Angels Sale Means Big Changes Are Coming, Starting Now

The Los Angeles Angels haven’t been winning games, but they have been improving in a big way. The sale of the club by much-loathed owner Arte Moreno is a quantum leap, especially since the buyer is Stan Kroenke, owner of the Los Angeles Rams and multiple other pro sports franchises. 

The basic logic here is that it would be hard to do worse than Moreno has done in the last decade. The Angels haven’t been to the playoffs in that time, and they recently ensured another losing with a seven-game losing streak last week. 

But Kroenke comes with a lot of sides and facets, as Alden Gonzalez and Buster Olney noted in their recent piece about what the sale of the Angels means for both the franchise and for MLB, and they raised some intriguing points that are well worth a review. 

Start with Kroenke’s success, as it’s indisputable. As Gonzalez outlined, he’s won two Super Bowls, two Stanley Cups, an NBA title, an MLS Cup, two NLL championships, and most recently a Premier League championship. 

But Gonzalez also noted some important caveats for the fan bases of the teams he buys.

“If you talk to L.A. Rams fans, he is a godsend,” Gonzalez wrote. “If you talk to fans of the NFL franchise when it was based in St. Louis, he is public enemy No. 1. If you ask Arsenal fans, he is an absentee owner. If he is heavily involved in the Angels, though, it would probably be a good thing. How involved he actually will be remains to be seen.”

Kroenke also treats his teams as real estate investments, in the purest sense. He used the Rams to engineer the SoFi Stadium deal, with the stadium at the heart of a 300-acre sporst-and-entertainment hub. 

Will he do something like that with the Angels? They represent an incredibly valuable piece of LA real estate, so it would be logical to assume something on that scale if he’s as involved as their LA locale would seem to imply. 

No one knows what that means on the field, though. Right now it means more Angels awfulness, with a Triple-A lineup that’s close to unwatchable. 

But the starting pitching is the opposite of that, and that’s where things get especially fascinating. The Halos have a rotation that’s starting to look like it’s to die for and that could be the focal point for the biggest change of all -- an Angels team that values winning more than just fans having an entertaining experience at the ballpark.