Can Mike Trout Make the Los Angeles Angels Contenders Again?

For 15 years now, Mike Trout has been asked to lead the Angels, and with all of his might, he has tried.

Trout has run himself into the ground to produce amid flawed rosters and unrealistic expectations. One of the generation’s best players is running out of time simply to come out a winner in a single playoff game.

But maybe the Angels have hit on an overly optimistic plan that is starting to bear fruit. What are the chances a veteran guru of fundamentals and a bunch of impressionable youngsters are able to lead the charge toward another postseason opportunity for Trout?

“It’s incredibly hard,” Angels manager Ron Washington once famously said.

The line was depicted in the 2011 movie Moneyball about the 2002 Oakland Athletics and applies to the 2025 Angels. Long and winding roads are kind of a thing for Washington, who has confirmed that he actually said what Hollywood has immortalized, even if the setting of where the words were spoken was a bit contrived.

At 73, Washington has the opportunity to get the 32-year-old Trout back into the playoffs by helping a bunch of 20-somethings realize their potential as soon as possible.

And the whole plan is coming together with the Angels in the midst of a schedule quirk that has them playing 26 consecutive games in their home state. Two homestands and an extended “road trip” to San Diego, Los Angeles and Sacramento have been transformative.

The Angels started their own California gold rush at the start of May, when they were buried in last place in the American League West with a struggling offense that needed to be painstakingly sifted from the sand.

“We’ve been getting good pitching, then we don’t have the offense we need. And then we blow games at the end, so we just don’t have everything working,” Washington said after a lackluster four-game series against the Detroit Tigers when the month began.

The team’s 25-year-old catcher, Logan O’Hoppe, acknowledged the obvious back then: “It’s a challenging time.”

O’Hoppe also referenced learning from struggles in 2024 to help mitigate the downturn in 2025, and while it sounded like a mature approach, the plausibility seemed remote.

And then came a seven-game winning streak the Angels took into a weekend home series against the Miami Marlins. All seven games were on the road, including the first three at the home of the World Series champion Dodgers.

That led into a just-completed four-game series sweep at Sacramento against Washington’s former club, the A’s.

Taylor Ward, in the midst of an 0-for-24 slide over seven games when the calendar flipped to May, batted .433 with a 1.533 OPS, four home runs and 12 RBIs during the seven-game streak. O’Hoppe batted .379 with a 1.272 OPS, five home runs and 11 RBIs in the same stretch.

It is the club’s first seven-game win streak since 2022 and the first with all of the games on the road since 2018. And it has come with Trout recovering from a bone bruise in his left knee.

Trout was injured on the last day of April, keeping him out of the team’s soul-searching California mission. He might be ready to return as soon as the run of in-state games ends.

They still could use the veteran’s help. The Angels were eight games under .500 when their winning streak began and six games out of first place. They were still one game under .500 and four games behind the division-leading Seattle Mariners heading into the weekend.

The bullpen still needs improvement but has been steadied by the veteran presence of closer Kenley Jansen. The rotation’s guiding light is Kyle Hendricks, while performances from veterans like Tyler Anderson and Yusei Kikuchi have led the way.

O’Hoppe has led the youth movement on offense with Nolan Schanuel and Zach Neto, who has been productive as ever in his return from shoulder surgery.

And it is all happening under the guidance of Washington, who will tell you how difficult all of this is, if you just ask. But he also is an optimist at heart.

“The main thing is our young kids are continuing to grow, and now our veterans are starting to show what they’re about,” Washington told reporters as the winning streak hit seven games, while sounding a lot like the manager of a different movie, Major League.

“And if we can keep that combination going, you’re gonna see a lot more of what you seeing.”