The Los Angeles Angels are entering an interesting 2025 campaign. They lost a franchise-worst 99 games last season — good enough to earn them the No. 2 overall pick in the 2025 MLB Draft — but decided to spend in an effort to compete for a postseason spot this season.
They addressed starting pitching by signing Yusei Kikuchi and Kyle Hendricks. They dealt with offensive depth by trading for Jorge Soler and signing players like Scott Kingery, Kevin Newman and Travis d’Arnaud. They may still make additions to the bullpen, but will get back their premier signing from 2023 in Robert Stephenson.
Add in a hopefully healthy Mike Trout and the natural progression of young talents like Zach Neto, Nolan Schanuel, Logan O’Hoppe, Jack Kochanowicz, Jose Soriano, Ben Joyce and more, and it feels as though the Angels are legitimately improved from 2024.
How improved is the big question. In 2024, the Angels finished 63-99. The worst American League playoff team — the Kansas City Royals — finished with an 86-76 record. But they’re expected to improve as well behind Bobby Witt Jr. In fact, only one of the six playoff teams from the AL last season — the New York Yankees — have any reason to finish worse than they did in 2024.
With that, the assumption is that the Angels need to make, at least, a jarring 23-win improvement in order to compete for the playoffs. That’s a hard pill to swallow, and it certainly doesn’t feel, on the surface, that the Angels have done enough to make that happen.
It’s impossible to know for sure until games are played, but metrics are not in their favor. Take the PECOTA standings projections from Baseball Prospectus.
Baseball Prospectus releases the PECOTA standings projections in early February each season. Last year, PECOTA averaged an 8-win gap in either direction from their preseason projections in the AL. This was exacerbated by a 25-win gap on the Chicago White Sox, who finished with the most losses in the modern era of baseball. Take away that historic outlier, and they were an average of seven wins off.
This year, they have projected the Angels to finish with a record of 76-86 to finish fourth in the AL West. If true, this would be the Angels 10th consecutive losing season and their 11th in a row missing the playoffs, both the longest active streaks in the sport.
Last year, they projected the Angels to go 75-87.
Below are the full PECOTA standings for the American League.
Angels projected to win 76 games by Baseball Prospectus
AL East
1. New York Yankees (90-72) – 1st in AL
2. Baltimore Orioles (89-73) – 4th in AL
3. Toronto Blue Jays (85-77)
4. Tampa Bay Rays (82-80)
5. Boston Red Sox (77-85)
AL Central
1. Minnesota Twins (86-76) – 3rd in AL
2. Kansas City Royals (81-81)
3. Cleveland Guardians (80-82)
4. Detroit Tigers (79-83)
5. Chicago White Sox (62-100)
AL West
1. Texas Rangers (89-73) – 2nd in AL
2. Houston Astros (87-75) – 5th in AL
3. Seattle Mariners (86-76) – 6th in AL
4. Los Angeles Angels (75-87)
5. Athletics (71-91)
