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Baseball, often called America's pastime, has always run on great duos. Ruth and Gehrig. Mays and McCovey. Jeter and Rivera.
For a handful of seasons, the Los Angeles Angels had a pairing that belonged in that conversation, and maybe above it: Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, arguably the two best players alive at the same time, in the same lineup, wearing the same uniform.
And they did almost nothing with it.
This is the story of how a franchise wasted the most talent any team has held at once in a generation, and how the ending finally arrived in the most painful way possible for Angels fans.
One of them walked out the door and immediately won it all.
On paper it should have been a dynasty.
You had a generational hitter in his prime and a player doing things no one had done since Babe Ruth. In reality, the Angels never played a single postseason game with both men on the roster.
The franchise last reached the playoffs in 2014, and got swept out of the division series. That was before Ohtani ever threw a pitch in Anaheim. Let that sink in.
Two of the greatest talents the sport has ever produced shared a clubhouse for years, and their teams never sniffed October.
Shohei Ohtani arrived in 2018 and broke the sport's imagination.
He was the first real two way star in nearly a century, a man who could launch a baseball into the third deck and then walk to the mound and strike out the side.
He won the American League MVP in 2021, then won it again in 2023, unanimously both times, leading the league with 44 home runs while also winning ten games as a pitcher.
No one had ever won the AL MVP unanimously twice. He was not just a great player. He was a category of one.
And the Angels could not do a thing with him. It was like owning a Ferrari and leaving it to rust in the garage.
Ohtani handed them the most valuable individual seasons the sport had seen in decades, and the standings barely moved.
Then, late in that 2023 season, his elbow gave out. The prime pitching years of a once in a lifetime talent had come and gone in Anaheim with nothing to show for them.
If Ohtani was the Ferrari, Mike Trout was the priceless heirloom.
For most of the 2010s he was simply the best player in baseball, full stop. Three American League MVP awards, a shelf full of Silver Sluggers, and years of numbers that will carry him to Cooperstown the moment he is eligible. Trout did everything a franchise player is supposed to do.
And it never mattered in the standings. Year after year he put up MVP level seasons and watched the playoffs happen without him. As his twenties turned into his thirties, the injuries started to pile up, and the cruel math of a baseball career began to close in.
The best player of his era spent the heart of his prime on a team that could not get out of its own way.
You would think two players like this would guarantee success.
The Angels spent a decade proving otherwise. The pitching behind Ohtani was thin. The defense gave games away. The roster had no depth, so a single injury could sink a month. And every winter, the front office found a fresh way to not fix it.
The lesson is not complicated, but it is worth saying plainly. Individual brilliance does not win baseball games by itself. Baseball is the ultimate team sport. You can roster the two best players on the planet, and if the other twenty four spots and the people building the roster are not good enough, you will lose.
The Angels were the proof of concept.
After the 2023 season, Ohtani hit free agency and did the one thing the Angels feared most. He left.
In December 2023 he signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers for ten years and 700 million dollars, the largest contract in the history of professional sports, structured with a stunning 68 million dollars a year deferred into the next decade.
He did not chase the biggest check for its own sake. He chased a team that knew how to win.
What happened next reads like a script written to torment Angels fans. In 2024, his first year in Dodger blue, Ohtani won the National League MVP unanimously, became the first player ever to hit fifty home runs and steal fifty bases in a single season, and won the World Series.
An MVP and a ring in year one. In 2025 he did it again. Another unanimous MVP, his fourth overall and third in a row, which puts him second only to Barry Bonds in all of baseball history. The Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays in a seven game classic to repeat as champions.
In 2026 he is still doing the impossible, back on the mound with an ERA under one through his first ten starts while mashing in the middle of the order.
Here is the part that should keep Angels fans up at night. Ohtani did not suddenly get better when he left. He was always this good. The only thing that changed was the organization around him.
Give a generational talent a functional team, and he wins immediately. That is the whole argument, settled.
Mike Trout is still an Angel.
He signed a deal that runs through 2030, and to his credit he has stayed loyal to the only franchise he has ever known. In 2026 he earned a genuinely feel good moment, his first All Star selection to actually reach the game since 2019, the twelfth of his career. Then a hamstring injury pulled him off the field again, the latest chapter in a body that keeps betraying one of the great careers.
And the team around him? The Angels sit at 34 wins and 49 losses as of this writing, dead last in the American League West, once again watching the contenders pull away.
The playoff drought that started in 2014 rolls on. Trout remains the great what if of modern baseball. What a talent like his might have looked like on a team that actually deserved him.
In the long history of the sport, Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout will stand as two of the brightest stars anyone ever saw.
Their talent was never the question. The Angels answered a different question, one no franchise ever wants to answer. What happens when you are handed greatness and fail to build anything around it.
Ohtani gave us the cleanest proof imaginable. He left a broken team, joined a great one, and won everything in sight, twice. Trout is still in Anaheim, still brilliant in flashes, still waiting for an October that may never come.
Two paths from the same starting point. One walked out and lifted a trophy. The other stayed, and kept the faith, and is still sending up a prayer.
Send me an angel, indeed.
Did Ohtani and Trout ever make the playoffs together?
No.
The Angels have not reached the postseason since 2014, which was before Ohtani signed with the team. The two shared a roster for years without ever playing a playoff game together.
Why did Shohei Ohtani leave the Angels?
He reached free agency after the 2023 season and signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers on a ten year, 700 million dollar deal, choosing a proven contender over staying in Anaheim.
How many MVP awards does Ohtani have now?
Four, and all four were unanimous.
That is the second most in MLB history behind Barry Bonds, and no other player has ever won it unanimously four times.
Did Ohtani win the World Series after leaving the Angels?
Yes, twice.
The Dodgers won the title in 2024 and again in 2025, with Ohtani winning the National League MVP in both seasons.
Is Mike Trout still with the Angels in 2026?
Yes. He is under contract through 2030 and remains with the Angels, though injuries have continued to limit him.
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