Mike Trout

On the record · career milestone this season

1,200 career runs scored — Sat, Mar 28 · night game vs. Houston Astros The scorecard → · The write-up →

The card rack

FlagshipMike Trout #1 · 2025 Topps Chrome Platinum · 243 recent sales 7N ▼0.1%

$1.36Raw$12.32PSA 9$36.78PSA 10$48.00BGS 10PSA 10 · 46 nights

Live on eBay now · asking, not sold · as of 2026-08-27 · paid links

$0.99Ungraded$1.00Ungraded$1.80Ungraded

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The rookieMike Trout #US175 · 2011 Topps Update · 1496 recent sales 7N ▲0.8%

$285Raw$405PSA 9$976PSA 10$1,575BGS 10PSA 10 · 46 nights

Live on eBay now · asking, not sold · as of 2026-08-27 · paid links

$290Ungraded$300Graded$305Graded

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Paid link — as an eBay Partner, FVR earns from qualifying purchases. · Flagship = his most-traded card (the market’s reference); the rookie = the top card of his first card year. As of August 27, 2026 · trend is FVR's own nightly archive · prices via SportsCardsPro · what these terms mean

Scout’s note

The engine says Trout is still hitting the ball harder than 93% of qualified hitters — an EV95 of 109.8 against a league median of 105.9 — but his results on contact trail the physics more than 88% of the sample, a luck gap of -0.0437. That's not a huge gap, but it sits on a 35-year-old in his 15th season, a man from Vineland who was the 25th pick in 2009 and has 424 home runs and 1,792 strikeouts in the book. This year's .242 average and .819 OPS in 114 games don't match the bat speed; the ball is coming off at 109.8 and the stat line reads like decline. He ranks 19th of 20 on the breakout board — not the loudest signal, but the shape is there. Twenty homers and 46 RBI at 35 is not nothing, and the contact says there should be more.

Current signals

The read: Trout is hitting the ball harder than 93% of the 373 qualified MLB hitters in our sample (EV95 109.8; league median 105.8), while his results on contact run further below the physics than 90% of them. Loud bat, quieter stat line — the breakout shape; he ranks No. 16 of 20 on the breakout board.

OWED — his contact has outrun his line. Where he sits in the league →

EV95 (mph)

109.79

Luck gap (park-adj)

-0.0458

Overlay score

0.6142

WAR (season · MLB calc)

3.0

Balls in play

283

Sprint (ft/s)

28.6

Age

35

A market fact, not an engine read: what a club decided about him, on the season before this one. Figures from Cot’s, as of August 25, 2026.

2026 salary

$37.12M

Tax hit

$35.54M

Service time

14 yr 70 d

Guaranteed

$427M

Cash and the tax hit are two different rulebooks and are never subtracted from one another — see the payroll board for his club, Los Angeles Angels.

A second set of books

The same contract, read by MLB Spreadsheets (Ethan Hullihen), as of August 20, 2026. We keep two sources on this because one source cannot check itself.

Tax AAV

$35.5M

Guaranteed

$426.5M

Term

12 yrs

His class

Extension

The tax AAV above is his number under the CBA’s own rulebook, not the average we work out from Cot’s total. On a contract with deferred money the two come apart on purpose — and neither is subtracted from the other.

Collect Mike Trout

If the signal is right, the cardboard usually finds out later. Current listings:

High-end listings ($75+) →

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Not financial advice. We take positions only after publication — never before. Misses stay on the record.