2021 ZiPS Projections: Los Angeles Angels

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Los Angeles Angels.

Batters

What makes the Angels a serious threat in any given season is fairly obvious: Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon. Trout starts just about every season as the MVP favorite — at least for now — and signing Rendon last winter brought in a second sorely needed superstar. A team that employs these two begins each year as top-tier contender… if they can just build a .500 team around the pair. That’s been the riddle the Halos have found themselves unable to solve; the last time the team had a winning record was 2015, and their last playoff appearance was 2014.

A decade of Trout without a single playoff win represents arguably some of the most wasted baseball potential in history. Sure, there have been examples of the Angels having terrible luck. Albert Pujols declined more quickly and more steeply than anyone imagined he would when he headed to the west coast for a mega-deal after the 2011 season. The problem is the team has frequently doubled-down on bad luck rather than mitigating its effects. Take Pujols. The Angels had little control over his walk off the proverbial cliff, but to keep playing him, hell or high water, was their decision. Nobody made the Angels essentially throw in the towel on having a major league quality first baseman for several years. Whether it’s Justin Upton or the parade of pitcher injuries, the Angels keep throwing good money after bad.

And the clock is ticking. Trout is no longer the young phenom; he’s approaching 30, and given the height of his peak, it’s likely that he’s already had his best season in the majors. The same goes for Rendon, who turns 31 next season.

Given all of that, you might think that I have an overwhelmingly negative view of the 2021 Angels. Actually, I’m relatively optimistic, albeit with an “if.” Even with the loss of Andrelton Simmons, there are some players here of real value. José Iglesias was legitimately excellent in 2020, even if you issue a stiff correction to his .400 BABIP. Jo Adell can’t possibly be worse than he was in last season, and he was a terrific prospect for very good reasons. The Angels have money they can choose to spend and if they can make real additions in left field and at first base — like ZiPS, I’m a Jared Walsh skeptic — they can challenge the A’s and Astros, two organizations that fall short of perfection.

Time is not on the side of the Angels. Now is when you can finally build a championship team around Mike Trout, not later. A winter when everyone else feels uncertain about the future is the best time to take the grandest risk for the highest upside.

Pitchers

Trevor Bauer would be a nice fit for the Angels, but that’s because he’d be — at least on the mound — a nice fit for pretty much everyone. Well, maybe not the Astros.

Dylan Bundy got a boost playing in a much better ballpark for his talents, and I’m far more certain he’s a number two or three starter than I was after his last season with the Orioles. Andrew Heaney isn’t going to turn into Tom Glavine or anything, but he’s been relatively dependable for the Angels when healthy the last three seasons. ZiPS likes both Patrick Sandoval and Griffin Canning to be average or even slightly better-than-average in 2021, and both are young enough to remain interesting even without world-beating stuff. You may be giving me the stink-eye about the positive Sandoval projection right now, but like Corbin Burnes last year, the suspicious stares ought to be directed at the home run rate, not me!

The real X factor is what, if anything, they can get from Shohei Ohtani as a pitcher in 2021. He’s been better-than-expected offensively in the States, but his pitching has been inconsistent, and his flashes of brilliance have generally been cut short by injury. Ohtani still wants to be a two-way player, and it’s still in the Angels’ best interest to entertain the notion; upside that high is too tantalizing to pass up just to have a sure-thing designated hitter.

Ohtani’s top comp is a fun one. Scipio Spinks was one of the more interesting characters in the late 60s. Spinks was a highly regarded young pitcher for the Astros, from a family who named all of the firstborn sons after figures in Roman history. Traded to the Cardinals for Jerry Reuss, Spinks carried around a three-foot stuffed gorilla named Joe, which became his constant companion. As a rookie, Bob Gibson once stole its nose! Spinks was the second-best starting pitcher on the 1972 Cardinals, but running the bases — he was sometimes used as a pinch-runner, a job he enjoyed — he injured his knee in a home-plate collision with Johnny Bench. The following season, he injured his shoulder, and he was never the same again. Spinks later worked as a high school coach and was a mentor to Oil Can Boyd and Matt Clement. The top comp lists are full of interesting players like this, and if you see a name you don’t know, it’s fun to do some winter reading. But I digress.

The Angels rotation is not in particularly bad shape, though it could use some spice at the top and some depth at the bottom. As with the offense, the Angels have a real incentive to go as over-the-top as they can this season while they still have the opportunity.

ZiPS is equally as positive about the bullpen, seeing it somewhere around the 10th-best in the majors despite losses to free agency. The Angels won’t miss Noé Ramirez if Raisel Iglesias closes out 40 games for a division winner in 2021. While the closer role is likely taken care of with Iglesias, an extra arm or two ought to be welcomed. When the injuries start, it would be a nice change of pace if the Angels employed too many quality pitchers rather than too few.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2021 due to injury, and players who were released in 2020. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Finnish industrial death metal fourth-wave ska J-pop band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. ZiPS is assuming that the designated hitter will continue in force in 2021; if it does not, there will be widespread minor adjustments across the board come April.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article, or get angry at Dan on Twitter or something.