Angels Offer A Blueprint For Bad Spending Decisions

Got $30 million or so hiding under a couch cushion? Want to spend it like a big-league team? If you want to be like the Los Angeles Angels, you take cash like this and spend it on the likes of reliever Robert Stephenson, and you get exactly nothing for your money. 

The Angels gave Stephenson a three-year, $33 million deal back in 2024, but injuries have turned that contract into a lost sunk cost. According to a report from Darragh McDonald of MLBTradeRumors.com, the right-handed reliever missed all of 2024, made ten appearances in 2025, and then missed all of 2026. 

There is one small ray of sunshine in all of this, however. Stephenson’s time on the shelf unlocked a club option for the Halos, so they can choose to walk away if they so desire, which is what new ownership will almost certainly elect to do. 

The point isn’t to disparage Stephenson in all this, as this sort of thing happens all the time with pitchers. Teams like to gamble on velocity, and the Angels rolled snake eyes in this particular dice game. 

When you add in the Angels’ other moves, though, you start to see exactly how this team lost 100 games. Documenting examples would take an entire book, so we’ll focus on one or two just to give you an idea. 

The Josh Lowe trade sticks out. The Angels acquired the outfielder from the Tampa Bay Rays back during the offseason in a deal that failed miserably,  and the Angels gave up a perfectly serviceable reliever, Brock Burke, in the trade, with Burke going on to have a solid season with the Cincinnati Reds. 

Lowe, meanwhile, was a constant offense liability, as he struggled to hit much over .200 for the entire season, other than the time when he was sent down to Triple-A Salt Lake to see if he could figure it out. This tracked with his earlier struggles in Tampa Bay, but for some reason the Angels thought they could get something different out of him. 

Another great example of this is the Grayson Rodriguez trade. The Angels gave away power threat Taylor Ward, who loved playing in Anaheim. (We’ll give a second or two to reread the last part of that sentence.) Rodriguez cost the Angels at least a half-dozen games as he submitted one bad start after another while trying to find his footing after injuries, and the Halos were never able to replace Ward’s power production.