The baseball gods interrupt this Mets meltdown to bring you Mike Trout’s Citi Field debut.
The Greatest Baseball Show on Earth will accompany his Angels to Flushing for a three-game series starting Friday night. Fresh off their miserable 0-6 road trip, and with a seven-game losing streak overall, the Mets must
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The 25-year-old has started this 2017 season in characteristically spectacular fashion, with a .341/.451/.742 slash line and 13 home runs putting him among the early favorites for more MVP hardware.
Mets fans, needless to say, have missed out by the luck of the draw. The last and only time the Angels came to Citi Field, in June 2011, Roy Hallenbeck, the baseball coach at Millville High School, drove up from South Jersey to watch his beloved Mets play, and thought to himself, “Maybe the next time the Angels are here, Mike will be up here.”
Less than a month later, on July 8, Trout, Hallenbeck’s star player, got his first call to the big leagues. In the nearly six years that have passed, Trout has put himself on an extreme Hall of Fame track.
He is the fifth player to capture two MVPs before his age-25 season, joining Johnny Bench, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial and Jimmie Foxx.
He is the eighth player overall and the fourth in AL history to tally 175 homers, 500 RBIs and 600 runs
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He has led the AL in runs four times, in OPS+ three times, in walks twice and in on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, total bases stolen bases and RBIs once apiece. Also strikeouts once, just to stay fair and balanced.
His career .972 OPS and 172 OPS+ pace all active players.
He has won the Silver Slugger award in each of his five full seasons.
With 51.3 career wins above replacement, per Baseball-Reference.com, he already has surpassed Cooperstown honorees such as Bobby Doerr (51.2), Kirby Puckett (50.9) and Orlando Cepeda (50.2).
Trout stands as the quiet counterpart to a young, five-tool stud the Mets know much better, the Nationals’ Bryce Harper. Whereas Harper has a knack for upsetting rivals while helping to defeat them, and he talks openly of his free agency coming after 2018, Trout’s most notable off-the-field involvement has come
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Of course, what Trout is missing on his résumé, on this week when the Yankees retired Derek Jeter’s uniform number, is postseason success. Trout has played in only three playoff games, in the 2014 AL Division Series against the Royals. The Angels got swept, and at 22-21, they don’t reside as a strong bet to qualify this year, either. Trout is counting on Angels general manager Billy Eppler, Brian Cashman’s former deputy with the Yankees, to build a stronger team around him.
Not that Trout would ever share any such frustrations. He’ll hold a news conference Friday, before the series opener, to better manage his time. Don’t expect any bombshell quotes to emerge.
The drive from Millville, located near Atlantic City, to Citi Field takes about 2 1/? hours, so it won’t be a true homecoming for Trout; the Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park, where Trout played two games in 2014, sits far closer. Yet he’ll have some support there. Hallenbeck plans to attend Saturday night’s game with three friends.
“Mike used to torture me when the Mets were collapsing in ’07 and ’08,” said Hallenbeck, who grew up outside Albany and became a Mets fan. “Mike was a Phillies fan.”
The Phillies of course capitalized on those memorable Mets collapses and captured consecutive National League East titles. Hallenbeck said he wasn’t aware of who else from the area would come up to Citi, although he expected Trout
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The Mets will be the 27th team to play host to Trout, and on this very same road trip, the Marlins will become host 28. That will leave only the Cardinals, who visited Anaheim and former St. Louis icon Albert Pujols in both 2013 and 2016. The Braves welcomed Trout and the Angels to their old home, Turner Field, in 2014, and the Angels will host the Braves this season rather than pay a visit to new Sun Trust Park.
If history holds, Trout’s visit to New York’s National League outpost will be
Carey Price Jersey worth the wait. If the Mets can’t turn their season around, Trout’s visit might be recalled as a rare 2017 weekend when it was worth going to a game at Citi.
