Mike Trout's Getting Rooked (Or He's Not)

Shortly after Marvin Miller took command of the baseball players' union he discovered to his horror that the baseball card companies -- well, company: Topps -- were inducing rookies and minor leaguers to essentially give away the rights to their likeness by offering  a handful of coins and Major League blandishment. Miller proposed to Topps that they negotiate a deal that would more fairly compensate the players for the millions that Topps was reaping.

Topps told Miller they had no reason to negotiate with him. "We don't see your muscle," they told him.

So Miller visited every MLB camp the following spring and exhorted the players not to sign the deals no matter their affinity for baseball cards. In return, he promised the players he would get them a better deal.

When Topps ran into a series of brick walls, they called Miller. Seeing his "muscle," they worked out a new deal that doubled player royalties and earned their union hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars, specifically 510 of them, is the amount that Mike Trout will "earn" in 2013, thanks to a four percent raise from his employer. That is his reward for one of the most extraordinary seasons in baseball history. Trout will take home $20K above the minimum salary for second-year players.

Mike Trout's MVP-level season was worth roughly $60 million on open-market last year, based on his 12+ WARP and a market value of nearly $5 million per win. For that performance, he earned the MLB minimum of $480,000.

Trout is unlikely to come close to repeating that in his sophomore season, but even if he's half as valuable, he's still outperforming his salary by $29.5 million.

What Angel management understands is that he has no "muscle." The Collective Bargaining Agreement signed by the league and the union gives teams total control of players until they reach salary arbitration in year three. This is designed to compensate teams for the substantial investments they make in player development.

Angel owner Arte Moreno is hardly known for austerity. He's made Google-sized investments in Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton, and has a Lehman Brothers deal with Vernon Wells. He could have thrown Trout an extra hundred grand -- couch cushion change for the franchise -- to reward him for propelling the team to contention and ingratiate the franchise to the player come free agent time. But he didn't have to. And so, Trout will earn all year what Alex Rodriguez will "earn" in three games -- three games, that is, that ARod won't play. 

But even a 21-year-old knows that "my time will come," and possibly soon. L.A. brass of Anaheim may already be working on a deal with Trout's representatives to buy out arbitration and a year or two of free agency. It may be wise to lowball his current compensation to create an incentive to sign a long-term deal. Arte Moreno didn't turn a half-million dollar ad agency into an $8 billion asset by making bad business decisions.

And when Trout gets his consolation prize -- whether he's 21 or 23 when it happens -- it will be in the Powerball range. In the meantime, he's the highest-paid 21-year-old this side of ... well, Bryce Harper, whose leverage is apparently greater. Harper earns $2 million this year, a mere $23 million below his value.