The Angels defeated the Seattle Mariners 5-0 tonight, and when Texas got six in the ninth to defeat Oakland 6-1. the LAAA (Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) had clinched the American League West.

Which should also mean that Mike Trout has clinched the AL Most Valuable Player award.

The turning point of their season would appear to have come on July 31, the trade deadline, when the Angels did nothing … while the first-place Oakland Athletics traded outfielder Yoenis Cespedes to Boston for pitcher Jon Lester.

The A’s offense subsequently collapsed, and it can be debated how much of that was about losing Cespedes out of the middle of the batting order, while the Angels shifted into overdrive.

The Angels trailed by two games when August 1 dawned, but they are 31-14 since, while the A’s have gone 17-27, and that the LAAA lead got so big they could clinch with 11 games left.

As for Trout? He pretty much has to be MVP, now that he has been the leader of a division-winning, best-record-in-ball team.

One major weirdness:

This actually is his worst full season.

Or least great.

Check the stats for yourself.

Through 152 games, his batting average is down 34 points from 2013 and 37 points from 2012, and his on-base percentage is down 54 (!) points from 2013 and 21 points from his Rookie of the Year 2012 campaign.

Mostly, that is about a big rise in strikeouts. He leads the American League in whiffs with 192, which a couple of decades ago would have been considered scandalous, a guy who runs as well as does Trout not putting the ball in play 192 times.

Trout already has a career high in home runs (34) and RBI (107), but he will not score as many runs as the 129 he managedin 2012.

If you believe in the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) stat, Trout’s decline, from 2012 ungodly good (10.7 WAR) to 2013’s very good (9.2) to 2014’s quite good (7.7). Nonetheless, he was three games better in 2012 than he is now, according to WAR numbers, and that’s a significant drop.

Mostly, he is already beginning to act like an aging player, at age 23.

Home runs up. Along with an all-or-nothing batting approach (strikeouts up), even as his steals are drying up — 49 in 139 games in 2012, 3 in 40 attempts in 2013, but only 14 in 16 attempts this season.

Make no mistake, he is still very good, and seeing him play, in person, only once since he came up in 2012 is one of my primary regrets from working in the UAE. No. Really.

But he will win the MVP this season because voters like their MVP to play for a playoff team, preferably a division-winner, and the Angels have done that, with Trout getting all kinds of help — from Albert Pujols to Howie Kendrick and Kole Calhoun to Matt Shoemaker, Jered Weaver and Garrett Richards.

He was the best player in baseball in 2012 and 2013, if you credit WAR, but Miguel Cabrera‘s Detroit Tigers won their division both of those years and Miggy got the MVP trophy.

It’s not exactly a make-good situation — Trout still has the best WAR in the game, at 7.7. But the stats say he was a better player in 2012 and 2013, when he finished second in the MVP voting.

As for the Angels, maybe they don’t care, with the division wrapped up, but it seems as if they should make sure they have home-field advantage throughout the postseason, and winning 100 is always nice, too. Need only five out of their last 13 to make it for only the second time in team history, and six wins would give them a club record 101.