it means the Halos can put all the side drama behind them and focus on kicking some AL rear end, which will then go a long way to cementing Trout’s place in the Big A for the rest of his MLB career.”

—Halos Heaven

Key Player

It feels weird to sit down and ponder the question of “Who is the Angels player people should tune in for the most in 2018?” and NOT have it be Mike Trout. I mean, the Halos have Mike Trout, the greatest player in the game right now, a perennial MVP runner-up or MVP winner, a fixture at the All-Star Game every summer, an electric, human highlight reel worthy of as much praise as anybody could possibly heap upon him, and then some.

Yet, here I am, writing about someone different. That’s just how unique the addition of Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani is for the Halos; he’s still unproven on the MLB field, but he’s already commanding the crazy levels of interest and enchantment that Trout has cultivated over his six MLB seasons. Mike Trout is the easy answer when it comes to key player, but it’s quite difficult to ignore a player of Ohtani’s caliber.

When’s the last time we saw such an incomparable talent as Ohtani? How could any fan of the Halos, or just an MLB casual fan, for that matter, NOT want to make some time in their day/evening to sit down and watch a guy who is going to be a flame-throwing starting pitcher one day, and a dangerous DH a couple days later? When there’s a guy who gets nicknames like “the Japanese Babe Ruth” thrown at him, there is just no way that anybody who has even the most fleeting interest in the national pastime could resist checking him out on the Angels, even if just for a couple innings.

For that reason, and still much to my surprise, I’ve got to say that Shohei Ohtani is the one key player on the Angels that is going to be most deserving of anybody’s attention once the 2018 season is underway.

—Josh Mayhood, Halos Heaven

Best Case

It feels weird not being able to say the Angels are obviously going to blow it because their farm system can’t help them and their budget is stretched too thin and there are too many obvious holes for them to avoid being sunk by at least one of those two facts. We have a new-look Angels team here, where Mike Trout is still at the center of it all, but Albert Pujols’ role has been reduced by the introduction of starting pitcher/designated hitter Shohei Ohtani, Justin Upton is around for the whole year instead of a few months, and Ian Kinsler has been brought in to help plug a whole at the keystone. If anyone out west is going to challenge the Astros, it’s this team.

Worst Case

All of that assumes that Ian Kinsler still has something to offer, Shohei Ohtani won’t have a rough rookie season that suggests the 24-year-old Nippon Professional Baseball import maybe should have had a few hundred at-bats at Triple-A first, Mike Trout will be healthy all season, Albert Pujols won’t find himself in the lineup more often than the Angels should risk, and the Los Angeles rotation will actually manage to avoid catastrophic arm injuries for the first time in [counts] oh, wow, this could all go to hell in a hurry still.