Buster OlneyMay 5, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseSenior writer ESPN Magazine/ESPN.com Analyst/reporter ESPN television Author of “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty”Follow on XMultiple Authors
Mike Trout details how he finally got healthy again (1:58)Angels slugger Mike Trout joins Buster Olney to discuss his offseason preparation to get healthy for the 2026 season. (1:58)
“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.”
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.”
“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.
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.
“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.”
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.
“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.
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.
“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.”
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.
Mike Trout details how he finally got healthy again (1:58)Angels slugger Mike Trout joins Buster Olney to discuss his offseason preparation to get healthy for the 2026 season. (1:58)
Angels slugger Mike Trout joins Buster Olney to discuss his offseason preparation to get healthy for the 2026 season. (1:58)
Buster OlneyMay 5, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseSenior writer ESPN Magazine/ESPN.com Analyst/reporter ESPN television Author of “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty”Follow on XMultiple Authors
CloseSenior writer ESPN Magazine/ESPN.com Analyst/reporter ESPN television Author of “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty”Follow on X
It was the loudest announcement yet of Trout’s return to the upper echelon of performers.
That might be thanks to some changes Trout made at the end of the 2025 season and over the winter.
“You never take for granted putting on a major league uniform,” Trout said.