ANAHEIM — When Mike Trout returns home to New Jersey, he expects to hear all the normal comments from friends.

“When are you coming back to the East Coast?” Trout said they ask him every winter.

Now that the Angels have suffered through a second consecutive losing season with Trout, the consensus best player in baseball, there is certain to be even more speculation that the Angels, for the good of the organization, should just start a rebuild by trading Trout.

General Manager Billy Eppler has said repeatedly that trading Trout is not on the table, and Trout simply laughs at all of it.

“I like playing here,” he said before the Angels finished the regular season with a 6-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners on Sunday. “The direction we’re headed in is a positive direction. We’ll see this offseason how it turns out for spring.”

Trout, 26, has spent six full seasons in the majors, and the Angels have made the playoffs once, and they didn’t win a game. The team was eliminated from the postseason in the last week three other times. Twice, the Angels were out of it early.

Meanwhile, Trout has been racking up historic individual numbers, leading to two MVP awards and three second-place finishes. This season, despite missing a quarter of the season with a thumb injury, Trout is likely to finish in the top five.

He was pulled from Sunday’s game after a fourth-inning single, leaving to a smattering of applause. He finished the season hitting .306 with 33 homers and 72 RBI. His on-base percentage (.442), slugging percentage (.629) and, obviously, OPS (1.071) will all lead the league. His OPS is a career high.

Yet, all of that earned him another October of watching the playoffs on TV. If he’s discouraged enough by that to want to play somewhere else, he doesn’t admit it.

“We’ve got a great group of guys,” Trout said. “The team chemistry is unbelievable. There is not one guy in here who doesn’t like each other. The coaching staff is unbelievable.”

Trout also said he has talked to Eppler about the future of the club, and Trout is confident that the Angels can be a playoff team in the three years left on his contract.

“It’s going to be a crazy offseason,” Trout said. “We’ve got a lot of money freed up. It’s going to be interesting. I like the direction we’re going.”

The Angels are finally free of the Josh Hamilton contract now. They have enough free agents coming off the books all over the roster that the Angels figure to have around $50 million- $75 million to spend this winter, without exceeding the luxury tax threshold. The variable is whether Justin Upton exercises his opt-out or stays, at $22.125 million a year.

Upton said last week that he enjoyed playing with Trout, and the feeling is mutual.

“Obviously the month he’s been here has been unbelievable,” Trout said. “You add a guy like that to our lineup makes it so much deeper and better.”

Ironically, Trout’s month with Upton has not been his best. Trout hit .231 with an .888 OPS in September, and some of the damage he did came after the Angels were eliminated on Wednesday. Trout explained that his timing was a little off and Manager Mike Scioscia agreed it was just an matter of an ill-timed slump.

“Some of the numbers are probably not Mike Trout-like, but I think that’s just the cyclical nature of this game, why a guy loses some timing, why the best hitters occasionally go into a little funk,” Scioscia said. “It’s just the nature of trying to hit a baseball.”

As Trout looks ahead to next year, he begins an offseason that will include his wedding. Beyond that, he has no plans to change anything about his training or preparation for the season.

“Just try to get better and stronger,” he said. “Come in ready to go.”

ALSO

JC Ramirez, who missed the last six weeks of the season with a damaged ulnar collateral ligament, underwent an ultrasound exam on Sunday to check the progress after his stem-cell therapy. “It’s better,” Ramirez said. “It’s healing. It’s in a good direction now.” Ramirez said he’ll have another ultrasound in four weeks…

Martin Maldonado caught a career-high 139 games, which led the majors. The workload clearly took a toll on his offense, leaving him to hit .183 in the second half. Scioscia said he doesn’t believe that Maldonado necessarily needs to catch fewer games next year, because he may be adjusted for the heavier workload next year. “There’s nothing to say he won’t catch 130 to 135 games next year and have better results offensively with this experience.”…

Bench coach Dino Ebel may be a candidate for a managing job this winter, which would be fine with Scioscia. “He’s got great communication skills,” he said. “He’s great with people. He has a deep understanding of the game. He’s a great candidate. I think he’ll be a terrific manager. Hopefully he’ll get that opportunity.”