Mike Trout has gone down for the rest of the year for surgery, and he will miss the last few weeks of another subpar campaign for his team. The craziest part, though, is that he will miss the last 3 weeks of the season, and he still is the likely American League MVP choice. He has been putting up numbers that have been MVP caliber for years as an 8-time all-star and a two-time MVP that has been nothing short of spectacular.

“I just think about putting up good numbers, playing hard, and winning games,” Trout said.

He is one of the most business-like players in baseball and does much of his offseason work off the beaten path and away from the public eye. This is one of his trademark values, and it shows when he is interviewed, signing autographs for kids, or playing the game how much he takes it seriously. 

He also is known to have a large passion towards and fun with the game while he plays. He always exemplifies the old cliche “I’ve never worked a day in my life,” no matter where he is on the field. He continuously tops his previous highs and continues to blow the minds of many baseball fans all over the world. 

Additionally, Trout has been one of the most consistent players in MLB history, year in and year out. He is always at the top of the league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. It is unusual for a player to consistently have career-topping seasons. Trout has played like a Hall Of Famer from the beginning of his career, and he is almost sure to be inducted in the next few years. 

His career wins above replacement is 72.6. That is 72.6 games won for his team better than his average replacement or backup. That 72.6 number is better than most players who have been inducted into Cooperstown, and Trout still has 11 years left on his contract. He also has 1324 career hits, and with 11 years to go, he surely should get up and over 3000 hits by the time his career ends. Furthermore, Trout has a career OPS+ of 176, 5th of all time among every player in MLB history.

Trout has one of the most systematic and calm approaches to the game of any player in the league. He is not outspoken, although he does carry a lot of personality. He is a very team oriented player and always speaks about how he would take a world series over any of the personal glory he gets. His story of his debut in the league is crazy, because he never played in AAA in the minors. He has had such evident talent his whole career, but hasn’t let it become something of a distraction. Simply put, Mike Trout off the field is as good as Mike Trout on the field.

And he keeps getting better. Trout continues to improve each year, becoming more deadly at the plate and in the field than the year before. This season he set a career high with 45 home runs and leads the American league in both OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage) and in on base percentage. This is a year in which the American league was pretty stacked, and he still paced the rest of the league with video game-esque numbers. These types of numbers are more than what Trout has posted in his career, and the highest in some of these statistical categories that we’ve seen in baseball since the 70s and 80s with some of the older big name stars. This just goes to show what a star Trout is.

The is only one question looming over Trout’s entire career: Will he get his world series title?