Late, super late Thursday night, after the Angels beat the Mariners, word began to spread that the Angels were calling up top prospect Mike Trout from double-A Arkansas. On Friday, the move's been made official. No corresponding move has yet been announced, but center fielder Peter Bourjos injured his hamstring on Thursday, and may need to go on the DL. In any case, Bourjos is out for at least the next few days, so Trout is going to play.
The Fate Of Mike Trout And The 2011 Angels, As Determined From Television
Mike Trout is up, and we’re not sure how he’s going to do, or how the team’s going to do around him. So we turn to TV for assistance.
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These are exciting times. Our own Rob Neyer wrote about Trout's promotion shortly after word got out, and Baseball America recently ranked Trout the No. 2 prospect in baseball, behind Bryce Harper. Trout is 19. He is 19 years old. And he owns a .950 OPS in double-A, with 32 extra-base hits, a .415 OBP, and 28 steals. He is a five-tool player with extra tools hanging in the shed, and people have been hyped for his arrival since the day he was drafted.
The big question now is how this is going to work. Is Trout up for the short-term? Is he up for the long-term? How well is he going to adjust to life in the majors? How well are the rest of the Angels going to play around him? In short, what impact will Trout’s promotion have on all parties involved?
Unfortunately, it’s hard for us to say, because there have been so few comparable situations in the past. It’s rare that you see a teenager like Trout get called up in the middle of a pennant race. However, while we haven’t seen many cases like this in the history of baseball, we have seen plenty of cases like this in the history of television. There have been countless shows and movies in which an exceptional and outstanding youth is thrust into an unfamiliar and challenging adult situation - most commonly college. From these examples, we can learn a few things, and from these examples, we can determine that the Trout promotion will most likely go one of three ways:
Trout will initially be rebuffed, but in time everyone will come to appreciate him, rally around him, and be better for it
At first, Trout will be received with skepticism and distance. His quirks will be weird. The way he talks will be off-putting. His talent will be intimidating, and hard to relate to. He’ll be seen as a freak, as a loner. But he’ll stay true to himself while making an effort to reach out, and after some time passes, a few brave souls will reach back. More and more people will get to know him, and in so doing, they’ll learn something about the world, and about themselves. In the end, everyone grows, and everyone grows as a single community.
Trout will have an impossible time fitting in and will ultimately inform his parents that he’s leaving with a weepy phone call
As in the first example, Trout won’t be welcomed with open arms from the get-go. He’ll be seen as too strange. Too different. But he won’t know what to do to make things better, because despite his abundant talents, few concern the interpersonal. His attempts to get to know others will be feeble and fruitless, and he’ll remain a target of mockery. Distracted, depressed and alone, he’ll struggle to perform, and finally on one rainy night, he’ll make the decision to pull out, having determined that he and everybody else would be better off if he left.
Trout will find love and slack off
In this scenario, Trout arrives in Anaheim with the noblest of intentions, but a new environment means new people, and almost immediately he develops an interest in a girl. As they come to know one another, Trout pays more attention to her and less attention to his work, and though others get on his case about his underperformance, he pays them little mind, having decided that the meaning of life is not accomplishing as much as possible, but rather finding happiness, and that true happiness can only be derived from a loving, committed relationship.
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