The Atlantic

Baseball’s Best Player Deserves More Than $430 Million

Mike Trout just signed a record-breaking contract extension with the Los Angeles Angels. What he really needs is a team that can win championships.
Source: Rick Scuteri / USA Today / Reuters

Tuesday morning, that Mike Trout—the Los Angeles Angels’ star center fielder and, by almost unanimous estimation, the best player of his generation—was preparing to sign a 12-year, $430 million contract extension. The deal is the largest in the; its official signing on , with two years left on Trout’s current contract, preemptively squashes an entire subgenre of drive-time-radio prognostication. Just weeks ago, the All-Star free agents Manny Machado and Bryce Harper changed teams and inked of their own. But while Machado’s and Harper’s winters were festivals of promotion and public negotiation, Trout reached his record-setting terms with the same inconspicuous ease with which he

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