After Anthony Rendon revealed that he had indeed suffered a fractured tibia and not a bone bruise, and after Shohei Ohtani cleared out his locker to undergo surgery to repair his torn ulnar collateral ligament, there really was only one more insult to add to the injuries that have defined the Angels’ 2023 season. On Sunday, the team transferred Mike Trout to the 60-day injured list due to continued setbacks in his recovery from wrist surgery, officially ending his season and opening the door to questions about his future with the franchise.

Trout fractured his left hamate while fouling off a pitch on July 3. He had surgery to remove the bone — a treatment that’s supposed to accelerate a return to play — two days later, and was expected to be sidelined for four to eight weeks. He returned on August 22, about seven weeks after surgery, but while going 1-for-4 with an infield single, he felt significant pain in his left hand when hitting and returned to the IL. Though he still hoped to play this season, he ran out of time.

“It’s frustrating,” a visibly emotional Trout told reporters in a media session on Sunday. “It’s been hard on me… It kills me not being out there. I’ve got a lot left in my career, and I can’t just sit around here and mope around. I’ve got to have that positive mindset.” Read the rest of this entry »

About two months ago, the Los Angeles Angels were trying as hard as they could to cling onto the back of the AL Wild Card chase. If they could do that, they could maintain the faint hope of convincing Shohei Ohtani, their once-in-six-lifetimes superstar free-agent-to-be, that Orange County was a place where he could win for the rest of his career.

They threw everything at the wall — traded the top tier of their farm system for short-term pitching help, revamped their outfield, and spent a lottery pick on a college first baseman, seemingly with the express purpose of rushing him to the majors in time to help with the playoff push. How’d all that go? Awful, as you might expect. Mike Trout got hurt, Taylor Ward got hurt, then Trout got hurt again. Lucas Giolito allowed 28 runs in 32 2/3 innings in his six starts with the Angels.

This week, the Halos made the unprecedented and controversial decision to put their rentals on waivers, in a last-ditch attempt to get back under the luxury tax threshold so they can receive a higher draft pick as compensation for Ohtani leaving. All that sounds absolutely horrendous, doesn’t it? Read the rest of this entry »

Hey there. Are you a major league general manager or president of baseball operations? Do you work in a front office role for a playoff-contending team? Do you wish you had another starter, a good closer, or maybe an outfielder? Well, I’ve got great news for you, my friend. Operators are waiting now for your call: the Los Angeles Angels just yelled “Everything must go!” and threw their roster on the waiver wire like a miffed fantasy owner.

More specifically, the Angels placed Lucas Giolito, Matt Moore, Reynaldo López, Dominic Leone, Hunter Renfroe, and Randal Grichuk on waivers. For the next 47 hours, any team in baseball can place a claim on any or all of their services. It’s an unprecedented maneuver that could inject talent into playoff races across the league, and in an unpredictable fashion. If you’re on the fringes, you’ll get the first bite at the apple, but there are so many players here that even some teams currently in playoff position might end up with someone. If you’re looking for more specifics on the waiver process, Jon Becker wrote a nice explainer here.

Let’s talk about the way this works for the Angels first. Coming into yesterday, we projected them for a competitive balance tax payroll of $234,398,925. The first CBT threshold for this year is $233 million. That means they need to save around $1.5 million to duck under that threshold. The players put on waivers are owed around $6.44 million over the remainder of the year, and a similar amount even when CBT tax calculations are applied. The total tax savings will be slightly less than that, because the Rockies are paying a portion of Grichuk’s salary, but assuming most of these players find takers, the Angels will end up below that threshold. Read the rest of this entry »

By now, you’ve probably seen that the Angels put what we in the business call “Darn Near a Whole Roster Of Players” on waivers. Per ESPN’s Jeff Passan, Lucas Giolito, Matt Moore, Reynaldo López, Hunter Renfroe and Randal Grichuk are all free for the salary relief taking; USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reports that Dominic Leone is on waivers as well. Meanwhile, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports that Harrison Bader, Carlos Carrasco, Mike Clevinger and José Cisnero have also been placed on waivers by their respective clubs. What does this mean for those players? What about the teams waiving or claiming them? What about you, the reader? Let’s dive in to some of the common questions I’ve seen since the news broke.

Q: What does “being placed on waivers” even mean anyway?

In the context of post-trade deadline transactions, being placed on waivers is similar to the waiver action that occurs when a player is designated for assignment. However, since the trade deadline has passed, the option to trade a player who has been placed on waivers is gone. The only option for a claiming team is to claim the player straight-up, paying all of his remaining salary for the rest of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

The news last night out of Anaheim landed like a punch to the gut of every reasonable baseball fan: Shohei Ohtani has a torn ulnar collateral ligament and at the very least is done pitching for the season, thus ending perhaps the greatest campaign we’ve ever seen. And in a double whammy that shouldn’t be dismissed, the team announced that Mike Trout is heading back to the injured list after playing just one game following a seven-week absence due to a fractured left hamate that required surgery.

Set aside the money for a moment; obviously this carries ramifications for Ohtani’s upcoming payday, which I’ll get to below. And forget the playoffs. The Angels went all-in in advance of the August 1 trade deadline but have gone an unfathomable 5-16 this month, plummeting out of the AL Wild Card race like an anvil without a parachute. Their Playoff Odds were already down to 0.3% before they were swept by the Reds in a bleak doubleheader on Wednesday. Even if Ohtani and Trout had both played at their peaks over the season’s final 34 games, the team’s fate was sealed. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone likes an inspiring story. They don’t call it a Hollywood ending for nothing; people love it when the hero wins before the credits roll. Over in near near-ish the center of American film-making, it looked like the Angels were setting up for another iteration of that classic arc. They were down and out, deciding whether they could stomach trading the best player in the game before losing him forever. The previous best player in the game was out with injury, and the ship was taking on water. Then, a classic mid-story twist: they ripped off an 8-1 run in the latter half of July and decided to go for it one last time.

Yeah, about that. Since trading for Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López to lean fully into this year, they’ve gone 2-9, slipping back below .500. After their playoff odds reached 22.7% on July 27, the Halos have crashed down to 1.3% in short order. That’s a seasonal low for their chances of making the postseason. Things are decidedly non-magical in the land of Disney these days.

What’s gone wrong for the Angels? Well, one thing’s for sure: it’s not Shohei Ohtani. He’s started at DH for all 11 games of the stretch and has hit a ludicrous .405/.542/.649, even better than his seasonal line. He left his lone start in that span early with hand cramps, but pitched four scoreless innings before departing. To the extent that one player can power a team, Ohtani is doing his best. Read the rest of this entry »

While some of the biggest names available did not find new homes on Tuesday, a whole lot of relievers are wearing new duds. So let’s get down to business.

The New York Yankees acquired pitcher Keynan Middleton for pitcher Juan Carela

With all the relief trades made by the White Sox, Middleton must have felt a bit like the last kid taken in gym class this weekend. This has been the year he’s put it all together, thanks to a much-improved changeup that has become his money pitch, resulting in hitters no longer simply waiting around to crush his fairly ordinary fastball. He’s a free agent after the season and certainly not meriting a qualifying offer, so the Sox were right to get what they could.

I’m mostly confused about this from the Yankees’ standpoint. He does upgrade the bullpen, which ranks below average in our depth charts for the first time I can recall. But unless they really like him and hope to lock him up to a contract before he hits free agency, I’m not sure what the Bombers get out of tinkering with their bullpen a little when the far more pressing problems in the lineup and rotation went unaddressed. As for Carela, he’s been solid in High-A ball this year, but he really ought to be as a repeater. Just how much of a lottery ticket he is won’t be better known until we see if he can continue his improvement against a better quality of hitter. Read the rest of this entry »

We all knew the Angels were desperate to add at the deadline. How desperate? Well, how desperate would you have to be to call your ex — two of your exes, actually — on a Sunday night?

The Halos continued their deadline restocking process by reacquiring a pair of their former first-round picks, Randal Grichuk and C.J. Cron, from Colorado in exchange for minor league pitchers Jake Madden and Mason Albright. (No, not the former secretary of state, but I’m gonna keep doing a double-take every time I see Albright’s name until well into his big league career.)

Every big league organization has its own special circumstances and cultural idiosyncrasies, but this trade brings together the two teams that have the best claim to being in unique situations. With Shohei Ohtani three months from free agency, the Angels sit four games out of a Wild Card spot with two teams to climb over. They face time pressure unlike anything most franchises have ever experienced. And the Rockies, well, are the Rockies. Read the rest of this entry »

Strength up the middle is important to any contender, but with so many teams still in the hunt for a playoff spot, it’s no surprise some of them are have some weak spots. Perhaps it’s easier for a team to convince itself that the metrics aren’t capturing the entirety of a weak-hitting player’s defense if they’re playing a premium position, which seems to be the case at both catcher and center fielder.

While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. Interestingly enough, two of the seven teams below the WAR cutoff for right field also make the list for left field: one because it’s far below, and the other because it’s right on the line. I’m listing the capsules in order of their left field rankings first while noting those two crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 1 deadline, but these are teams to keep an eye upon. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are through July 26, but team won-loss records and Playoff Odds are through July 27. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, the Angels made the most consequential decision they’ll make all year: they decided to pull Shohei Ohtani off the trade market and attempt to make the playoffs. They followed that decision up almost immediately with a complementary one, acquiring Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López from the White Sox in exchange for prospects Edgar Quero and Ky Bush, kicking the trade deadline off in earnest by landing one of the best starters on the market, plus an interesting relief flier.

If you came here for a tallying up of the relative merits of the four players involved in this deal, you’ll definitely get it, but I’ll be frank: I don’t think that’s the most interesting thing to discuss about this trade. If that’s what you’re after, search for the phrase “get down in the mud and count beans.” You can read the second half of this article and come back up here later. First, though, I want to talk about the bigger picture here for both the Angels and the Sox. For my purposes here, we’ll just ballpark it: Giolito is a solid third starter. López is a high-risk, high-reward setup man. Quero is a 50 FV catcher, a middle-of-the-top-100 prospect. Bush is a future back-of-rotation starter. There’ll be more than that later, but that’s a good starting place.

Deciding whether or not to trade Ohtani is a responsibility I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It goes beyond counting up value and cost, weighing playoff odds against organizational soundness. It’s not about wins and losses, even. Voluntarily sending the best player in baseball out of your city is a legacy question, a fan interest question, the kind of thing disgruntled fans might cite for why they fell out of love with the team. On the flip side, turning a rental into multiple top prospects might be the kind of move that builds a competitive core around the tail end of Mike Trout’s prime. This isn’t your average buy/sell decision; when they write Perry Minasian’s baseball biography, what he did with Ohtani will likely be in the first paragraph. Read the rest of this entry »