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Buster Olney
Multiple Authors
For four nights last month, Mike Trout dueled with Aaron Judge at Yankee Stadium, trading big swings and long home runs — and after the games, exchanging competitive text messages that acknowledged what the other had done and how much fun they had sharing the stage.
It was the loudest announcement yet of Trout’s return to the upper echelon of performers.
“I saw ‘Mike Trout,'” Yankees manager Aaron Boone wrote in a text after watching Trout in the series. “He controlled the heck out of the strike zone and was deadly in his strength.”
The Los Angeles Angels outfielder is back to being an elite player, moving more freely after years when his greatness was derailed because of injury. Through 34 games, he has 10 homers and an OPS of .983. He leads the American League with 30 runs scored and the majors with 34 walks.
It’s a version of Trout that baseball fans haven’t seen in a long time. His former manager Brad Ausmus said Trout “looks very much like he did when I was with the Angels [in 2019] … a dangerous hitter.”
That might be thanks to some changes Trout made at the end of the 2025 season and over the winter.
Late last season, as he was grinding through the Angels’ schedule, he felt that some of his mechanical adjustments were starting to work. As he moved into the offseason, the Angels talked to him about reducing his weight, with the theory that he would reduce the stress on his body — his legs, in particular.
“If you look at all of the great players, they tend to lean out over time,” Angels general manager Perry Minasian said. “Freddie Freeman, David Ortiz, a lot of guys.”
Trout changed his workout program, an adjustment that has carried into the 2026 regular season. In the past, he would do an upper-body workout twice a week, a lower-body regimen twice a week, and then take Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday off. Instead, he’s working out daily, but sometimes to activate his physiology instead of lifting heavier weights — he might do as few as eight reps of the same exercise and call it a day.
Trout hired a nutritionist and focused on eating less junk food on the couch before he goes to sleep, and along the way, his weight dropped to 230 pounds, which is about eight to 10 pounds less than in previous seasons. He noticed an immediate difference late in the winter with how his legs and knees felt. As spring training games started, Trout had a goal to get back to a sprint speed of 30 feet per second — a target he hit a couple of times.
His adjustments went beyond workouts and included a mental reframing that started last fall. As a parent to two young children, Trout embraced each moment with his kids. He’d get back from the ballpark tired, wanting to stay on the couch, but Beckham, who turned 5 last year, would ask him to play Wiffle ball — and Trout would head off to play with his eldest child. Trout heard friends and family say that their kids’ lives pass by so quickly that they need to enjoy them when they have the chance.
After finishing his 15th big league season last fall, Trout talked about his time in baseball along those same lines. It passes by so quickly — and he needed to enjoy it more. “I’ve made a point of slowing down this year,” he said.
Slow down. With each drill, each at-bat, each day in the sun, or cold. The time with teammates. Playing a game he has always loved.
“You never take for granted putting on a major league uniform,” Trout said.
Trout has been donning his Angels uniform since 2011. His first nine seasons in the big leagues are largely unmatched in history: From 2012 through the COVID-shortened 2020 season, he mashed 297 homers, mustered an OPS of 1.008 and stole 197 bases, generating 73.5 WAR. At 29 years old, he had more WAR than the career totals of Derek Jeter (71.3), Gary Carter (70.1) and Tony Gwynn (69.2), and many other Hall of Famers.
“In talking with him, he feels healthy and rejuvenated,” Ausmus said of Trout. “I believe being back in center field has helped his frame of mind.”
Trout believes it has helped, too.
Before the 2025 season, he was moved to right field to help keep him healthy. A variety of injuries — from a calf injury to a torn meniscus in his knee to lower-back problems to a broken left hamate — caused him to miss 382 games from 2021 through 2024. But Trout played just 22 games in right field before a left knee injury limited him to DH. He hit just .232 last season, with his OPS dipping below .800 for the first time since his first handful of games in his rookie season.
When the Angels hired Kurt Suzuki, a former teammate of Trout, to be their next manager after the 2025 season, Suzuki asked how the Angels could help Trout. He asked to return to center field, where he would be most comfortable. He discovered that his legs didn’t feel any better when playing in the corner spots.
When looking at his injury-marred seasons, it’s easy to focus on his numbers dipping and what could have been, but for Trout, it might have been much more about the fun he was missing playing ball.
“Looking back, when I was banged up,” Trout said, “you say the word ‘fun.’ … To go out there and not have full capability because something was holding you back — that was tough for me.”
The move back to center — and the offseason changes — seemed to have worked. His outward joy, which was long inherent in how Trout played, appears to be back — as is the dominance that became synonymous with the slugger during his peak years in the 2010s.
Part of being in the moment is connecting with other players in a way you cannot when you’re not on the field.
Trout has been hearing from players on other teams looking to play at his new golf course — Trout National, The Reserve — which officially opened in mid-April in Vineland, New Jersey, close to Trout’s hometown of Millville. Trout first played the course last October, and now players with the Phillies or teams visiting Philadelphia have reached out about tee times.
His fellow players have also noted his return to greatness this year. He is viewed by peers as baseball royalty: As injuries took him off the field in recent years and his production waned, Trout dropped in the rankings of ESPN’s Top 100 players — and veterans, such as Matt Olson, Austin Riley and Carlos Correa, argued that he belonged closer to the top.
And now, he is, again.
“I always enjoy playing this game, and I know what I’m capable of doing,” Trout said recently. “It was killing me going out there knowing I wasn’t myself … I’m taking the time to enjoy every minute of it.”