Want to get in a fun sports debate with your friends? Try to construct the Mount Rushmore of the worst contracts handed out to players under Angels owner Arte Moreno. There is no shortage of options, whether you favor the mega-deals that flopped or the smaller but still substantial commitments that didn’t come close to being repaid.
The above table doesn’t even include Vernon Wells, whom the Angels acquired from the Blue Jays in 2011 for Mike Napoli in the middle of a seven-year, $126 million deal. Toronto flipped Napoli to the Rangers for days later, where he became a World Series hero that October (although Texas lost to the Cardinals and even bigger World Series hero, David Freese, and Albert Pujols, who signed with the Angels that offseason). Wells performed below replacement-level during his two years in Anaheim before being traded to the Yankees … with Los Angeles still picking up most of the tab for the final two seasons of his deal.
Of course, not all of those acquisitions are Moreno’s fault (and the contracts given to Vladimir Guerrero and Torii Hunter near the outset of his tenure proved to be good ones). But he reportedly pushed for the signings of Pujols, Josh Hamilton and Anthony Rendon—arguably the three worst deals of the bunch—and the buck ultimately stops with the owner.
Moreno, 76, has accumulated a lot of those so-called bucks during his tenure—perhaps even more than he’ll get for the sale of the Angels, which he announced Tuesday he would explore, all but ensuring a change in ownership is forthcoming. That news set off widespread celebrations from Halos fans and even one of the club’s most iconic former players, Rod Carew, who felt spurned by the franchise years ago.
In the team’s statement announcing the potential sale, the Angels said that under Moreno they fielded “competitive lineups which included some of the game’s greatest all-time players.” Let’s ignore the genuinely hilarious fact that the team singled out its batting lineup over its pitching staff, which has long been the team’s Achilles heel, and grant that much as true. The billboard advertising magnate does deserve some credit for overseeing the drafting and extending of Mike Trout and the signing of Shohei Ohtani, as well as a fruitful period immediately after his purchase of the team from Disney that produced five division titles in his first seven years at the helm.
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But it also seemed that from the start, Moreno was overly obsessed with the idea of creating a star-laden team to match the Southern California setting. Within two years of purchasing the team, he announced the intention to change the team’s name from the Anaheim Angels to the much-ridiculed Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, prompting a lawsuit from the City of Anaheim and angering many fans from the team’s native Orange County who don’t identify with L.A, the heart of which is easily an hour’s drive in normal traffic. Over time, the payroll came to be clogged by aging stars who didn’t necessarily fit the roster and quickly exited their primes upon their arrivals. The team also commonly bet on players who performed well in platform years that often turned out to be outliers. Whether that’s due to poor evaluation or coaching, it’s a phenomenon that has occurred throughout multiple front office and coaching regimes under Moreno.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles’s true team, the Dodgers, built a consistent contender by hiring Andrew Friedman, the former Rays GM who had previously built a winning, pioneering franchise in Tampa Bay out of smarts and a shoe-string budget. Before that, though, the Dodgers also struggled to live up to the lofty payrolls established in the early years of the stewardship of Guggenheim Baseball Management.
One thing you can’t say about Moreno is that he didn’t spend money to try and improve his team. (Trout’s extension that runs through 2030 spared the Halos the embarrassment of losing this generation’s premier player in free agency—though Trout has dealt with several significant injuries over the past few seasons, and his diagnosis with a chronic back condition last month is cause for some long-term concern.) The problem is that the Angels, much like the Dodgers in the pre-Friedman era, didn’t spend in the right places.
Even when Trout has been healthy, the Angels’ stars-and-scrubs approach to roster building hasn’t worked. For a little while this year, it looked like it finally might. Armed with a top-10 payroll, they were tied for first in the AL West on May 15. They soon endured a franchise-record 14-game losing streak that effectively sunk them out of playoff contention and resulted in the firing of manager Joe Maddon, with the Angels sitting at 27–29, on June 7. The team’s 25–41 record since then indicates Maddon wasn’t the issue.
Just a few days ago, Maddon told Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times that “the infrastructure needs to be improved. There’s a lot of things that need to be improved there. … These guys can’t do it alone, obviously. It’s the non-sexy stuff that has to get better. It’s not just bright, shiny objects—they have that.”
Maddon, a former Rays manager and World Series winner with the Cubs, knows a thing or two about a winning philosophy in the modern era. It includes a rich player development system built around scouting, research and development and the international amateur market. This has eluded the Angels over the last couple of decades, and has resulted in one of baseball’s consistently worst farm systems, Trout’s emergence notwithstanding. (Ohtani was already a professional in Japan by the time the Angels signed him, so their successful acquisition of him should not be credited to the player development system.) There’s a knowledge gap between the front offices in MLB’s best franchises and its worst, and the Angels have been on the wrong side of that divide for too long.
And so this fall their championship drought will reach 20 years, a streak that began right when Moreno purchased the club following its epic 2002 World Series win over the Barry Bonds-led Giants, the franchise’s lone title and American League pennant in 62 seasons. The Angels haven’t had a winning season since ‘15, haven’t reached the postseason since ‘14 (tied for the third-longest drought in MLB) and haven’t won a playoff game since ‘09. Trout will end this season with a lone, abbreviated playoff appearance in 12 seasons, an unbelievably poor record that will define Moreno’s tenure. The Angels are lucky Trout re-signed with them and didn’t look for greener pastures, of which there are many.
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They may not be so lucky when it comes to Ohtani, though. The two-way superstar is set to enter free agency after next season and has expressed his desire to play for a winning ballclub, a designation his current team can’t lay claim to. Losing him would be a devastating blow.
Then there are the off-field controversies. Moreno oversaw a franchise with a pitcher, Tyler Skaggs, who died of a fentanyl overdose in July 2019 after a clubhouse attendant obtained drugs for him. Skaggs’s family is currently suing the Angels over his death. Moreno’s attempt to buy Angel Stadium from Anaheim fell through amid an FBI investigation of the deal that resulted in the city’s mayor resigning in May. With those disputes surrounding the club amid disappointing results on the field, Moreno hasn’t spoken with the media since February 2020.
Despite Moreno’s mishandling of the team over the past two decades, the club remains an attractive investment for prospective buyers. Due to the club’s premier location, loyal fan base—the Angels’ attendance averaged sixth out of 30 teams in the five years preceding the pandemic, none of which ended in playoff appearances—and the presence of two of the sport’s singularly talented superstars, the Angels are rated by Forbes as the ninth-most valuable MLB franchise at $2.2 billion—after Moreno purchased it from Disney for $184 million less than 20 years ago. That valuation would only rise if the Angels reach their potential on the field, an endeavor they’ve failed to accomplish under Moreno. With the right sort of leadership, though, it’s far from an impossible task.
For a time, it looked like Moreno was a leader who could transform the Angels into a dynasty. He was a popular figure who showed his passion early on by mingling with fans in the Angel Stadium concourse and putting his handprints on the team’s roster. As it turned out, though, his involvement in baseball operations was not what the Angels needed.
“My family and I have ultimately come to the conclusion that now is the time [to sell],” Moreno said Tuesday in his statement revealing his intentions. While he likely meant that in relation to his own situation and the profits he’s set to rake in, it rings true for the team, too. Given all that’s at stake for the Angels in the near future with Ohtani’s free agency looming and Trout now in his 30s, the sale, whenever it happens, certainly won’t have come a moment too soon.
