For some teams, the offseason is a time to make big changes. Some teams elect to go quiet and stand pat, but Chad Jennings of The Athletic did a complete rundown of the biggest offseason change for every team in baseball, and his comment about the Los Angeles Angels basically summed up the team’s approach with a single comment:
Wait, that guy plays for the Angels?
Jennings then offered up a game. He provided a list of ten moderately familiar names, then asked readers to guess which team they currently play for. The names include third baseman Yoán Moncada, starter Grayson Rodriguez, outfielder Josh Lowe, reliever Jordan Romano, infielder Vaughn Grissom, reliever Drew Pomeranz, first baseman Trey Mancini, closer Kirby Yates, infield Jeimer Candelario, and starter Alek Manoah.
If you’re an Angels fan, you already know these names, although you may have missed one or two. The Angels have been signing players at a rate of at least one a week for most of the offseason, and the fact that some where done within a day or three of each other raises the possibility that a dartboard or a game of corn hole may have been involved in the decisions.
The projection sites aren’t convinced that any of this is going to work. Only the Chicago White Sox, Washington Nationals and Colorado Rockies have worse FanGraphs odds to make the playoffs, according to Jennings. Given that it basically takes a .500 record to be in playoff contention these days, that’s not good.
It’s going to be up to rookie manager Kurt Suzuki, new pitching coach Mike Maddux and new hitting coach Brady Anderson to make chicken salad out of this mess, and it’s a massive task.
Perhaps the worst part of this is the medicals on many of these players. It’s tough to tell the injury list and history without a scorecard—-hey, maybe owner Arte Moreno could make a few extra bucks selling one for this—-but it would probably be easier to list the players who aren’t coming off an injury than the ones who have been on the shelf in the last couple of seasons.
There are two real questions with all this: (1) When will things fall apart? (2) How bad will it get when they do? Fired manager Ron Washington somehow managed to keep the Angels within striking distance of .500 for the first half of last season, but we got a snapshot of just how bad things might get under interim manager Ray Montgomery after Washington had to step down due to his health issues.
No one knows where Suzuki will land in all this, but in theory he has the proverbial puncher’s chance to figure out the revolving door and field a team that plays something resembling professional baseball, which hasn't always been the case in Anaheim lately.