James has another piece up today, dividing the Angels' fortunes into six phases. The last being the Trout phase. (It's interesting that he rates one or two of them by their "energy" - signing FA's, making trades, spending $$.
On this era he writes:
..
6. The Mike Trout Era
2010 to the Present
And what has happened since then?
Well. . .I don’t want to be judgmental. The Angel organization has not gone into the tank, but entering this season—despite having had the best player in baseball for most of this decade—the Angels Franchise Strength Index was down to 78, and did not appear to be headed up.
There is a special problem for teams that play in the largest cities. I’ll write more about it when I get to the Mets, but it has to do with what we could call glittering options. When Albert Pujols was on the free agent market post-season 2011 he was a glittering option. When Josh Hamilton was available a year later he was a glittering option. The Angels didn’t ask "Is this player actually going to help us?" They asked "Can we afford him? Well, hell yes, we can afford him. We’re a big-city franchise here!" This leads to an unwise allocation of resources.
The Angels have kind of wasted the Mike Trout years, frankly. They haven’t collapsed, but they have not built around him. Yes, they have had some terrible luck, but they have not done what they should have done with Mike Trout in the lineup.