The first post-Shohei Ohtani season of Angels baseball was painful for fans, as the Halos finished dead last in a weak AL West division with a 63-99 record, just avoiding the franchise’s first 100-loss season ever.
With Ohtani no longer on the roster and the team coming off its worst season yet, speculation about a potential rebuild has swirled around the team, but owner Arte Moreno put those rumors to rest during a phone interview with reporters (including Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register) earlier on Saturday. During the conversation, Moreno made it plain that his objective for the organization is to compete for a playoff spot in 2025. It’s a tall objective given that only the White Sox ended with fewer victories than Anaheim this season, but Moreno noted that spending is “going to go up” to meet his hopes for contention next year.
With that stated, it does not appear that a significant rise in payroll is expected. Following a considerable decline in salary from 2023 to 2024, Moreno now believes the club’s budget for 2025 will fall somewhere between the $176 million proposed by the team this year and the $215 million paid during Ohtani’s final season with the organization. It’s unclear where Moreno’s goal payroll falls between those two figures, but the Angels should have some flexibility this winter anyway. After all, the club’s 2025 books include just over $109 million in guaranteed contracts for 2025. That doesn’t include salaries for the Halos’ rather large arbitration class, but even if each player is tendered a contract in line with the projections by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz they’d still be sitting at a tidy $147M for 2025, or nearly $30M below last year’s payroll.
If Moreno limits the team’s payroll to just around $200 million, the club could have up to $50 million in payroll flexibility remaining. Furthermore, Moreno suggested that the club’s payroll increase this offseason should be sustainable, but he cautioned that if payroll were to return to 2023 levels in the future, it would have to face similar cuts to what it did last winter, with Moreno indicating that the budget for 2023 was unsustainable.
“It’s just an automatic loss,” Moreno remarked of the club’s $215 million salary for 2023, as reported by Fletcher. “If I start piling up (financial) losses, then the next year I’m going to cut.”
Of course, even a substantial financial commitment is unlikely to lift the Angels out of the American League bottom without major internal improvements to their core group of players. The most significant lift would undoubtedly come from a healthy and effective season for Mike Trout, the club’s potential Hall of Famer who has never been anything less than outstanding with the bat despite being limited to just 266 games over the past four seasons. Trout’s healthy season, even if he is no longer the annual 8-win player he once was, would be a game changer for the team’s offense. So too would steps forward from the club’s young core, including catcher Logan O’Hoppe, first baseman Nolan Schanuel, shortstop Zach Neto, and southpaw Reid Detmers.
Overall, 2024 was a mixed bag for the quartet, with Detmers struggling throughout the year and spending the majority of the season in Triple-A, while Neto had a breakout season, combining 30 stolen bases with a 114 wRC+ as he locked down the Angels’ shortstop position. Meanwhile, O’Hoppe and Schanuel had perfectly good seasons, albeit with only average offensive from both players and O’Hoppe taking a step back defensively, both young players have plenty of space to grow next year.
With Luis Rengifo and Taylor Ward among the other complementary players set to return next year, it appears that the Angels’ biggest challenge this season will be patching up a pitching staff that ranked last in the majors with a 4.57 ERA and only ahead of the Rockies with a 4.68 FIP. Veteran lefty Tyler Anderson turned in a solid mid-rotation performance this year (3.81 ERA in 31 starts), and Detmers’ combination of strong pedigree and past success leave him likely to earn another shot as a starter next year, but a lackluster 2024 performance from Griffin Canning and midseason elbow surgery for lefty Patrick Sandoval both leave the club with few solid answers in the rotation for 2025.
The Angels have been notoriously cautious to shop at the top of the starting pitching market during Moreno’s stint as owner, so it would be surprising if the club pursued a top arm like Max Fried or Corbin Burnes this winter. Nonetheless, playing in the mid-tier of free agency this winter might help the team add more stability to its rotation, with alternatives such as Luis Severino, Nathan Eovaldi, Sean Manaea, and former Angel Andrew Heaney expected to be available.
