MLB’s Diseased Franchise

MLB’s Diseased Franchise

The Angels are the worstrun organization in pro sports. That includes the Pirates, A’s, Rockies, White Socks, Giants, Jets, Raiders, Wizards, Hornets, all those bad hockey teams. The Los Angeles Angels are worse. Players, scouts, baseball operations, team physicians, executives. They’re all infected with team owner Arty Moreno’s loser. I’ve talked about how much this team frustrates me before. Two of my biggest videos ever are largely about how incompetent this franchise is, but their scope does not cover how much I detest this organization. People talk about the Dodgers ruining baseball with their spending or their deferrals or the cheap teams like Oakland or Pittsburgh, but the real danger to MLB resides in Anaheim. If MLB had just a few more teams like the Angels, it would be in danger of going extinct. The Angels diseased culture has led to both the least competitive team in baseball and the tragic death of Tyler Scaggs. These are the two defining aspects of the last decade of their franchise. One of them is a normal outcome for a typical dysfunctional sports organization. The other is not, and that’s what sets this team apart. Understanding both of these aspects is necessary to understanding what the Angels truly are. First things first, roster construction. Before I get to how they totally butchered Shoi Otani’s last years in Anaheim, I need to cover how this team drafts. They grab headlines for all the wrong reasons. The 2021 Angels drafted 20 consecutive pitchers. New GM Perry Manazian used every single pick on pitchers because their pitching was so weak. 19 of those pitchers were college level. So analysts deduced that the Angels were looking to sh up their pitching as quickly as possible. Four and a half years later, only three have made the bigs, combining for 0.9 by and 154 innings pitched. When you account for trades they’ve made, including players from this class, they’ve netted 0.5 War from the 2021 draft. The only MLB players from this draft who are still on the Angels are Sam Bachmann and Chase Silth, neither of whom will look all that great. This draft was a patented Angels shortcut. They had Otani and Mike Trout playing at high levels. They needed pitching, so they drafted a bunch of older pitchers. Drafting is incredibly difficult, but it’s also random. With 20 picks, at least one of the players should be good just based on that randomness. But they boxed themselves in to one strategy, limiting the type of player they could pick. Using basic logic, there’s no way the best player available happened to be a college arm in 19 of the 20 rounds. This strategy resulted in a third round pick who they traded for half a season of easy out Escobar. They made these picks because of their short-term needs, which is a ridiculous strategy for any draft, but especially in baseball. Good teams pick the best players available in every round. They pick players of all kinds with high ceilings that they project will grow and develop into great MLB players. Which brings us to a related issue. The Angels cannot develop players. In the last decade, the Angels have had just one double-digit FUR pitcher, Show Otani. They’ve had four such position players. Otani, Trout, Andreton Simmons, and Taylor Ward. Otani obviously did a lot of developing here, but he was also a very good pro already in Japan, and he’s a generational talent who probably would have been great anywhere. Same as Mike Trout, who did most of his development closer to the year 2000 than the year 2025. Simmons was already a generational defender when the Angels traded for him. Taylor Ward is one of their only successful developments in the last decade. He stopped at every level of the miners. Changed positions multiple times, shifted his approach to the plate, and continuously got better even after making the bigs. He’s the first exception to the Angels rule. The second and final exception is Zach Neto, who spent just 44 games in the miners before debuting with the Angels, completely skipping AAA. I cannot overstate how lucky the Angels got here. His minor league stats were good, but not mind-blowing. And the Angels threw him right into the fire in 2023. He struggled for a bit, then took massive strides on offense each of the last two seasons. The fact that they’ve developed so few position players tells me that Neto’s talent is transcendent. He also probably would have figured it out elsewhere. The Angels have been handling prospects just like this for the entire decade. Draft a player as close to big league ready as possible. Circumvent any type of minor league progression if possible. Then call them up to sell some tickets for their home debut. The success rate is low. Let’s check every firstrounder of the 2020s. All of which were picked in the front half of the round. 2020 Reed Demer’s out of Louisville. 13 minor league appearances before debuting. 2021 Sam Bachmann out of Miami University. Despite repeated injuries and an astronomical walk rate, he pitched just 23 minor league games before debuting. 2022, Neto 44 games. Kudos to the Angels for the pick, but he succeeded in spite of the developmental strategy, not because of it. 2023, Nolan Shanuel out of Florida Atlantic. 22 minor league games, 17 at AA and none at AAA. He debuted in August. 36 days after signing with the team. I’ll come back to him in a minute. 2024, Christian Moore out of Tennessee, 79 minor league games, he had a sub 800 ops in the minors this year when they promoted him. And guess what? He looked nowhere near MLB ready once he was recalled. That’s a combined 181 minor league games between the Angels last five first rounders before debuting with the big league club. Like I said, they got extremely lucky with Neto, who’s the best player in his class by a long shot. As for Shanuel, he’s an everyday player who was hit above MLB average in his career, which already makes him a solid pick by default. My issue with them specifically picking him so high is his lack of ceiling. He’s a low power, unathletic first baseman. His hit tool was a lead in college and already MLB caliber at the time of the draft. But outside of the most incremental of slugging improvements, he’s essentially the same exact player today as he was when he was drafted. There’s a reason the minor leagues exist, and there’s a reason college players don’t start in the majors after the draft. Teams with good development let their guys make changes in the low pressure minor league environment before throwing them into the fire. Shanuel’s entire 2023 off season was centered around improving his endurance because he’d never played a full pro ball season before. Most rookies are working on aspects of their actual game, not focusing on standing up all day. He hasn’t made any major swing adjustments that could potentially open up his ceiling since joining the Angels. No developmental risks taken because they drafted him and rushed him up to be the player that he already was. And even if Shanuel takes a big leap next year and develops into a truly great first baseman, he’ll already be entering arbitration by next off season. Even though Neto’s been great, he had to get a lot better once he was already in the league. And he’s already in arbitration. And to be clear, these guys are the only two successful outcomes of this strategy. They did the same thing with 2024 second rounder Ryan Johnson this season. He was drafted with the compensation pick they got for letting Otani walk. Guess how many games he pitched in the minors before debuting? 20, 15, 10, 5, 1, zero, zero, zero. He pitched zero minor league games before debuting for the Angels on opening day of this season. Let’s take a wild guess on how that went. And that one’s gone. The Angels were using an average stuff starter with zero professional experience as a highleverage MLB reliever. Extremely high risk, extremely low reward. The guy doesn’t have strikeout stuff to be a Garrett Crochet or Chris Sail out of the bullpen. He got shelled. They sent him all the way down to single A to start and he finished out the year pretty damn well down there. Maybe if he started there, he would have done well enough to finish the season in double A with extreme prospect hype and zero MLB service time. But no, that would make too much sense for this team. Just this year, they picked Tyler Brenner second overall. He wasn’t a top 10 pick on any of the major mock drafts, and they picked him second over consensus top five picks like Cade Anderson and Ethan Holiday. It was a shock to most of the baseball world. Once again, they got headlines for all of the wrong reasons. Who knows? Brener could be a great pitcher. He’s still a great prospect regardless of how shocking the pick was. But at this rate, they’ll give Brener the opening day nod next April and be surprised when he gets shouted. The next aspect of roster construction that really pisses me off about this team is their fascination with name brands. This summer, I made a video about Peter Bendix, the president of baseball operations for the Marlins. One of the main reasons I believe in his strategy is his acuity for finding surplus value in the margins. Waivers, rule five draft picks, minor league free agents. The Marlins have used their low expectations to their advantage by finding and developing discarded talent on the fringes of their roster. The Angels do exactly the opposite. The guys they bring in to fill in their bench and the bullpen are all pedigree and noability. Former prospects like Tuki Tucant, Jake Eer, Oswell PZA, Ian Anderson, Scott Kingery, Carter Kboom, Miguel So, Ken Hura, Cole Tucker, and Carson Fulmer have eaten up innings and plate appearances over the last two seasons alone. These names give illusions of upside. High draft picks or former top prospects were once highly regarded for a reason. But over years and years of minor and major league failure. When these guys don’t produce or progress, they’re simply not valuable. The best result of this strategy was Mickey Moniac, who put up 2.2 Bir in 2023, but has accumulated0.7 since. And he was a little different in that he was an actual return piece in a real trade. The Angels do not have the pro scouting infrastructure in place to make good finds. Ask yourself, when was the last time the Angels had a surprise breakout player? Brock Burke and Bryce Teoddosio are the closest examples to fringe value that they’ve found in the last couple of years, and they combined for 0.9 FR in 2025. Teodosio was an undrafted free agent who signed in 2021. And he’s been more valuable than 19 of the 20 pitchers that they drafted. And the affinity for brand names over actually doing work to find value doesn’t stop at the players. Each of the Angels last three manager hires were made for their names. Joe Madden joined the Angels in his late60s, coming off a brutal 2019 collapse with the Cubs. Now, he was a longtime member of the Angels organization, and he was a big part of their late 90s and early 2000s ball clubs. So, I’ll come right back to this, but after firing him in 2022 and sticking with their bench coach, Phil Nevin, for the next year and a half, the Angels went even older with their next manager, Ron Washington, at age 72. He couldn’t even make it through half of his second season before being relegated to an off the- field role. To replace him, the Angels have signed former catcher Curt Suzuki to a one-year contract. This was after they all but signed Albert Pooh Holes to manage, but then bulked at the salary demands. When was the last time you saw a firstear manager sign a one-year contract? This organization is doing prove it deals with managers, or are they officially punting this season and letting Perry’s clock run out? They also just aren’t successful enough organizationally to be so enamored with hiring familiar faces. Did they really think that hiring Madden would return them to their early 2000 success? Do they think that Suzuki or Pooh Holes was the answer because they played on the team a few years ago? The team wasn’t even good when these guys were playing here. It’s such a unique situation where the payroll is at or above league average every year, but it’s built on such a cracked foundation that lacks competence or planning. I don’t think there’s a single organization less predictable year-over-year than this one. Otani was set to walk after the 2023 season. In 2022, he was the MVP runner up, and Trout finished eighth in voting. Them and Ward were the best three hitters on the team, and they were all pretty healthy throughout the season. The pitching staff was also in the top half of the league in terms of productivity. They won 73 games. Trout and Otani combined for over 15 war and this team won 73 games. The roster was nowhere near good enough to contend. Ken Rosenthal reported that the Padres’s made a monster offer for Otani at the 2022 deadline, including Jackson Merrill and many of the pieces that went back to DC for Sodto. The Yankees and Dodgers also made massive offers in 2022, but the Angels stuck with their superstar. Entering 2023, they had three options. Trade Otani for a massive hall to kickstart the rebuild, extend Otani, or go allin on this loaded free agent class to make one last push. Aaron Judge, multiple potential Hall of Fame shortstops, star pitchers, Wilson Contrarus, and more are available. Which path will it be, Arty? It’ll be the secret fourth path. One foot in, one foot out. signed Tyler Anderson and Brandon Drury. Trade for Hunter Renfro and Gio Orchella. That’ll be enough to contend, right? Well, kind of. They were 52 and 49 on July 26th, seven games out of the division and four games out of a crowded wild card. Again, they’re presented with options. The team isn’t awful, but it’ll take a massive splash and some good luck to make the playoffs. Realistically, the best option is to trade Otani now to the highest bidder since an extension probably won’t be happening. Once again, all in right now or tear it down. The Angels have an offer on the table for Junior Camero plus two of the Ray’s other top 10 prospects. That’s a total reboot right in front of them if they want it. On July 26th, they officially declared Shi Otani off the market. It’s all in. They traded for Lucas Gilito, Ronaldo Lopez, CJ Cone, and Randall Gritic. That’s all. What? You were expecting more? Otani tears his UCL in August. The team goes 8-19 in the month, waves most of their trade deadline acquisitions, then goes 8-19 in September. Otani wins his second MVP. The Angels once again finished 73 and 89. I understand that trading away a generational talent isn’t easy, but the Angels held on to Otani for all the wrong reasons. They never once truly went allin with him on the roster, and they never even got close to the playoffs in his six years in Anaheim. You could say they would have had a chance to make it if not for injuries. But they needed so much to go right for it to be worth keeping him. If it’s that unthinkable to trade him away, why not do more to build up the roster in the first place? I think the only reason they kept him at all is so Arty could give the fans a reason to show up to the ballpark in the dog days. That’s it. It wasn’t a calculated 40 chess move. Arty just wanted to sell tickets in August and September. It would have been different if they had a real chance at signing him once he hit the market. But the Angels reportedly didn’t even try to match the Dodgers contract offer when Otani gave them the chance. They knew it was his last season. They knew this roster wasn’t near playoff ready and they kept him to sell tickets instead of flipping him for a potentially franchise altering hall. That is disgusting mismanagement and nothing has changed since this debacle. Notice how I haven’t mentioned the general manager’s name throughout this entire part of the video. That’s because Perry Manassian is merely a puppet operating at the behest of Arty Moreno. Perry is no idiot. He’s been in baseball his whole life, scouting for the Rangers in his early 20s and working his way up to assistant GM of the Braves in the late 2010s. After the Angels fired Billy and Epsler in 2020, they hired Manazian to replace him. Apparently, entering 2023, Perry talked Arty out of signing Trey Turner to a mega deal, saying that this team wasn’t just a tray away from contention. That’s good advice and a good decision from Perry. the 2023 team plus Trey would not have made the playoffs. They’d have dedicated millions and millions of future dollars to late30s Trey Turner and never made the playoffs once. Understanding that Perry does have the capacity to view the bigger picture here tells me all I need to know. Perry probably felt the exact same way I did entering 2023 and at the 2023 deadline. He probably saw an Otani trade as his golden ticket to bolstering the farm. But Arty needs to approve any deal that’s made and Arty would never let Otani leave the Big A while still under contract. All of this is to say that Arty Moreno is the problem. Perry will be extended as Arty’s mouthpiece or leave after this year. In all likelihood, Arty will promote someone from inside the organization or bring in someone else who he knows and nothing significant will change. The last GM to truly try and lay his own foundation here was Jerry Dotto, who resigned in July of 2015 while the Angels were leading their division and coming off a 98 win season. Arty tightened his constraints over philosophical disagreements with manager Mike Sa who retired a few years later anyway. Moreno picking so over to Poto isn’t a crazy move from his point of view, but the fact that he couldn’t lead the two to a compromise to at least make it through the end of this season exposes the problem. Arty Moreno is no leader, and every move he’s made since that decision is only further evidence. He installed Bill Stoneman as the interimm GM after Dotto resigned. Stoneman hadn’t been part of the team’s baseball operations in nearly a decade. His trade deadline acquisitions of Shane Victorino, David De Jesus, and David Murphy combined for negative 1.4 war with the Angels, who missed the playoffs by one game. The Angels haven’t gone above 500 since. The Poto drafted Taylor Ward in his final draft, and the Angels have drafted maybe three good players since then. Let’s see how Dotto’s doing in Seattle, who were in a far worse spot when he left Anaheim. Let’s keep it. Arty is stuck in his ways. He will always stick with what he knows over any type of innovation or long-term investment. Scouting, analytics, training, development, and recovery are all way behind the good teams across this league. All because of one man’s stubbornness. And here’s where we get to the uncomfortable part of this video. The culture that Arty Moreno has cultivated, the lack of care and poor attention to detail at all levels of the organization, the comfort with mediocrity, it all led to the death of Tyler Scaggs. The wrongful death civil suit filed on behalf of Scaggs’ estate against the Angels organization is currently being heard. And each detail that emerges about this story makes the team look more and more culpable. To recap the situation, Tyler Skaggs died in his Texas hotel room on the night of June 30th, 2019. Pills were found in his room and the autopsy found a mix of alcohol, oxycodone, and fentinyl in his system. The DEA concluded that a fentinyl laced oxycodone pill was the catalyst in his death and that he wouldn’t have died that night without ingesting it. Eric Kay, then Angel’s communications director, was found guilty of selling Scaggs the fentinol laced pill. Kay is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence as a result of the criminal trial that took place in 2022. The news you’ve been hearing about this recently is from the ongoing civil trial. Paragraph 3 from the introduction of this complaint for wrongful death reads the following. The tragedy of Tyler’s death was made worse by the revelation that it could have been avoided. Without question, the Angels knew or should have known that Kay was supplying illicit drugs to not only Tyler but at least five other Angels players. i.e. 24% of the team’s active roster. Kay had a long history of drug abuse and the Angels knew about his problems with drug abuse and addiction. The Angels knew that Kay had gone to rehab several times during his employment with the Angels and that he had overdosed at least once. Despite all of this, Kay had complete access to players day and night, both off the field and on the field, who the Angels knew or should have known were trying to play through pains and injuries associated with the long baseball season. This was a fatal mistake. The complaint goes on to allege that vice president of communications Tim Meade, Kay’s direct superior, was aware of all of this and did nothing to put a stop to it. Me and other Angel’s execs have denied knowledge of his addiction, but me admits that he was aware about some of Kay’s concerning behavior. He knew about Kay’s relationship with an Angel’s intern, mediating their situation himself rather than reporting them to HR. He was also aware of Kay taking part in player dares for cash. This story is the one that’s grabbed the most headlines so far. Kay was paid cash to take a 90 mph fastball off the knee and eat a popped pimple off Mike Trout’s back. The cash was used to fuel his drug addiction. Players from the 2019 Angels have testified during this trial, including Trout, who says he confronted Kay about his addiction once he found out about it. He also said that once the players were aware, they stopped with the dares and they stopped giving Kay signed memorabilia. This is all to say based on what we know so far that Angel’s executives went to great lengths to protect Eric Kay and their own reputations when they should have been getting him help. A ton of the warning signs were brushed off as Kay having a bad day or potential mental health issues. I’m not saying that the Angels are the only team where pitchers have popped painkillers to make it through a season. I’m not saying that the Angels are the only team where employees have done gross or demeaning dares in the clubhouse. I’m not even saying that me or any of these executives are bad people. I’ve heard great things about me in the past. He seemingly thought he was doing right by Kay by protecting him. But in this case, a young man died a totally preventable death because of the toxic culture within this organization. Me and some of the other executives have been working for this team for decades. Reading through these court hearings paints a disgusting picture of complacency. Dr. Craig Milhouse, a longtime teen physician, also testified, saying that he’d prescribed Kay with over 600 opioid pills between 2009 and 2013 and that he was unaware with how addictive they were. Imagine your doctor not understanding the addictive properties of opiates. You’d probably find a new doctor. Milhouse has worked for the Angels for 31 years, and he’s still working for the team. Vince Willlet, a former Angel’s Clubby, testified that he saw Kay crush up and snort pills. And Kay asked him to stand guard and make sure nobody else saw as he snorted them up. Will it said that he never reported Kay’s drug use out of fear of losing his own job or being accused of drug use himself. Just like me going around HR to mediate Kay’s relationship with an intern, nobody in this org went through the proper protocols to officially report Kay’s drug use. It was an open secret and everyone was walking on eggshells and now the blame is being passed around in the circle. There is still no accountability. The fact that Kay kept his job through all the reported outbursts, a reported overdose, and most of the organization knowing he had a drug problem is emblematic of everything wrong here. They didn’t discipline him, try to get him help, or fire him. He was just Eric being Eric on an off day. Nothing to see here. This archaic boys club mentality leaking into the 2020s is despicable to say the least. And obviously the most important consequence is the tragic death of Scags. But it’s also the reason while they’ll never contend again until Arty sells this team or dies. Arty is at the center of all this. There’s no excuse available that he’s a hands-off owner and that this stuff slipped by under his nose. He clearly pulls the strings from a baseball operation standpoint. signing Albert Pooh Holes, Josh Hamilton, and Anthony Rendone were 100% him. Based on the FBI corruption probe that blew up the Anaheim City Council that he bought and paid for, he’s heavily involved with the day-to-day of the business side, too. That’s right, I forgot to mention, former mayor of Anaheim, Harry Sidu, was caught on tape saying that he expected a million dollar campaign contribution from the Angels after the baseball club purchased Angel Stadium. already got a sweetheart deal on Angel Stadium and the surrounding land in exchange for a bribe. And it would have gone through had the FBI not stepped in. You can’t tell me that this guy is oblivious about the Angel’s culture. In fact, he’s the one who’s setting this culture. He wants it this way. Tyler Skaggs is dead. Eric Kay is in jail for the next two decades away from his kids. Lower ranking employees were afraid of losing their jobs. Upper ranking employees were either unaware of what was going on or actively trying to hide how serious it was. And who knows what else has happened behind the scenes that hasn’t been reported on yet. This is why Arty prefers his hires in house. He wants people who are already friends with people in the organization so nobody spills the beans. This is a culture of negligence at all levels that is festered thanks to Arty’s toxic leadership. They behave as if there are no more improvements to strive for. They’re uninterested in developing players or staff. They’re comfortable with mediocre executives, directors, doctors, baseball operations, and players. They can’t even imagine a world where this team is serious on or off the field. Arty holds nobody accountable, and he’s not held accountable himself. As long as the Angels are turning a profit, the league will never force a sale as long as the Angels make money. I’m not sure how fans have stuck around for this long, and I don’t know how fans can continue rooting for this train wreck, knowing that there’s no salvation in sight. All we can hope for now is that some of the veteran level executives at this team finally put their foot down and push for some change. This trial has been covered thoroughly by Sam Blum of The Athletic, so make sure to go check his stuff out. He is one of the best beat reporters in baseball and easily the best reporter for Angel’s News. Thanks so much for watching. Shout out to my channel members. Misty, Zack G, Ethan, Alex, Mammoth, Zach E, Vicram, Elquo, JJ, John, Jackson, Ryan, Flyatory, Vify, Okay, then Y, GF, Wavy, Purdau, Joshua G, Edmania, DM, TSG, Zeva, Tommy, Joshua S, Delv, Visional, Nathan, Lorenzo, Drew, Anguen, Penguin, Benny, and sports stats. I plan on releasing one more membersonly video before the end of this year. Thanks so much for supporting.

The Angels are losers. They are actively suffering the longest playoff drought in MLB while simultaneously battling the estate of Tyler Skaggs in court. Both of those issues are a result of the toxic culture established by team owner Arte Moreno.

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Editing help: @BaseballHistorian