Angels Option Decisions Cover A Wide Range Of Possibilities

The Los Angeles Angels do have some option decisions to make, and they’re going to end up covering a lot of ground when they go to make them. They only have one player option call to make, but if you expand the decision process to include players who are out of minor league options, then things get a lot more interesting. 

Start with the player option. It’s for reliever Robert Stephenson, who was given one of the worst contracts handed out by the Perry Minasian/Arte Moreno regime. The Angels gave Stephenson a three-year, $33 million deal back in 2024, and he’s barely seen the mound in Anaheim or elsewhere since. 

Stephenson underwent a second elbow procedure back in April, which makes this an easy call. The player option is only for $2.5 million, which is tempting, but unless the new ownership believes in flushing money the way Moreno and Minasian did, turning down this option should be the simplest decision of the offseason so far. 

Add in infielders Vaughn Grissom and Denzer Guzman being out of minor league options, though, and a host of possibilities pop up with both players. 

Consider Grissom first. The Angels picked him up in a minor deal last offseason, and the Halos actually got some value. Grissom made the club as a utility infieder, and for a while he was the starting second baseman. He wound up at first when Nolan Schanuel got hurt, and he proved capable enough defensively. 

The value came at the plate, where Grissom wound up hitting cleanup for what was basically a Triple-A lineup on a 100-loss team. That lowers his value, but Grissom did hit enough to get some kind of low-cost deal to keep him on the 40-man roster. 

There probably won’t be a lot of competition for Grissom’s services, but he showed enough offensively to possibly be a fit as a bench player elsewhere. 

Guzman is an entirely different story. He hit well early and showed some possibilities at third base, but by the end of the season he was back to being a no-bat defensive infielder. Guzman may have some value there, but the new GM and manager may decide that value is negligible enough to explose him to any team that thinks he might be worth a shot. 

These aren’t huge decisions by any means, but Grissom does matter to some extent and there's a good chance Guzman could be playing elsewhere next year.