With 81 games scratched off of the regular season, the Los Angeles Angels have fallen to 45-56, and enter one of the more pivotal trade deadlines in their franchise’s recent history.
The plan for general manager Perry Minasian since this past offseason was to build a winner, to get his roster over the hump of missing the playoffs each year since the 2014 season when they lost in the first round. Their most recent World Series title came in 2002, and perhaps the most outrageous fact is their two-man tandem of Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout has never appeared in the postseason together.
Both Trout and Ohtani faced off in this year’s World Baseball Classic, with the incredibly climactic Championship Game coming down to the pair facing off in the final inning. Trout would strike out after a tough at-bat, as Ohtani and Team Japan bested Team USA.
Their biggest matchup came before the season, in front of an international crowd that drew 5.2 million viewers in the United States.
The talk around Major League Baseball has been how can the Angels lose with two of the best players in the sport? Because baseball is difficult, and it’s even tough when realizing that it takes more than just two players to play the game.
Another hurdle has been ownership and the trickle-down effect Angels owner Arte Moreno has bestowed on his franchise since taking over in 2003 when he bought the team for $184 million. His infatuation with high-priced free agents has failed more times than they’ve worked out, and the dream of owning an MLB franchise almost came to an end before this season.
Moreno announced he was exploring a sale for the Angels in late August, but after revealing there wasn’t a buyer he felt met the asking price he desired, he ultimately chose to maintain ownership of the Angels. Now worth an estimated $2.7 billion, he entered a season with the understanding that this could be the final run with Ohtani, with his free agency looming.
Moreno provided Minasian with the green light to add to the current roster via free agency, adding now-All-Star closer Carlos Estévez, left-hander Tyler Anderson, and Brandon Drury on multi-year deals. A few trades with veterans in their final years of arbitration rounded out the offense, but one thing lacked, impact from the farm system.
Minasian has been fairly aggressive in calling-up top prospects, adding Logan O’Hoppe, Zach Neto, Ben Joyce, Sam Bachman and Livan Soto to help out the Major League roster. Unfortunately, O’Hoppe, Neto and Joyce have all sustained injuries, Bachman has been lackluster in his given roles, and Soto isn’t an impact bat offensively.
Since June 1, the Angels have the third-worst ERA as a pitching staff in the American League, with 4.75 collective. On the offensive end, they can score runs, and their 118 wRC+ ranks as the second-best in the AL in the same span. Much of which is carried by Othani, who has posted a 1.050 on-base plus slugging, 71 RBI, 63 runs scored, and his 32 home runs prior to the break have him on a historic pace.
Heading into the break, the Angels have lost nine of 10 games, including two embarrassing losses to the Los Angeles Dodgers to cap off the first half.
The decision for Minasian on how to conduct the rest of the season is difficult because the injury bug has depleted his roster from their fullest potential, which was .500 baseball. With Trout out with a broken hamate bone in his left wrist, Drury nursing a shoulder injury, Gio Urshela done for the year, and O’Hoppe just beginning to take swings, the Angels might be too deep to trade their way out of back into the win column.
Fangraphs gives the Angels just a 10.8% chance to make the playoffs, and although he’s been slugging, Ohtani hasn’t fared well without Trout in the lineup. The same lack of restraint that Moreno had when spending hundreds of millions on big names is why the farm system has taken a back seat for so many years.
Their farm system ranks as one of the bottom three in MLB, with just two prospects in MLB’s top-30, O’Hoppe and fellow catching farmhand Edgar Quero.
Smart franchise operation would be to sell, take what you can get from the moveable pieces you can and build from within. Starting from scratch isn’t the sexiest move, but it’s exactly what has made teams like the Baltimore Orioles, Texas Rangers and other rebuilding teams that much more dangerous when mixed with high-priced free agents.
However, the tipping point might be the once-in-a-generation talent they still have in Ohtani. The one final push to gut the razor-thin farm system they have to acquire players on expiring deals might be where Moreno urges his front office to trend.
Minasian improved them on the margins and brought in upside veterans and stayed within the team’s means, all while under the competitive balance tax. Unfortunately, he might be backed into that spot by his owner to continue that further dive with trades that will undoubtedly mortgage more of the future.
Trading Ohtani isn’t the smart move, but it makes all sense in the world for what the Angels as a franchise need. If all signs point to him leaving via free agency, trading him could jump-start the inevitable rebuild for a few months of him playing elsewhere.
If Minasian believes that just making it into October on fumes, then acquiring the pieces he feels could help right the ship, is the direction he could go. Nobody can fault him for either, because with a player like Ohtani, wreckless decisions might be only justifiable in this instance for a player with talents we might never see again.
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