Angels star Mike Trout is hoping to return to the team's lineup by late July

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Angels star Mike Trout is hoping to return to the team's lineup by late July

2024-06-30 09:03 Last Updated At：09:12

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Mike Trout repeatedly said he doesn't have a timetable for his return. However, the Los Angeles Angels slugger did admit he would be disappointed if he wasn't playing by the end of July.

“Oh yeah, I'll be back before that,” Trout said Saturday before the Angels hosted the Detroit Tigers. “I’m not putting like, an exact timetable on it, but once I do all the tests and I can run, hit and throw, I'll be out there.

"I’m happy where I’m at right now. It makes me relieved not to feel (any consistent pain)."

Trout hasn’t played since April 29 after an MRI exam confirmed he had torn meniscus in his left knee. The three-time AL MVP then had surgery on May 3.

When Trout had surgery, the initial timeline was six to eight weeks. The recovery though has gone slower than initially expected.

Trout is jogging and working out on a treadmill as well as playing catch. He hasn't started running or taking swings.

“I'm itching to hit. I feel like if I went into the cage and took some swings I would be pain-free,” Trout said. "I think the biggest thing for me is actually the running part, but we have to build up to that.”

It remains to be determined if Trout would need a rehab stint once he is ready to go.

This is the fourth straight season Trout has dealt with a major injury.

He played in only 36 games during the 2021 season due to a strained calf. In 2022, he was sidelined for five weeks with a back injury.

Last season, Trout broke a bone in a hand on a foul ball during a game in San Diego on July 3. He tried to return in August, but played in only one game.

Trout has played in only 266 games and missed 302 since the start of the 2021 season.

The Angels have won a season-high five straight games. Despite their two highest-paid players being out of the lineup for the past two months, the Halos have gone 14-10 in June after a tough start to the season.

One of the keys to the June surge has been Luis Rengifo, who leads the American League with a .315 batting average.

After going 7-21 at home the first two months, the Angels are 10-4 at The Big A in June.

“I’m pleased with the progress that we’ve made with these young kids, and I’m more than certain they’re pleased with it too," manager Ron Washington said. “You can see that by the way they about their business. We're getting there, but we're not there yet.”

Trout and Anthony Rendon have been in the same lineup in only 118 games out of 568 since 2021 (20.8%).

Rendon has missed 61 games with a hamstring injury that happened in late April. The $245 million third baseman is expected to face live pitching next week and could be back in the lineup when the Angels return home on July 8 after a trip to Oakland and Seattle. Rendon has played in only 167 games since the start of the 2021 season.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB

Hurricane Beryl razes southeast Caribbean as a record-breaking Category 4 storm

2024-07-02 09:19 Last Updated At：09:20

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (AP) — Hurricane Beryl ripped off doors, windows and roofs in homes across the southeastern Caribbean on Monday after making landfall on the island of Carriacou as the earliest storm of Category 4 strength to form in the Atlantic, fueled by record warm waters.

There were no immediate reports of possible deaths or injuries, with communications largely down across the region.

Streets from St. Lucia island south to Grenada were strewn with shoes, trees, downed power lines and scores of other debris scattered by winds up to 150 mph (240 kph), just shy of a Category 5 storm. The storm snapped banana trees in half and killed cows that lay in green pastures as if they were sleeping, with homes made of tin and plywood tilting precariously nearby.

“Right now, I’m real heartbroken,” said Vichelle Clark King as she surveyed her damaged shop in the Barbadian capital of Bridgetown that was filled with sand and water. Beryl was still swiping the southeast Caribbean late Monday afternoon even as it began moving into the Caribbean Sea on a track that would take it just south of Jamaica and toward Mexico's Yucatan peninsula by late Thursday as a Category 1 storm.

Late Monday, Beryl's winds increased to 155 mph (250) kilometers, on the brink of becoming a Category 5 storm.

Beryl was located about 575 miles (925 kilometers) east-southeast of Isla Beata in the Dominican Republic and was moving west-northwest at 21 mph (33 kph), with hurricane conditions possible on Jamaica Wednesday.

A hurricane warning was in effect for Jamaica, and a tropical storm warning for the entire southern coast of Hispaniola, an island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

“Beryl is expected to remain an extremely dangerous major hurricane as its moves over the eastern Caribbean,” the National Hurricane Center said.

The last strong hurricane to hit the southeast Caribbean was Hurricane Ivan 20 years ago, which killed dozens of people in Grenada.

On Monday afternoon, officials received “reports of devastation” from Carriacou and surrounding islands, said Terence Walters, Grenada’s national disaster coordinator. Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said he would travel to Carriacou as soon as it’s safe, noting there’s been an “extensive” storm surge.

Grenada officials had to evacuate patients to a lower floor after hospital roof was damaged, he said.

“There is the likelihood of even greater damage,” he told reporters. “We have no choice but to continue to pray.”

In Barbados, Wilfred Abrahams, minister of home affairs and information, said drones — which are faster than crews fanning across the island — would assess damage once Beryl passes.

Beryl strengthened from a tropical depression to a major hurricane in just 42 hours — a feat accomplished only six other times in Atlantic hurricane history, and with Sept. 1 as the earliest date, according to hurricane expert Sam Lillo.

It also was the earliest Category 4 Atlantic hurricane on record, besting Hurricane Dennis, which became a Category 4 storm on July 8, 2005.

Beryl amassed its strength from record warm waters that are hotter now than they would be at the peak of hurricane season in September, said hurricane specialist and storm surge expert Michael Lowry.

Beryl also marked the farthest east that a hurricane has formed in the tropical Atlantic in June, breaking a record set in 1933, according to Philip Klotzbach, Colorado State University hurricane researcher.

On Sunday night, Beryl formed a new eye, or center, something that usually weakens a storm slightly as it grows larger in area. Experts say it’s now back to strengthening.

Jaswinderpal Parmar of Fresno, California, who was among the thousands who traveled to Barbados for Saturday’s Twenty20 World Cup cricket final, said he and his family were now stuck there with scores of other fans, their flights canceled on Sunday.

He said by phone that it's the first time he has experienced a hurricane — he and his family have been praying, as well as taking calls from concerned friends and family as far away as India.

“We couldn’t sleep last night,” Parmar, 47, said.

Even as Beryl bore down on the southeast Caribbean, government officials warned about a cluster of thunderstorms mimicking the hurricane’s path that have a 70% chance of becoming a tropical depression.

“There’s always a concern when you have back-to-back storms,” Lowry said. “If two storms move over the same area or nearby, the first storm weakens the infrastructure, so the secondary system doesn’t need to be as strong to have serious impacts.”

Beryl is the second named storm in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. Earlier this month, Tropical Storm Alberto made landfall in northeast Mexico and killed four people.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts the 2024 hurricane season is likely to be well above average, with between 17 and 25 named storms. The forecast calls for as many as 13 hurricanes and four major hurricanes.

An average Atlantic hurricane season produces 14 named storms, seven of them hurricanes and three major hurricanes.

Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Associated Press videographer Lucanus Ollivierre in Kingstown, St. Vincent contributed.