Angels' Trout, Trumbo deserve All-Star consideration

The waiting is almost over.

Most of this year's All-Star rosters will be announced Sunday -- there is still a "Final Vote"

competition to select the last player on each league's roster plus the inevitable injury replacements. The

two young players that have driven the Angels back into contention after a disappointing start -- Mike

Trout and Mark Trumbo -- have certainly done enough to merit inclusion. But the vagaries of the selection

process make their selection less certain.

"If I get picked, it'd be a great honor. But if I don't get picked, there's always next year," Trout

said recently. "It's a good personal goal. But I'm here to win. All the individual honors are nice, but

that's not as important as helping the team win."

The Angels, who fell to Toronto 7-5 Friday, have certainly done a lot of that since Trout's promotion

from Triple-A on April 27. They were 6-14 before his arrival and have gone 37-20 since, the best record in

baseball over that stretch.

Trout also leads the American League in batting (.342) and stolen bases (22) at age 20. There have been

only two players in MLB history to win batting titles in their age-20 seasons (Ty Cobb and Al Kaline). If

selected for the All-Star team, Trout would be only the 18th player in baseball history to be named to the

All-Star team before his 21st birthday (Bob Feller and Dwight Gooden did it twice).

Trumbo, meanwhile, has been the Angels' most consistent offensive force and leads the team in home runs

(19) and RBI (53) while batting .314. He has more RBI (34) since May 27 than anyone in the majors and only

home run leader Jose Bautista (14) has more home runs than Trumbo (13) in that time.

"I treat it the same way I treated all the Rookie of the Year talk last year -- I don't expect

anything," said Trumbo, who finished second to Rays right-hander Jeremy Hellickson in the AL Rookie of the

Year voting in 2011. "If something were to happen, it would be awesome, a tremendous honor. But I'm not

spending any time thinking about it."