Anthony Rendon is another failure by the Angels to surround Mike Trout
The Angels took a big swing to add Anthony Rendon to the lineup around Mike Trout, and it looks like another big miss.
Though he’s out injured right now, Mike Trout is one of the biggest stars in baseball. But the Los Angeles Angels have made the playoffs just once thus far in his career.
But it’s not for a lack of effort, or any constraints on payroll. Resources have been put into surrounding Trout (Josh Hamilton, C.J. Wilson, Albert Pujols, etc.). The latest swing was third baseman Anthony Rendon, who they signed to a seven-year, $245 million deal in December of 2019.
Rendon has been a fine player, with at least a 4.5 bWAR in five times in a six-season span (2014-2019) with the Washington Nationals. His first season with the Angels, COVID-19 shortened and limited as it was, was fine (.286/.418/.497 slash-line-.915 OPS, nine home runs, 31 RBI, 2.1 bWAR).
But 2021 has been a different story. In 58 games Rendon hit .240 with seven home runs, 34 RBI and a .712 OPS. He missed time with knee, groin, hamstring and triceps injuries, and now he’s done for the season with surgery to fix a right hip impingement.
Rendon is 32 years old. He’ll enter 2022 off a season marred by a string of injuries, and after by all accounts an out of nowhere surgery on a previously unaffected body part. And he’s under contract through 2026, his age-36 season. The Angels keep trying to surround Trout with talent, often aggressively overpaying to do so, and Rendon has quickly become another in that line of bad decisions.