The Angels Are Stuck in Purgatory
The Angels have absolutely no business not being the most interesting team in baseball. How can a team with arguably the two top talents in the sport be practically mundane? They were number 3 in our preseason MLB.tv rankings, and they… would not be that high today. Just like they have every year since they were swept out of the ALDS by the Royals in 2014, this Angels team has wilted as the summer carries on. It was a tough enough pill to swallow when they were just letting Mike Trout down, the best player of the last decade. Now ,they’ve been lucky enough to stumble upon the second coming of Babe Ruth, Shohei Ohtani – and they are still sitting in fourth place in the division.
Joe Maddon, one of the most respected managers of the modern era, hasn’t been able to captain this team to a winning record in his time as LA’s top guy. $245 million-dollar man Anthony Rendon missed two-thirds of this season and has yet to post the kind of impact that would warrant his salary. Is there any way that the Angels can find their wings?
It’s been well publicized that pitching has been a blight upon the Angels for years now, but the long-term health of the Millville Meteor has become a concerning question as well. Trout’s calf injury has limited him to just 36 games, and Maddon commented on Monday that it’s “a possibility” he will have to be shut down for the rest of the season. His rehab has already taken much longer than originally expected, and he’s still feeling a fair bit of soreness in that right calf, apparently. His last game was on May 17th, and his recovery was projected to need only six-to-eight weeks. That four months possibly won’t be enough time to make it back to the field is a troubling sign for how he will age going forward.
Even if Trout comes into spring training next year in the best shape of his life, there’s not a long history of outfielders that are over-30 and over-225 pounds staying in the grass long-term. In fact, only four other qualified players (Frank Howard, Carlos Lee, Marlon Byrd and Matt Holliday) have ever done it for more than a measly 100 games. Trout has been a great defensive center fielder in the past while only Byrd among those guys can say the same, but Trout will surely be moving to a corner spot full-time upon his return. While the Angels must accept that Trout’s slow decline as a defender and baserunner will continue, his 193 wRC+ at the plate this year would have been a career-best over a full season. If a .333/.466/.624 batting line is a declining player, then that player must have been pretty excellent to start with, to put it mildly.
While Trout’s been the guy they’ve been missing, Ohtani has been the Angels’ one saving grace all season long. He’s been killing it on both sides of the ball. Even though he probably doesn’t have the innings to be seriously considered for the Cy Young, he should run away with the AL MVP award unanimously – unless there’s a dissenter or two that doesn’t like that his team did not qualify for the playoffs. No matter what, though, the award is his – and deservedly so. The Wins Above Replacement (WAR) stat isn’t really equipped to handle a two-way player like Ohtani, since it’s only a measure of how much more or less valuable a player at a single position is than his peers. Ohtani has no peers. He seemingly breaks a new record or does something amazing each and every week. He just stole home the other day, he reached the 40 HR-20 SB threshold before the calendar flipped to September, and his 160 wRC+ is fourth in baseball (not counting Trout, who doesn’t have enough plate appearances to qualify). Oh, and he’s pretty good on the mound, too. He’s the best pitcher on the team, and when a reliever comes on to take the ball for him, he gets moved to right field to keep his bat in the lineup.
The things Ohtani is doing on the field are practically single-handedly revitalizing interest in the sport. The Angels have been and will continue to face a lot of scrutiny from fans (and possibly the league) if they can’t get their act together and put out a competitive product to surround him and Trout with.
As for the supplemental players they’re currently rolling with, the aforementioned highly-paid third baseman Anthony Rendon has suffered through a disappointing year but put up a career-best .418 OBP in his first season as an Angel last year. He’ll still only be 31 on Opening Day next year, too, so it’s not as if his tank is on E just yet. Much like Rendon, fellow infielder David Fletcher had an excellent year in the shortened 2020 season but has struggled to make good on that promise this year. Jared Walsh has been very good since the start of 2020, and the Angels are hoping Brandon Marsh can be their answer in center field for the foreseeable future and the new-groove Jo Adell is showing promise. Outside of a new shortstop, the Angels’ offense looks pretty much set entering 2022.
The pitching staff is what’s in need of an influx of talent. Ohtani is amazingly their only starter who has even thrown 100 innings entering September. The next two guys in terms of innings are Andrew Heaney at 94 IP and Dylan Bundy at 90.2 IP. They’ve put up ERA’s of 5.27 and 6.06, respectively, which aren’t figures that will keep the Angels competitive in too many games. Patrick Sandoval and Alex Cobb have been more effective in fewer innings, and they have further depth behind them in José Suarez and Griffin Canning. Most of these guys should return next year, but the Angels should aim to diminish their roles. Lockdown relief ace Raisel Iglesias, who has actually been their third-most valuable pitcher in terms of WAR this season, will be a free agent in November.
The Angels have already invested heavily in their core, and they’re undoubtedly socking away hundreds of millions in their piggybank for the massive contract Ohtani will require in a few years. If they want to see a return on that investment, they’ll need to spend a little further for that elusive top-of-the-rotation arm they’ve whiffed on for the past 2 decades. Raisel Iglesias is a guy they’ll need to re-sign to solidify the ‘pen, and one of the many premium free agent shortstops would go a long way towards lengthening their lineup and solidifying what has been shoddy team defense. It’s debatable whether or not they are a couple pieces away from having a realistic shot at going deep into the postseason, but they’re too far down the rabbit hole to blow it up and try again in 5+ years. This all seems familiar.
The Angels can realistically expect to score more runs next season without making any big roster changes thanks to a new roll of the injury dice. However, they will have to make a couple of impactful additions to the pitching staff and hope that a lot of other things break right for them if they want to sniff late-October baseball next year.
-Michael Swinehart
