Angels GM doesn’t regret leaving Mike Trout in minors for 20 games

I wondered yesterday whether not calling up Mike Trout until April 28 cost the Angels a playoff spot and while it’s obviously impossible to say for certain the numbers certainly suggest that it could have.

Alden Gonzalez of MLB.com asked general manager Jerry Dipoto that very question last night, and he downplayed any regret about the delayed call-up and also explained the Angels’ thought process with Trout:

I don’t know how much sooner we could’ve called him up. I mean, Mike had no spring training at all. Essentially, if you look at spring training, even the game portion of spring training is a month-long exercise. We didn’t even give him that long. He had enough time to go down and get his timing, hit .420-something and then pop up and be the best player around. I have not lost sleep thinking about that, about the idea that we didn’t call him up soon enough.

Dipoto is referring to the fact that Trout missed much of spring training with the flu and a minor shoulder injury, which is a factor I included in yesterday’s post. However, it’s worth noting that Trout was healthy enough to immediately hit .403 in 20 games against Triple-A pitching once the real games started.

Ultimately when a team misses the playoffs by 2-3 games there are a dozen things you can point to as “reasons” why and for the Angels this season Trout is merely one of them, but when arguably the best all-around player in baseball spent the first 20 games of the season in the minor leagues and the team that missed the playoffs by 2-3 games got off to a 6-14 start without him ... well, it’s natural to wonder about that specific reason.