Arte Moreno

The Angels announced that the Moreno family is ending the exploratory process to sell the team and will continue ownership throughout the 2023 season and beyond.

“During this process, it became clear that we have unfinished business and feel we can make a positive impact on the future of the team and the fan experience,” owner Arte Moreno says in a statement released by the club. “This offseason we committed to a franchise record player payroll and still want to accomplish our goal of bringing a World Series Championship back to our fans. We are excited about this next chapter of Angels Baseball. We are grateful to Galatioto Sports Partners for their outstanding efforts throughout the process that allowed us to meet with a number of highly qualified individuals and groups who expressed strong interest in the Club. However, as discussions advanced and began to crystallize, we realized our hearts remain with the Angels, and we are not ready to part ways with the fans, players and our employees.”

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred also released a statement on the matter, as relayed by Sam Blum of The Athletic. “Despite strong buyer interest in the Angels, Arte Moreno’s love of the game is most important to him. I am very pleased that the Moreno Family has decided to continue owning the team.”

Moreno, now 76, announced in August that he would explore a sale of the team. There weren’t many details of the sales process reported in the interim, though Manfred did say in December that the club was hoping to have the sale completed by Opening Day. It appears that Moreno either didn’t find an offer to his liking or had a change of heart and will keep hold of the team for the foreseeable future.

He purchased the team from the Walt Disney Company for $184MM in April of 2003. The Angels were reigning champions at that time, having won the 2002 World Series. They qualified for the postseason a few times in the next few years but have since gone into a dry spell. They have made the playoffs just once since 2009, getting swept by the Royals in the 2014 ALDS and not making it back since. That’s come despite having some superstar players on the roster in those years, include current Angels Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. The club’s payroll has regularly been in the top 10 in the league in Moreno’s tenure but he’s garnered a reputation as being one of the owners more likely to meddle in baseball decisions, which has made him a divisive figure among the Angels’ fans.

This offseason, despite the potential sale hanging over the club, they have been quite active in pursuing upgrades. They traded for Gio Urshela and Hunter Renfroe while signing free agents Brandon Drury, Brett Phillips, Tyler Anderson and Carlos Estévez. That’s bumped the club’s payroll up to $206MM, per Roster Resource, with a competitive balance tax calculation of $220MM. That payroll would indeed be a franchise record as Moreno stated, with Cot’s Baseball Contracts having their previous high as last year’s $189MM figure. Whether that’s enough for the club to break its postseason drought remains to be seen. They will be looking to chase the Astros, who have dominated the division for years and just won the World Series. The young and resurgent Mariners just grabbed a Wild Card spot last year and the Rangers have been extremely aggressive in pursuing upgrades over the past couple of years.

The continuation of the Moreno regime will lead to various questions that will need to be resolved in the years and months to come. From on-field perspective, the biggest unknown is the future of Ohtani. The unprecedented two-way superstar is entering his final year of club control before he’s slated to reach free agency. Many have been speculating about whether a new owner would be motivated to give Ohtani a mega deal to stay an Angel or would prefer to start fresh by clearing house and beginning a rebuild. Now those questions will have to be directed towards Moreno and whether they can find common ground on a deal or if Ohtani is determined to spend the next part of his career elsewhere.

Off the field, there will be questions about the issues that perhaps led to Moreno pursuing a sale in the first place. A company created by Moreno was attempting to purchase the 150-acre Angel Stadium site from the city of Anaheim with a goal of using the land to develop commercial space, housing, restaurants and more. A tentative agreement was reached at a $320MM price point but the potential sale drew heavy criticism from many in the area and a federal investigation was launched into alleged corruption, violations of state laws, and insider information being shared as part of the deal. Anaheim mayor Harry Sidhu was personally cited in the investigation and ultimately resigned. Anaheim City Council later voted against the deal in May of 2022. The club’s lease on the stadium runs through the end of the 2029 season with a club option to extend that lease through 2038.

There will also be league-wide questions to be answered, as the Angels were one of two teams exploring sales this winter. The other is the Nationals, though that situation appears to be mired in TV rights issues and nowhere near a resolution. For any groups interested in getting into the MLB ownership game, those two paths that appeared open a few months ago now appear to be closed or perhaps untenable. The league has expressed interest in expanding from 30 to 32 teams though Manfred has repeatedly said that he would like each of the A’s and Rays to resolve their respective stadium situations before expansion will be on the table.

In a news release, the Angels ownership group announced that it is considering selling the team, and will start to explore a possible sale along with Galatioto Sports Partners (who have been retained as financial advisors during the process).

“It has been a great honor and privilege to own the Angels for 20 seasons,” owner Arte Moreno in the statement.  “As an Organization, we have worked to provide our fans an affordable and family-friendly ballpark experience while fielding competitive lineups which includes some of the game’s all-time greatest players.”

“Although this difficult decision was entirely our choice and deserved a great deal of thoughtful consideration, my family and I have ultimately come to the conclusion that now is the time.  Throughout this process, we will continue to run the franchise in the best interest of our fans, employees, players, and business partners.”

While any number of factors may have weighed into the Moreno family’s thought process, it was less than three months ago that Anaheim’s city council ruled against a long-gestating deal that would have seen Moreno’s management group purchase Angel Stadium and the entire 150-acre property around the ballpark. Moreno’s group was planning to develop the area into a multi-purpose residential and commercial space, similar to other “ballpark village” developments that have become common around both newer baseball stadiums and other venues in other sports.

However, the tentative agreement between Moreno and the city fell apart, in large part due to an ongoing federal investigation concerning alleged corruption, violations of state laws, and insider information.  Former Anaheim mayor Harry Sidhu resigned his position, and the city council voted to overturn the Angel Stadium deal entirely in the wake of the scandal.

Though the stadium controversy led to fresh questions about the franchise’s future in Anaheim, it now seems like Moreno himself will be walking away from the Angels entirely.  Moreno originally bought the team in April 2003 for a price of $184MM, taking over operations from the Walt Disney Company in the wake of the Angels’ 2002 World Series championship season.

That 2002 title still stands as the franchise’s lone championship, despite Moreno’s efforts to remake the Angels into a big-spending perpetual contender.  Under Moreno’s stewardship, the Halos have regularly been at least a top-10 payroll team, even if Moreno’s willingness to spend didn’t lead to a willingness to cross the luxury tax threshold.  (2004 was the only season the Angels ever made a luxury tax payment.)

The Angels reached the postseason five times between 2004-09, though they won only two playoff series and didn’t advance beyond the ALCS.  The regular trips to October soon stopped, as an AL West title in 2014 (and a three-game sweep at the hands of the Royals in the ALDS) marked the Angels’ most recent postseason appearance.  After winning 85 games in 2015, Los Angeles has had six consecutive losing seasons, with the struggling 2022 squad on its way to making it seven straight years of sub-.500 baseball.

As Moreno’s statement noted, “some of the game’s all-time greatest players” have worn an Angels uniform in the last 20 seasons, including the likes of Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, Vladimir Guerrero, and Shohei Ohtani.  Despite these and other talents, the Angels simply haven’t been able to break through due to a host of other ill-advised acquisitions.  While Moreno was willing to spend, this aggressiveness manifested itself in many major investments that simply didn’t pan out — i.e. Josh Hamilton, Justin Upton, Vernon Wells, Gary Matthews Jr., Zack Cozart, and (to date) Anthony Rendon.

Pujols’ ten-year, $240MM free agent deal is probably the defining transaction of Moreno’s ownership, and unfortunately symbolic of the Angels’ last decade of struggles.  While Pujols was still an elite player heading into the 2012 season, giving such a major contract to a first baseman entering his age-32 season was seen as a risk, and those fears ended up being warranted.  Pujols had a few good seasons in Anaheim, but injuries and the normal aging curve made him far less productive than during his prime years with the Cardinals.

Responsibility for these signings ultimately fell to Moreno himself, who was widely known to be far more involved in baseball operations than the average owner.  The Angels have had five different general managers during Moreno’s tenure, with this revolving door reflective of Moreno’s lack of patience.  As well, the Angels haven’t had much of a minor league pipeline in place to build around these high-priced acquisitions, as the Angels have routinely traded prospects and missed on several draft picks.

Trout is the major exception, of course, but the Angels haven’t been able to capitalize on having a homegrown prospect develop into a legendary player.  Signing Ohtani was another huge moment for the organization, and while injuries have largely kept Trout and Ohtani from seeing a lot of time together in the same lineup, it still seems hard to believe that a team with two generational players hasn’t been able to even crack the .500 mark, let alone contend in October.  Ohtani is a free agent after the 2023 season, and his future with the Angels will certainly be a major story over the next year-plus, with an ownership change now adding another intriguing wrinkle.

Major League Baseball now has two franchises known to be for sale, as the Lerner family is also widely expected to sell the Nationals.  It is possible that any bidders for the Nats might also look into buying the Angels, and it’s safe to assume that either franchise will sell for at least $2.5 billion.  The Angels’ proximity within the greater Los Angeles area could mean a higher price tag, though it also remains to be seen if the organization will necessarily remain in Anaheim.

As per the team’s Angel Stadium lease, the Angels are bound to their ballpark through 2029, with a club option to extend that lease through the 2038 season.  While the Halos aren’t going anywhere in the short term, at least, a new owner might have designs on moving the team elsewhere.  Conversely, a new owner might represent a new beginning for the Angels’ future in Anaheim, potentially a fresh start on talks about ballpark redevelopment, and perhaps even another name change.  It’s probably safe to say that the old “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” mouthful will remain a thing of the past, but the club could also return to the “Anaheim Angels” moniker rather than being tied to Los Angeles.