If you’re playing fantasy baseball this year, you can probably attest that Anaheim Angels superstar Mike Trout was taken first overall. That’s because he is undoubtedly the best baseball player in the world right now.

Every season people speculate whether he will be able to match the superhuman campaign he had the year before, and every year he surpasses it. His growth as a player has been nothing short of remarkable, and if you mix that in with his Grade-A character and you’ve got a very, very likable player.

For MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, however, Trout could be doing a little better.

During the All-Star festivities in Washington, Manfred made some waves by stating that Mike Trout would be a bigger star if he did a better job marketing himself.

The following is an excerpt from tsn.ca:

"Player marketing requires one thing for sure — the player," Manfred said earlier in the day. "You cannot market a player passively. You can't market anything passively. You need people to engage with those to whom you are trying to market in order to have effective marketing. We are very interested in having our players more engaged and having higher profile players and helping our players develop their individual brand. But that involves the player being actively engaged."

Manfred went on to expand on some of the ways he believes Trout could improve his status in the game:

 

 

The comments instantly sparked backlash from baseball fans arguing that Trout has done absolutely nothing wrong, and that he has no responsibility to be marketing himself to people that aren’t even big enough baseball fans to know who he is. While every Twitter user has the ability to pile on the negative response, there’s one particular response that is catching the eye of fans – the Angels.

 

 

The team didn’t specifically express that this was a response to Manfred, in fact the caption explaining that they had a “statement on behalf of Mike Trout” had lots of fans holding their breath, but this statement is absolutely the organization leaping to the defence of their star.

Trout doesn’t owe anybody anything, and he’s certainly done of heck of a lot more for the game of baseball than is required of him.

(H/T Twitter/Angels)