ANAHEIM – The Angels stink this season. And you hate it, right?
You shouldn’t.
If you’re a fan of the ball club, you feel hoodwinked. Duped and demoralized.
But please, don’t.
C’mon, you say. You heard Perry Minasian, the club’s general manager, say the Angels would be “aggressive” in the offseason and you leaned forward in your seat, eager to see what would come next.
You made peace with Shohei Ohtani’s departure (what choice did you have?) and took to heart the scuttlebutt about the Angels looking into left-hander Blake Snell and first baseman/centerfielder Cody Bellinger in free agency. You got your hopes up that they – or other comparable free agents – would end up in Anaheim this year, competent complements to (now injured) Mike Trout.
And then you watched the Angels’ biggest offseason signing be reliever Robert Stephenson. A shrug of a $33 million-over-three-seasons acquisition of a pitcher who’s injured and has yet to take the mound for the club whose 16-28 start is the second-worst in franchise history.
How are you supposed to be OK with that?
Because it’s going to be OK. Or, well, it could be OK – if the Angels lean all the way into the long game, which will require them (and you) to embrace the stink.
To accept the painful part of the growing pains happening now and for the foreseeable future.
To give these young guys – Nolan Schanuel and Logan O’Hoppe, Zach Neto and Mickey Moniak, Jo Adell and Reid Detmers – some grace, to take some solace in their small victories.
To be OK with the type of delayed gratification you plan for instead of begrudgingly being forced to accept in real time, year after year.
Just because a team doesn’t climb atop the roof with a megaphone – testing, one, two, testing! – to proclaim a rebuild is a rebuild doesn’t mean it isn’t one.
Especially when you have Manager Ron Washington all but spelling it out: “I want to see us win more ball games, but you have to learn to do that, and this group I have, they are learning how to win,” he said before Wednesday’s 7-2 win over the St. Louis Cardinals, a teaser of what his group is capable.
“I recognize an ‘Aha!’ moment every single day,” Washington added. “They all have skill, they all do something out there on certain nights that you go, ‘Wow, I wish he learned how to consistently do that.’ But they just haven’t gotten the chance to do it yet – and now they have that chance, so we just gotta be patient. Gotta be patient.”
And I know I’m testing your patience now, Angels fan, because how can anyone expect you to put stock in a full-fledged youth movement when the club’s farm system smells like a farm; it stinks too!
It’s been well chronicled, how behind the Angels’ developmental system is. So no matter which experts are doing the gauging, FanGraphs, ESPN or MLB Pipeline, no one ranks it better than 28th of 30.
In 2022, Southern California News Group’s Jeff Fletcher did a deep dive into the array of developmental issues keeping the Angels from their goal, which, as Minasian once put it, is “to consistently put a contending product on the field.”
The Angels – who instead have had consistently losing seasons since 2015 – haven’t had suitable backup depth to fill gaps when their big leaguers get hurt. They haven’t had enough sufficiently tradable prospects to get the deals done. They haven’t had the technological capabilities to keep up with opponents, or the philosophical conviction on which to follow through.
And we all know why. It wasn’t a priority for club owner Arte Moreno.
“The genesis of the (player development problem) was Arte’s unwillingness to make big investments in that area,” a former Angels executive told Fletcher in 2022. “As Arte starts to get more and more excited by the ideas of flashy free agent signings, from (Bartolo) Colon to (Vladimir) Guerrero and leading to everybody since, there was just a shift in spending behavior or how the money was allocated.”’
Moreno has tried eating his cake and wanting more too; it hasn’t worked. Even with greats like Ohtani and Trout on the roster.
I don’t know what Trout’s appetite for it might be, but it’s time to bake this thing from scratch. Whatever Minasian needs, from personnel to technological upgrades to, yes, a contract extension past this season, give it to him.
Pick a lane – Minsasian’s “winning is a skill” concept – and live there; trust that your line of cars will start moving eventually.
Nurture guys like Neto while he grows up, this plucky 23-year-old Floridian, the 13th overall pick in the 2022 MLB June Amateur Draft who’s now in his second Major League season.
He showed up early to the ballpark Wednesday with a smile, never mind the Angels’ poor record and three consecutive losses. Spotted his manager and told him: “Look who just got here? Big Papa!” And then went and drilled a home run over the left field wall before sidling up to Washington – told you so!
Zach Neto gets one back for the Angels with this home run! Pads the lead and puts the Angels up 4 again!
5-1 Halos!#RepTheHalo #GoHalos #Angels #LTBU pic.twitter.com/YYTHfnw8Uj
— Locked On Angels (@LockedOnAngels) May 16, 2024
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“Whether we win or lose, just keep coming to work and making it fun,” Neto said Wednesday night after the Angels won at home for just the sixth time this season, a baby step in what will likely be a long and arduous process – if the Angels do it right.
“Just keep believing in each other, keep going out there every day, just keep grinding for each other. This game’s hard and we’re playing really good teams. … It’s just a matter of us being in those situations where we get to grow as players.”
Pan out, step back, commit to the bit and the Angels and their fans could learn to like the sound of that – despite this season’s stink.