The Los Angeles Angels face the unfortunate reality of their current place in the standings, and with only so many opportunities to make up ground, general manager Perry Minasian and his roster are in a tough spot.
Trading from the cream of their remaining prospect pool to acquire Lucas Giolito, C.J. Cron, Randal Grichuk, and others to supplement the current Major League roster was amongst the most aggressive stances around the league. Minasian opted to make one final push with this club, instead of the opposite, which was to look towards the future.
An already depleted farm system couldn’t fall much further, and Minasian figured it was in the best interest of the fans, players, and organization to hit the gas pedal, per Alden Gonzalez of ESPN:
“I understand the sentiment of, ‘Sell everything, rebuild,’ all those types of things,” Minasian said. “I understand that. But when you have a special player, who I don’t know if we’ll ever see again, having a special season, when you have a team around him performing, keeping their head above water with a chance to win every night — I feel like the team deserved a chance to win. And I think there’s real value in that, especially for our younger players.”
This season did feel like a final hurrah, at least with the impending free agency of Shohei Ohtani and how that’ll impact many areas aside from just on-field personnel. But the Angels chose a high risk, high reward option, and it crashed down in just a few short weeks:
“Other stars have left, other teams have gotten draft picks — they don’t fold the franchise,” Minasian said. “You can recover from that. That being said, we wanted to give ourselves the best chance to have a successful season and play meaningful games in September and hopefully get to October.”
Minasian sticking to his guns on how he approached the trade deadline is one route he could have gone, and he would be justified in doing. A once-in-a-generation talent like Ohtani isn’t guaranteed to come back to the franchise in the offseason, but a certain playoff run wasn’t a lock either.
The randomness of a big league season and how well a team gels together is contingent on more factors than simply having plus-additions to a roster. Sadly, that much is evident in the Angels 5-13 record since the deadline.
Mike Trout discusses Shohei Ohtani’s Angels future
All hope isn’t completely lost on the year, but as the Seattle Mariners continue to surge, the Wild Card race might be too far out of reach to seriously contend. Even with Mike Trout on the mend, his time playing with Ohtani could be coming down to its final run of games.
With a surefire mega-contract guaranteed to be in Ohtani’s future when it comes to free agency, he’s maintained the utmost level of professionalism despite the chatter, something Trout echoed.
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