Aug 24, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Los Angeles Angels center fielder Mike Trout (27) reacts to a strike in the eighth inning against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.Los Angeles Angels won 8-2. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Sousa-USA TODAY Sports
Mike Trout might be the best player in MLB, but he’s stuck on a struggling team. What other players have starred for clubs circling the cellar?
Two weeks ago, Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels celebrated his 25th birthday in a most inauspicious way, putting on a golden sombrero in a 3-1 loss to the Seattle Mariners. That the Angels dropped the game has become a theme in Trout’s fifth full season, as the team find itself in dead last in the American League West, some 20.5 games behind the frontrunning Texas Rangers.
Despite the piling up of losses, though, Trout is currently on pace to do something no one else has ever done in MLB history. His 7.9 bWAR entering play on Thursday leads the majors, and if that lead holds, it would mark the fifth straight time he has done so. No other player has led the league in this statistic five consecutive times to open their career.
Trout is having another standout season, with a slash line of .312/.430/.553, 27 doubles, 24 home runs, 78 RBIs, 21 stolen bases, and an OPS+ of 170. The picture made by his numbers suggest a second AL MVP is well within his grasp, but as the Angels continue to struggle, that possibility seems to shrink.
There have been others in MLB history like Trout. Players who dominated the game individually while their teams wallowed in mediocrity. Hall of Famers who missed out on the feeling of winning big, raising trophies, and having their contributions recognized as they should have been.
A look at the career of Andre Dawson leaves little question that his 2010 induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame was richly deserved. But his one MVP season is not only considered to be one of the biggest misses since the BBWAA started handing out the award, he was also stuck on a Chicago Cubs team that finished 76-85, good for last place in the NL East.
In 1987, Dawson had some gaudy numbers with 49 home runs and 137 RBIs. Yet a deeper look reveals a good but not great year. The Hawk slashed .287/.328/.568, amassed a 130 OPS+, and finished with a bWAR of 4.0. Several other players, including Ozzie Smith of the St. Louis Cardinals and Eric Davis of the Cincinnati Reds, made compelling cases for the MVP, but Dawson’s power numbers were just too much for them to overcome.
In a career that spanned two decades, Dawson had a respectable enough slash line of .279/.323/.482, hit 503 doubles and 438 home runs, and drove in better than 1,500 runs. His 64.5 career bWAR is currently 95th all-time amongst position players, but he only played on a winning team a handful of times and saw the playoffs just twice, and goes down as one of only four men to win an MVP on a last place team.
In his first season with the Philadelphia Phillies after being traded by the St. Louis Cardinals, Steve Carlton put together one of the most dominating seasons any pitcher in MLB has ever had. He won the 1972 NL Cy Young award unanimously and finished fifth in the MVP voting, but the Phillies ended the season 59-97, in the basement of the NL East 37.5 games back of the in-state rival Pittsburgh Pirates.
Carlton went 27-10 in ‘72, with a 1.97 ERA, 2.02 FIP, and 182 ERA+, all of which were tops in the league. He also led the NL with 310 strikeouts, a 3.56 strikeout-to-walk ratio, 30 complete games, and 346.1 innings of work.
In a career that saw him throw over 5,200 innings, Carlton became a member of the 300 win and 3,000 strikeout clubs, placing 11th and 4th, respectively, on the lists at present. He amassed a 90.4 bWAR, won three more Cy Youngs, and eventually helped Philadelphia win the World Series in 1980.
The career of Alex Rodriguez reads like one big tabloid newspaper, and much of the backlash against him began when he left the Seattle Mariners for the Texas Rangers and a 10-year, $250 million contract. Despite A-Rod putting up astronomical numbers in Arlington, the Rangers finished in last place all three seasons he was there.
In his final year with Texas in 2003, Rodriguez won the AL MVP after slashing .298/.396/.600 with 30 doubles, 47 homers, 118 RBIs, and a league-leading 124 runs scored. It was arguably his least productive season with the Rangers, yet garnered the first of three MVPs he would win in his career. The club finished 71-91, 25 games out of first place in the AL West.
Rodriguez averaged 52 home runs and 132 RBIs per season with Texas, missing just one game in three years, and had a bWAR of better than 8.0 in each. Yet the Rangers never won more than 73 games during that time, and A-Rod was essentially given away to the New York Yankees where he would win two more MVPs and get a World Series ring in 2009.
When Cal Ripken won his first AL MVP in 1983, the Baltimore Orioles won 98 games and beat the Phillies four games to one in the World Series. Eight years later, the Iron Man would collect the MVP hardware once more, but the O’s had a season to forget.
In 1991, Baltimore finished the season 67-95, 24 games behind the first place Toronto Blue Jays and saved from the cellar by only a Cleveland Indians team that lost 105 games. The Orioles’ struggles could not, however, be pinned on their ultra-durable shortstop.
Ripken slashed .323/.374/.566 with 46 doubles, 34 home runs, 114 RBIs, and an OPS+ of 162. His 11.5 bWAR was a career best, and ranks 11th for a position player in a single season on the all-time list.
In a 20-year Hall of Fame career, Ripken amassed a 95.5 bWAR total, good for 25th in history among position players, but only saw the postseason three times and never returned to the World Series.
Walter Johnson was perhaps the greatest pitcher in MLB history, yet he spent the majority of his 21-year career playing for loser after loser with the Washington Senators. It was not until he was 36 that the Big Train won a pennant, and in nine of his years in DC, the team finished in sixth place or below.
There was of course no Cy Young award for Johnson to win during his career, but had the award existed, he would undoubtedly have taken home his fair share. Johnson won 417 games in his career, second in history to only Young himself, had a career 2.17 ERA, 2.42 FIP, 147 ERA+, 3,509 strikeouts, and an MLB career record 110 shutouts.
Johnson’s greatest season came in 1913, when he went 36-7 with a 1.14 ERA, 11 shutouts, and a ridiculous ERA+ of 259 in 346 innings of work. He was awarded the equivalent of the MVP that season, and while the Senators did finish with a winning record, a World Series berth would elude the franchise for another 11 years.
A Hall of Famer, member of the 500 home run club, and one of the most beloved players to ever step on the field, Ernie Banks holds the dubious distinction of being the only back-to-back MVP to play for teams that finished under .500. In an 18-year career spent entirely with Chicago, Mr. Cub never made it to the postseason.
From 1955 to 1960, Banks was as feared a hitter as any in the National League, hitting 40 or more home runs and driving in 100 or more five times in six seasons, yet the Cubs never finished higher than fifth in the standings.
In 1958, Banks won his first MVP, leading the NL with 47 homers and 129 RBIs, while slashing .313/.366/.614 with an OPS+ of 155 and a 9.4 bWAR. Chicago finished 72-82, 20 games behind the Milwaukee Braves.
For an encore, he hit 45 home runs and piled up a league-high 143 RBIs in 1959, slashing .304/.374/.596 with a 156 OPS+ and a career-high 10.2 bWAR to claim the MVP once again. True to form, the Cubs ended up with a losing record again, finishing 74-80, 13 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers.
So Mike Trout is actually in good company, having a tremendous season for a wholly less-than-tremendous team. It’s a fact of baseball that the Hall of Famers on this list have proven that one man alone cannot carry a bad club by himself. For Trout’s sake, hopefully the Angels can turn things around in the next few seasons and he doesn’t turn into the Ernie Banks of the Millennial Generation.
