Archive for Angels

Unless the Los Angeles Angels win their final six games and somehow figure out how to get Major League Baseball to overturn the results of 15 others, the club will finish below the .500 mark for the 11th consecutive season. This postseason will mark the 12th in a row to not feature any Halos, and it has been 17 years since the last time they won a game in the playoffs. The Arte Moreno era is ending, with Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke taking over the helm. And while Kroenke has a mixed record as an owner, a mixed record would qualify as progress after Moreno. New ownership tends to represent a new beginning for a team, setting up an important question: Can the Angels return to playing October baseball in the near future? After all, while the team doesn’t have the same revenue as the Dodgers, it’s still located in the second-most-populous metropolitan area in the United States; theoretically, they have the resources to speed up the process.

I like to joke about baseball’s Anna Karenina issue, because I think the novel’s first line — “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” — is an even more appropriate observation for baseball teams than it is for families. All great baseball teams look kind of the same, but every lousy team looks different. As bad teams go, the Angels have never been spectacularly lousy; if they fail to at least split their last six games, 2026 will be the first time ever that the franchise has lost 100 games. Still, this is a franchise that hasn’t figured out how to play .500 ball while employing the best player of the 2010s and the likely best player of the 2020s. They even had both of those guys on the team for a while! That the Angels have tended to hover just below mediocre rather than being hilariously awful is probably one of the reasons they’ve never truly blown things up and tried something radically different. The Angels never reached a point where they just threw stuff against the wall to see what sticks, something the White Sox finally accepted a few years ago, and that the Rockies appear to be starting to accept now.

If the Angels were to compete again soon, where would the talent come from? At first blush, there’s no amount of squinting that can make the Angels look like they have the foundation of a solid team. Mike Trout is still pretty good, but he’s a galaxy away from the player he once was, and as hard as it is to believe, he turned 35 last month. Zach Neto is solid, but if you listed the rest of the starting lineup and told me that I was looking at the starting lineup for the Durham Bulls or the Round Rock Express, I might believe you.

To get a more comprehensive look at the team’s offensive future, I ran updated WAR and OPS+ projections for the Angels over the next five seasons. I’ve included pretty much everyone on the roster or in the high minors, as well as those top prospects who are at a minor league level where projections are practical. That leaves out intriguing players like Johnny Slawinski, Joswa Lugo, and Yilver De Paula, but we’re also talking about non-elite prospects at the very low levels, so the median outlook for their projections is going to be fairly low. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are at least a few additional lottery tickets out there for the Angels.

To make a quick read of the table easier, I’ve highlighted all of the 3-WAR projected seasons in red and all of the 2-WAR projected seasons in yellow. I’ve also blacked out the seasons where a player isn’t under team control, or where ZiPS is highly confident that they won’t be in baseball based on their performance. Oh, and I threw in Anthony Rendon for the sake of curiosity:

There… isn’t a lot of color in that chart. ZiPS doesn’t see anyone beyond Neto as a key part of a contending team. Trout is almost certainly going to become less and less of a contributor in coming seasons, and Denzer Guzman and Christian Moore look more like complementary options than guys threatening to attend a string of All-Star games (though Guzman does have some decent projected upside). Even given the very real possibility that ZiPS is underrating Arjun Nimmala, that’s still a stunning lack of offensive talent in the organization.

Let’s move on to the pitching, where things do look a bit better. There are no borderline star seasons projected, so I’ve highlighted all the 100 ERA+ seasons in yellow:

Reid Detmers and Walbert Ureña both project as very good mid-rotation starters, and the latter is a long way from free agency. There may be No Such Thing as a Pitching Prospect©, but ZiPS does think Tyler Bremner is likely to be at least solid. None of the rest of the arms look amazing, but the Angels do have an interesting bunch of plausible bullpen candidates, though nobody who would blow your mind. If the Angels get lucky with either Grayson Rodriguez or George Klassen, and Najer Victor figures out the significance of that white house-shaped pentagon next to the batter, it’s a pitching staff they could make quite decent with a few splashy upgrades.

Sum it all up, and ZiPS sees the Angels as a 70-win team in 2027, with only minor growth from there based on their in-organization options. To that end, the team’s player development absolutely has to improve; the Angels only barely moved out of the bottom third of our farm rankings on the last update, the first time they’ve done so since 2020. That’s particularly concerning for a team that hasn’t contended in more than a decade. Hopefully the team will move on from a draft philosophy that emphasizes high-floor/low-ceiling prospects who can be promoted to the majors very quickly.

As for their options beyond the organization, could the Angels contend with a spending spree next year? I get asked that question fairly regularly in my weekly chats, so at least someone is interested in the answer, or at least wants to trick me into writing about the Angels. Let’s give it a spin.

A contending Angels team needs a high-end starting pitcher, a veteran bulk arm, and probably three additional good relievers. Here’s one set of potential additions:

Most of the names here are interchangeable with other options, but you can’t really fake signing Tarik Skubal and have to go with the real thing. ZiPS estimates that doing so would make the Angels a 77-85 team, but also one that just added more than $80 million in salary to get there.

As for the offense, it needs a lot of work and there is only so much they can practically do, even in an ultra-aggressive buying frenzy. Assuming that Trout stays at DH, they certainly need a couple of outfielders, and there’s no Aaron Judge to sign. The corner infield spots aren’t the weakest on the roster, but Teruaki Sato is one of the best players (possibly) available, and I’d like a bit more certainty at second base if we’re doing full-on win-now mode:

You may have noted the problem I’m running into for the quick-fix route: There’s a hard limit on just how many difference-makers there are available in free agency. These four signings probably add another $80 million to the payroll, and once you throw in the player benefits, the Angels would have a luxury tax payroll creeping into the $300 million range. Their projection would only improve to 83-79, and while that would be the team’s best year in a decade, it’s a pretty brutal projection to intentionally pay $300 million for.

In the end, the Angels don’t appear to have enough in-house options to make buying their way into contention a real possibility. That means that the road ahead will be a lot harder, with them eating some awful seasons without any pretense of contending, trying some new things, and taking some chances, all of which the franchise has struggled with for the last decade. As it turns out, needing to replace about 20 players on your roster isn’t something you can do quickly. By the time the Angels are good again, we might be talking about the next lockout!

Max Muncy is still a work in progress. Four-plus years after he was featured here at FanGraphs in a piece titled, Oakland Prospect Max Muncy is Trying to Find Himself in High-A, the 2021 first-rounder is doing much the same in the majors. Currently slashing a wholly uninspiring 230/.296/.387 with nine home runs and an 83 wRC+ over 284 plate appearances, Muncy remains — as he readily admitted when I spoke to him earlier this summer — in search of his groove.

“It’s one of those things that might be ever-evolving,” said the 24-year-old infielder, who put up not-dissimilar numbers after debuting with the A’s last season. “You have to just keep working at it. Every level presents a new challenge — the pitchers are better, so you have to make adjustments — and luckily there is no level higher than this one. Once I get enough at-bats, get to play consistently, I’m going to do what I know I can do. I’m going to be a good player.”

Muncy said in our 2022 conversation that he had been doing a lot of experimenting, and to a large extent that has continued throughout what is now more than 2,200 professional PAs. Read the rest of this entry »

Dominic Canzone is having a strong season with the stick. Playing on a Seattle Mariners team that went into last night having scored the fewest runs in MLB, the 29-year-old outfielder/DH has slugged 22 home runs while putting up a .258/.327/.482 slash line and a 131 wRC+ over 474 plate appearances. Along with Randy Arozarena he is only player in Dan Wilson’s lineup with 300 or more plate appearances and a wRC+ higher than 108.

His performance hasn’t come out of the blue — at least not to fans in the Pacific Northwest. Canzone began establishing himself last season. The sample size wasn’t particularly large, but he nonetheless logged a .300 batting average, 11 round-trippers, and a 141 wRC+ in 268 trips to the plate. Selected in the eighth round of the 2019 draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks and subsequently swapped to Seattle in 2023, Canzone has turned into a formidable presence in the batter’s box.

The most meaningful developmental stride he’s made since coming to pro ball?

“Approach,” Canzone told me. “I would say that the hardest part to get as a Major League hitter is understanding how pitchers are going pitch to you in certain situations, and then having a solid approach. Everybody has the ability, so it’s all about looking for the right thing in the right spot.

“In college, it was so much easier,” added the erstwhile Ohio State Buckeye. “You pretty much just hunt the heater, because they’re not too great at landing multiple off-speed pitches for strikes. It’s easier to spit on that type of stuff and, obviously, everything isn’t as sharp.” Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Trout has been one of the best hitters of his generation, if not one of the best in baseball annals. Now 35 years old and in his 16th major league season — all with the Los Angeles Angels — the pride of Millville, New Jersey has left the yard 424 times while logging a 163 wRC+ over 7,765 plate appearances. A 12-time All-Star and three-time MVP, he has been awarded nine Silver Sluggers.

When Trout arrives in Cooperstown — already with 90.2 WAR, enshrinement is basically a fait accompli — he will do so as a slugger who embraced a relatively straightforward approach. Much like his longtime contemporary Bryce Harper, who was featured in our Talks Hitting series back in May, Trout is steadfastly old school in the batter’s box. It’s hard to argue with the results. While no longer in his prime — not even legends can defeat Father Time — he is undeniably an all-time great.

Trout sat down to talk hitting prior to Tuesday’s game at Fenway Park.

———

David Laurila: How much have you changed as a hitter since signing your first professional contract?

Mike Trout: “I’m pretty much the same guy. I try to keep it that way. If you look at when I was younger — high school to early in pro ball — it’s pretty much the same now. I mean, there have been tweaks here and there. It might look a little different, but I feel like I’m the same hitter.”

Laurila: Can you elaborate on “might look a little different?”

Trout: “Subtle differences in my setup. The main thing is my contact points, and you probably wouldn’t see much difference there, but the setup is what gets you to that spot. That’s what I’m working on during the times I’m trying to figure stuff out.”

Laurila: Is that basically a feel thing? Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Angels unexpectedly announced that longtime owner Arte Moreno had agreed to sell the organization to Stan Kroenke, the icositetra-billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL, the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, the Colorado Avalanche of the NHL, the Colorado Rapids of MLS, the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League, and Arsenal Football Club, both the men’s team of the English Premier League and the women’s team of the Super League. The deal is reportedly for $4 billion, a record price for the sale of a controlling stake in an MLB franchise, surpassing the $3.9 billion sale of the San Diego Padres to Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano earlier this summer.

Forbes estimates Kroenke’s net worth to be $24.3 billion, making him the new wealthiest MLB owner, ahead of Steve Cohen, who’s worth about $23 billion. Ben Clemens wrote about the sale on Wednesday, and I’d encourage you to check it out for everything that you need to know about the Angels under Moreno and the ever-increasing values of MLB franchises. That second part is what I want to stress, especially as it pertains to the seemingly inevitable lockout coming this offseason. Rob Manfred and the 30 team owners are going to push for a salary cap, and to support their case, many of them will both cite the need for competitive balance and claim that baseball is a bad business. When they do, think back on the two record-setting sales from this year and understand the real reason why management has shut down the sport. But let’s not get too caught up in the doom and gloom right now, because the upshot of the sale is the Angels’ future looks a whole lot more promising under Kroenke than it did under Moreno.

That’s the last we’ll talk about the business of baseball today. Instead, in this week’s mailbag, we’ll answer your questions about teams that finished the season below .500 with a positive run differential, the single-game feat most correlated with career success, the pitchers who had the longest careers while pitching their first and last games on the same field, and the ideal hot dog per game ratio. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, I woke up to a text warning me that first pitch of the Diamondbacks-Giants Bridge League game had moved up to 10 AM local time – presumably due to the heat, our morning low on Thursday was 95 degrees and cranked up to 113 – and that a rehabbing Ketel Marte was in the lineup. The change in schedule meant I could spend an hour watching Ketel and Co., then slip over to the Rockies’ side of the Salt River Fields Complex to catch a second game. Rehabbers typically hit every inning, so I hoped to squeeze in three Marte at-bats before changing locations. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I took a two month hiatus from writing this column because we had a heavy summer of evaluating baseball, and as it turns out, it’s tough to both analyze baseball and watch it entirely out of a sense of whimsy. But now the tables have turned. There are no more studies to do on prospect valuation. The trade values have been tabulated. The deadline has passed. The playoffs are still a month away. There’s not much to do other than watch baseball and enjoy, whether it’s playoff races, dominant performances, exciting debuts, or just the beauty of a well-played game on a warm summer evening. So kick back, relax, and join me in thanking Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the article format that I’ve been riffing on for the past four years.

1. Rangy Infielders
During the peak of the infield shift, 5-3 double plays had a brief heyday. With three defenders on the right side of the infield against most lefty batters, the third baseman played a de facto shortstop for large portions of most games. When those lefties grounded out to short with runners on, third basemen somewhat frequently fielded the ball, stepped on second, and threw to first to complete the play. But with two infielders now required to be on each side of second base, it wouldn’t make any sense for a third baseman to get the ball and then sprint past the shortstop to tag the base and make the relay throw.

Or would it? Read the rest of this entry »

Tommy John spent 26 seasons pitching in the majors from 1963–74 and then 1976–89, more than any player besides Nolan Ryan, but his level of fame – and indeed, his contribution to the game — stems as much from the year that cleaves that span as it does from his work on the mound. As the first recipient of the most famous sports medicine procedure of all time, the elbow ligament replacement surgery performed by Dr. Frank Jobe in late 1974 that now bears his name, John endured an arduous year-long rehab process before returning to pitch as well as ever. His recovery gave hope to generations of injured pitchers whose careers might otherwise have ended.

By the count of analyst Jon Roegele, keeper of the Tommy John Surgery List, over 2,700 professional players have undergone some variant of Jobe’s pioneering surgery on John during either their amateur or professional careers. That list ranges from Brent Strom — who did not make it back to the majors after becoming the second recipient of Jobe’s ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction technique but went on to become a successful pitching coach — to Hunter Greene, who just underwent his second Tommy John last week. So far, only three are in the Hall of Fame, namely Paul Molitor (the first position player to undergo the surgery), John Smoltz, and Billy Wagner, but Justin Verlander, Chris Sale, and Shohei Ohtani will almost certainly follow in their wake, with more to come. By Roegele’s accounting, over 39% of all major league pitchers in 2025 had undergone Tommy John surgery.

On the mound, John was the epitome of the “crafty lefty,” so good at his vocation that he arrived on the major league scene at age 20 and made his final appearance three days after his 46th birthday. His 700 starts and 288 wins are both more than any other 20th- or 21st-century pitcher outside the Hall of Fame except Roger Clemens, but John’s longevity, his more dominant cohorts — including six 300-game winners — and the surgery that bears his name have overshadowed the rest of his on-field accomplishments. Between going 0-for-15 on BBWAA ballots (where he topped out at 31.7%) and 0-for-5 on Era Committee ballots (where he peaked at 43.8% on the 2025 Classic Baseball ballot), he never came particularly close to election, though in 2013, he got a share of the spotlight when the Hall honored Jobe. Read the rest of this entry »

I made my first trip to Oracle Park earlier this week to catch the final two games of a three-game set between the Giants and Astros. I was in San Francisco reporting a different story, but I was eager talk about Yordan Alvarez with his teammates, his opponents, and pretty much anybody else who was interested. I’ve long compared him to Willie McCovey because of his overwhelming physical stature and profile at the plate — it helps that Alvarez, like McCovey, also bats left-handed and wears no. 44 — and I considered myself fortunate to get to see the Astros DH play in San Francisco. I hoped I’d get to witness him launch one into McCovey Cove. That didn’t happen, but it was still fun to watch him during what’s turning into a career year.

One of the players I talked to about Alvarez was Houston outfielder Taylor Trammell. His response, to a question about what makes Alvarez so good, is worth sharing. “He is the most efficient player I’ve ever seen,” Trammell said. “He does exactly what he needs to do to get himself ready to play well, and then does nothing more. His preparation seems so effortless because he has so much confidence in his routine. He’s shrunken it all into a box.” Trammell also bats left-handed, yet he said he can’t study Alvarez to figure out what to do in the box because “pitchers throw differently to him. They throw him the pitches they don’t throw to anyone else just to try something to get him out.” He said Alvarez sees changeups from pitchers that he didn’t even know had changeups, and while that might’ve been a slight exaggeration, it worked to explain the helplessness that opposing pitchers must feel when Alvarez is in the box.

That’s the last we’ll discuss Alvarez here today, but if you want to read more about his MVP-worthy season, I’d encourage you to check out Dan Szymborski’s post from Monday breaking down Alvarez’s odds of winning the American League Triple Crown. Instead, in this week’s mailbag, we’re answering your questions about a pair of Cardinals pitchers who are greatly outperforming their peripherals, whether strong plate discipline translates to successful ABS challenges, the final franchise to (maybe) register a 100-loss season, and more. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the second installment of “Wait, What?!,” a series in which I dive deep on some of the prospects whose performance has most surprised me this season.

He had me at “Italian.”

At the outset of the pandemic, my wife encouraged me to join along as she learned Italian. After months of resistance, I finally caved. The first word I learned was ragazzo, which means “boy.” The plural form (ragazzi) came not long after, at which point I was able to translate the name of the pizza joint I’d often stumbled into at 3 AM back in college. All of 90 seconds into studying, I was hooked. I quickly exhausted a couple of online courses and soon, in a sort of modern day, language-themed pen pal arrangement, I connected with a few Italians online, which improved my language skills dramatically. This will be my last article here before I take a two week trip to Italy to see those friends. As far as I know, I don’t have a hint of Italian heritage, but that hasn’t prevented me from becoming a proud Italophile.

So, when an Angels source sidled up next to me on the backfields a few months ago and started talking excitedly about a Milanese lefty they’d signed out of indy ball, I stopped paying attention before he got to the part about the upper-90s fastball and wipeout slider. Read the rest of this entry »