We're nearly one third of the way through the 2026 regular season. The Angels have won exactly one third of their games. Despite getting out to a decent start -- the Halos were 11-10 after a win on April 17 -- they're now sitting on a 17-34 record. A resurgent performance from Mike Trout and a breakout from Jose Soriano fueled that early success, but those two alone can't carry the rest of the roster. The Angels have won only six of their past 30 games and just one of their past 10.
The end result doesn't come as a major surprise, although it's nevertheless jarring when any team rattles off a stretch with only six wins in 30 games. Still, the Angels didn't enter the season expected to be contenders. MLBTR readers overwhelmingly voted that their offseason was worthy of a D or F grade. FanGraphs projected what now looks like a charitable 72 wins. PECOTA had them down at 66 wins, which now also looks like it could finish on the high end. My colleague Anthony Franco opened his review of the Halos' offseason by writing that the Angels "did little to improve a 90-loss roster and again enter the season as one of the American League’s worst teams on paper."
It's a familiar refrain. The Angels will extend their playoff drought to 12 years when the current season concludes. They haven't had a winning record since 2015. Owner Arte Moreno has cycled through seven managers since their last winning season. Current skipper Kurt Suzuki is in a virtually unprecedented situation: a rookie manager on a one-year deal. There's a chance that 2027 will bring an eighth manager in 12 years.
To hear Suzuki tell it, the Angels are right on the cusp of turning things around. Sam Blum of The Athletic asked him last week whether he felt this was a cold stretch or reflective of where the Angels are as an organization. Suzuki replied: "I truly do believe that we've hit a cold stretch. Even that being said, there are a lot of games where we're in it. We're one swing away, maybe one pitch away, one out away."
Granted, there's not much Suzuki can say in that situation. It's a perfectly fair question to be asked, but a rookie manager on a one-year contract isn't going to throw the entire organization under the bus. He probably does believe, to an extent, that the players on hand have underperformed, gotten unlucky and that the record could be better. There may even be some truth behind that. The Angels certainly aren't a good team, but a team with Trout, Soriano and Zach Neto probably isn't quite bad enough to be a 54-win team (the Angels' current pace).
That said, the Angels are an unequivocally bad team. The organization has been stuck in neutral for more than a decade. Let's take a look at the current state of the roster, what could be done, and why the Halos are spinning their wheels in perpetuity.
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More like why can’t Arte Moreno accept reality?
As long as the team is making him money, nothing else matters.
That’s right, business first, winning down the list. Not trading Ohtani exemplified his goal.
He doesn’t know how to build a baseball team, much less rebuild. He replaced an ad exec as POBO with another ad exec. That should fix it.
SELL THE TEAM!
(Not sorry. Next game I go to in July, I will be participating in the chants.)
Bc the fans don’t want to win
Huh? Im scratching my head at this comment when you have a whole crowd chanting “sell the team”
That’s what Arte said, winning isn’t a top 5 priority for fans. It’s mentioned in the article.
I think he’s referencing Arte Moreno’s quote of “winning isn’t even in the top 5 priorities among angels fans” haha
Catch 22. You have to be able to judge talent to realize how few people on this team have talent.
Does anyone actually believe Minasian knows how to judge talent?
Arte is a disgrace. Don’t trust him. He has destroyed a team in Southern California of all places. Not a small market. Minassian is clueless and doesn’t know what he is doing. Stop with managers that have never managed a day in their life. Suzuki is gone after this year.
I can’t disagree with either statement.
It’s a two headed beast.
Are you asking if a team that has Los Angeles in its name but is geographically nowhere near Los Angeles has a hard time accepting reality?
“nowhere near Los Angeles”
You’re joking right?
Good write up. As a life time Angels fan, what I don’t understand is if fans/Arte don’t care about winning, then what’s the big deal about entering a rebuild? Seems like they’d be bad either way, but one at least has a glimmer of hope. Incredibly frustrating.
Ticket sales. That’s it 😂
Would love to see a study across MLB the past 15 years about how many fans a team loses after going into a rebuild. If I had to guess, it’s probably ~5k fans per game for the angels since they draw so well. But of course every team is different.
You still need the right people in place to make the trades, scout, draft properly and develop talent. If they traded Ohtani, Trout, whomever, there’s no reason to think they would get anything more than a handful of magic beans…….
You don’t need the right people to know the obvious. You just need a brain.
We are not talking about blowing a third round pick or trading Marsh for O’Hoppe, which are understandable mistakes, I’m talking about the wasted first round picks and acquiring redundant pieces like Lowe that anyone with a clue knows were bad moves.
The highlight of the Angels’ roster is that it’s fun to say Zeferjahn.
The Angels organization needs a refresh from top to bottom. Nothing will change, and the Angels will be hopelessly lost in the wilderness, until Arte sells the team.
And what about the Tigers? When do they play the Halos?
Mike Trout to Boston for Yoshida and Arias. Who says “no”?
What if the Sox include Jarren Duran?