The Angels announced a surprise change at the top of baseball operations. Los Angeles has fired general manager Perry Minasian and hired longtime Cardinals executive John Mozeliak as interim GM.
Mozeliak’s official title is baseball operations consultant. He’ll take over daily roster maintenance in the short term but is apparently not under consideration for that position full time. The club announced that Mozeliak is being brought in to “(refine) a baseball operations strategy and (assist) the organization in its search for a new general manager.” They didn’t specify how long they expect that search to last, but Alden González of ESPN writes that Mozeliak is expected to remain with the organization through the end of the calendar year.
Minasian is out after a five-plus year run as general manager. Team president Molly Jolly released a statement in the press release. “Perry has been a valued leader who has worked tirelessly over the last six years to strengthen our baseball operations department,” Jolly said. “I am grateful for his dedication, insight and many contributions to our organization.”
The Halos hired Minasian over the 2020-21 offseason. They’d made the playoffs just once in the previous 11 seasons and were halfway through their window of club control over Shohei Ohtani. Minasian took over a roster with two of the best players in MLB but sorely lacking from a depth perspective without much in the minor league pipeline. It was more of the same during his front office hierarchy, which was characterized by a continued inability to put a capable supporting cast around Ohtani (for three seasons) and Mike Trout.
Los Angeles has systematically refused to rebuild, a mandate that spans multiple front office regimes and presumably comes directly from owner Arte Moreno. They’ve tried to patch things together with mid-level free agent signings and by drafting college players whom they’d expedite through the minor leagues.
While that approach has panned out with shortstop Zach Neto, their other top picks under Minasian have yet to make a significant impact. They’ve selected Sam Bachman, Nolan Schanuel and Christian Moore with top 15 overall picks between 2021-24. Schanuel is a low-end regular at first base. Bachman has battled injuries and wound up in relief. It’s still too early to judge on Moore, who has raked against minor league pitching but struggled in his first 58 MLB games while trying to find a defensive fit.
That’d perhaps be less of an issue if they were finding value beyond the first round, but that didn’t really happen. The Angels selected Ky Bush with their second-round pick in 2021. They punted their next two second-round choices to sign Noah Syndergaard and Tyler Anderson, respectively.
Ohtani’s free agency after the 2023 season was a clear organizational crossroads. The Angels were a few games back in the Wild Card picture at the deadline and decided to go for it. They pushed in for Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López, sending Bush and then-prospect Edgar Quero to the White Sox for the impending free agent righties. More notable is that they took Ohtani off the trade market, reportedly the second straight year in which Moreno stepped in to kill the possibility of dealing the sport’s best player.
It immediately went south. The Angels went 8-19 in August to fall out of playoff position. They placed Giolito, López and other impending free agents on waivers to dump their salaries and avoid paying the luxury tax. Ohtani would depart for a second-round draft pick just months after the Halos could’ve commanded a franchise-altering return. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic recently reported that the Rays had floated a prospect package involving Junior Caminero and Carson Williams for a couple months of Ohtani’s services.
The Ohtani compensation pick has been emblematic of the team’s overall approach. They used that selection on Dallas Baptist righty Ryan Johnson, who sat out the rest of the 2024 season. The Angels jumped Johnson directly to MLB as a reliever last year. He struggled and was optioned all the way to High-A in May to build up as a starter. Johnson has been up and down from Double-A this season and has an 8.21 ERA in 34 major league innings. He’s still one of the team’s better prospects, but there hasn’t been any sign of an organizational development plan.
There has been a similar amount of turnover in the dugout. The Angels had four full-time managers over Minasian’s GM tenure, plus a half-season from Ray Montgomery on an interim basis while Ron Washington was absent for health reasons. Minasian inherited Joe Maddon, who was fired midway through the ’22 season. Phil Nevin got a season and a half before the Halos hired Washington. They moved on from him last offseason. After a reported pursuit of Albert Pujols fell apart, they hired Kurt Suzuki on an atypically short one-year contract. That lined him up with Minasian, whose deal expires at the end of 2026.
The Angels have gone 392-500 since the start of 2021. Their 63-99 record two seasons ago is the worst in franchise history. They’re one of four teams — along with the Pirates, Rockies and Nationals — that hasn’t made the playoffs in the last five years and have the sport’s longest active drought at 11 seasons.
There’s no real reason to believe they’re on the verge of a turnaround. This year’s 34-48 start puts them on a 67-win pace and ties them with the Royals for the worst record in the American League. While they’re technically only 5.5 games back of a Wild Card spot, that’s far more about the state of the AL playoff field. Their draft strategy perennially leaves them with one of the sport’s weakest farm systems. Baseball America ranked their minor league pipeline 28th in MLB entering the season. Last year’s #2 overall pick Tyler Bremner is their only prospect on BA’s Top 100 list.
Minasian certainly doesn’t deserve all the blame. Moreno’s intervention in baseball operations has spanned multiple front offices. The GM inherited the disastrous Anthony Rendon contract and dealt with varying payroll limits, particularly after the team’s local television deal fell apart. The Angels haven’t gone beyond their three-year, $63MM contract for Yusei Kikuchi over the past five seasons. Their only other signees for more than $30MM were Raisel Iglesias (whose salary they dumped a few months into a four-year deal), Tyler Anderson, and Robert Stephenson.
The challenge will now fall on Mozeliak, at least in the short term. The 57-year-old had a long and generally successful run leading baseball operations with the Cardinals. Mozeliak spent more than a decade in the St. Louis scouting department before ascending to the GM role as a 38-year-old going into 2008. The Cards returned to the postseason within two years and won the World Series in 2011. They had a knack for developing mid-round draftees into productive big leaguers for most of the next decade and made the playoffs nine times between 2011-22.
St. Louis was a little delayed in pivoting away from their traditional success relying on ground-ball pitchers in front of an excellent infield defense. They fell behind in terms of developing swing-and-miss arms as much of the league emphasized working up in the zone with four-seam fastballs. That has caught up to them over the past couple seasons, as they missed the playoffs each year from 2023-25. Amidst the collapse of their own local broadcast deal, Cards ownership has also tightened payroll restrictions and moved into a retooling period focused on building their pitching pipeline.
Mozeliak announced over the 2024-25 offseason that the upcoming year would be his final running baseball operations. He indeed turned the reins to Chaim Bloom, who’d spent the previous couple seasons in their player development department, as soon as the ’25 season ended. It wasn’t clear at the time whether Mozeliak would look for other opportunities to lead a front office.
He’ll take that on in Anaheim, albeit with an apparent end goal of moving back into more of an overhead position and turning daily responsibilities to the next general manager. Assuming that doesn’t happen before the August 3 trade deadline, it’ll be Mozeliak’s responsibility to manage a likely selling scenario. He’ll also be in charge of next month’s draft, in which the Angels will pick 12th and 45th overall. They have the sixth-highest selection in every round after that.
The team’s top potential trade candidates (e.g. Neto, José Soriano, Reid Detmers) are all under arbitration control for multiple seasons. Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported over the weekend that Moreno wasn’t interested in trading those players or outfielder Jo Adell. Continuing with their usual approach wouldn’t leave them with much to dangle at the deadline. Kirby Yates and Brent Suter are impending free agent relievers who might be able to return a low-level prospect. They’ll need to decide on Suzuki’s future as manager this offseason.
It’s not clear if the Angels will provide a public timeline for the GM hire. Sam Blum and Katie Woo of The Athletic write that the team declined to make Jolly available to reporters tonight but have scheduled an introductory press conference for Mozeliak tomorrow.
Respective images courtesy of William Liang/Jeff Curry — Imagn Images.
