What Kind Of Rebuild Do Angels Fans Want Next Year?

There are multiple ways to build a winning team in baseball, as we’ve just learned. The Milwaukee Brewers are currently waiting for the Tampa Bay Rays to presumably finish off the Cleveland Guardians and start the World Series, and it was the Brewers who used a small-market approach to dethrone the Los Angeles Dodgers, who spent their way to the top while putting together a farm system that’s the envy of nearly every team in baseball, including the Los Angeles Angels.

Angels fans aren’t familiar with this sort of thing, but they’re about to be. New owner Stan Kroenke has won championships in multiple sports, so he knows as much as anyone about winning formulas. Here are some of the steps Kroenke might take in doing his rebuild as he becomes more familiar with the issues in Anaheim and basball at large.

Rebuild fan trust

This is a big one. The Angels fan base soured on the team completely this season, to the point where the “tarps off” crew in the upper deck at Angels Stadium lived by variations of the constant chants to fire former owner Arte Moreno. The attendance numbers may have been decent, but the fans weren’t actually at the games, and many wound up outside the stadium holding signs while organizing de facto protest rallies. 

Winning them back won’t be easy, but real promotions with fan giveaways would help. The Angels have become notorious around baseball for their cheesy promos involving dollar store items that were as disposable as the tickets fans didn’t want to use. 

Ensure a talent pipeline

This one gets a check box, remarkably enough. The job’s not finished yet, but the Angels finally cleaned house at the deadline and started to replenish the farm system. The typical formula for the Halos has been drafting college players who are close to ready to the big-league level, but having a talent pipeline is a big part of being able to overcome adversity. 

Add key veterans with a budget that works

We’ve seen what happens when an owner tries to simply spend his way to the top, and Steve Cohen of the New York Mets wound up in last place in the NL East when he tried to do that. But the Angels already have some key veterans in place, so adding a closer, another top starter and a couple of power hitters at important positions would go a long way toward convincing fans that the Halos have a real budget and they’re willing to spend to win.