The Angels Go Third Base Shopping

The Angels did some bargain shopping over the weekend, adding veteran infielders Eduardo Escobar and Mike Moustakas to the roster from the Mets and Rockies, respectively. Escobar, who has triple-slashed a .254/.305/.432 line this year and was a part-timer in New York after the team turned to rookie Brett Baty as the starter at third base, was acquired for two pitching prospects, Coleman Crow and Landon Marceaux. Moustakas has performed adequately as a role player for the Rockies this year, splitting time between first and third and pinch-hitting, and fetched minor league pitcher Connor Van Scoyoc in return.

Assuming the Angels aren’t simply quickly acquiring third basemen from 2018 as part of some mad scavenger hunt, the urgency here reflects their desperate need for infielders. In most seasons, the preseason plan to have Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani and precisely nothing else go wrong with the other 24 players has gang aft a-gley by this point of the season, like most of the best laid plans of mice and men, despite Disney selling the Angels to Arte Moreno 20 years ago. Nobody writes a paean to a team with a .537 winning percentage, but this ordinary level of respectability, if the first half ended today, would represent the franchise’s best first-half winning percentage since the 2015 season. At 42–37, Los Angeheim stands just a game out for the last wild card spot, so now is pretty important.

“Now” is also a bit of a problem when it comes to the roster. While this may be the season the Angels finally write the proof to the hypothesis “.500 Team Plus Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout = Playoffs,” parts of the roster have crumbled in recent weeks. And while the lineup has scored 5.3 runs per game in June, more than 20% of that total came in Saturday night’s 25–1 humiliation of the Rockies; the Angels are at a decidedly meh 4.4 runs per game in recent weeks otherwise. The infield increasingly looks like a rickety structure that could collapse with a firm gust of wind. Jared Walsh, who looked in 2021 as if he could hold down the fort at his peak for three or four years, struggled in 2022 with thoracic outlet syndrome, and his return this year was poor enough that he was sent down to Triple-A Salt Lake.

Walsh’s injury and performance issues were two of the dominoes to fall early on, with Brandon Drury, signed to be the team’s second baseman this offseason, having to fill in at first a lot this season. More of them collapsed in the last two weeks: Gio Urshela is out, probably for the season, with a fractured pelvis; Anthony Rendon is out with a wrist contusion; and Zach Neto is sidelined with a sore oblique. While Neto has been terrific in recent weeks, the infield problems have reached the stage where his return probably won’t be enough. And though it would be nice for Rendon to come storming back and play like he did in his first season with the Angels in 2020, he’s been extremely underwhelming with both wood and leather despite being healthier this year than in either of the previous two years.

As replacements go, fans aren’t going to get a tingle up their spines when seeing either Moustakas or Escobar in the starting lineup, but the pickings tend to be slim at this point of the season. Many teams are confronting their accumulated injury problems at this point, but you don’t see a lot of them suddenly change course and throw in the towel in June. In our playoff odds, only six teams have a 5% or worse chance at this point, compared to 12 teams on the same date last year. And of those six, three (Nationals, Athletics, Royals) have been mostly stripped of their veteran talent already, and despite giving up Moustakas, the fourth team (Rockies) tends to cling onto its role-playing veterans like they’re the last rolls of Charmin when you hear a civil emergency siren.

Neither veteran will get the Angels a championship, but they may stop the bleeding, which might be just as important at this point. Escobar was dreadful in April, causing that loss of his job to Baty, but he’s thrived recently in his reduced role and has his seasonal line up to decent levels. Given the turmoil in the Angels infield, the fact that he can fake being a second baseman or a shortstop when necessary is something more valuable to Los Angeles than most other teams at this juncture. If Rendon does come back and discovers his offense, the team will be able to find gainful employment for him in other spots in the lineup and won’t have to jerk Drury or Neto around as much.

Moustakas is more limited at this point in his career, but like Escobar, he addresses a need in the lineup. With the decline of Walsh, the Angels have been short on lefty bats outside of Ohtani; I’m not sold on Mickey Moniak maintaining his current levels of performance for very long. He can fill in for Hunter Renfroe at first, assuming that’s the short-term plan, and is a platoon complement there, or he can start at first if Renfroe is needed in the outfield. And if Walsh finds his swing and there’s some good news from Rendon for a change, the Angels don’t have enough of a commitment to anguish about not having playing time for Moose.

Naturally, the Angels didn’t get either player for free. Crow ranked eighth on our Angels prospect list, with Marceaux at 25th. Crow in particular looks high in large part due to the general weakness of the team’s farm system; a 40 FV prospect would rank somewhere between 13th and 23rd in the Mets’ farm system. Neither Crow or Marceaux throw particularly hard, and the latter’s performance in the minors this season has been rather lackluster. ZiPS is no more optimistic than the prospect watchers, seeing Crow as a fourth-starter type and Marceaux maybe sticking around in a mopup/emergency type role for a few seasons. Van Scoyoc hasn’t really featured on many prospect lists, but I’m kind of intrigued by him; a big dude with a hard sinker, inconsistent secondary pitches, and who has gotten his walks under control seems like an interesting possibility to convert to the bullpen. If I were the Rockies, I’d rather have him in the organization right now than Moustakas, who never made much sense for the team to roster given their well-expected place in the standings.

The Angels didn’t frighten the Astros or Rangers with these moves, but their challenge was akin to trying to cater a wedding using only things they find at their local gas station; you’re going to find individually wrapped hard-boiled eggs, precut salami and stale cheese, and hot dogs that have been simmering for months, not aged duck breast with Lardo di Colonnata and guanciale. These moves aren’t sufficient to get Trout and Ohtani into the postseason, but they may have been necessary. And that’s fine. Hopefully, when the trade season really kicks off, the Angels will find a move or two that’s more ambitious.