For a rebuilding Angels team, it’s all about hope

ANAHEIM – At its core, baseball is about hope.

It’s the only thing that keeps people going back to ballpark in some cities, the idea that better times are in the future – whether in the near future or a few (or more) years down the road.

As usual, this is a big part of why Angel fans continue to come to the stadium. But this season, the motivation is slightly different. Shohei Ohtani is now a Dodger, Mike Trout is entering the back nine of his career, and there’s a good chance that if a story of triumph is to be written about this franchise, it will be written in the years to come rather than in the months to come, perhaps. by names like Nolan Scuanuel, Logan O’Hoppe, Mickey Moniak and Zach Neto.

Maybe even Jo Adell too, although the clock seems to be running out for the outfielder who was once the franchise’s brightest prospect.

There was a lot of reason for hope when the Angels returned Friday from a 4-2 road trip after being beaten twice by Baltimore in Games 1 and 2. The Orioles are really good, and the Marlins really aren’t. not – they were 0-9. before winning on Sunday – so the three games in Miami turned out to be a successful series for the Angels.

They split the first two games of their home opener against Boston, but on Sunday the hope wasn’t enough. It was a 12-2 disaster, with Chase Silseth giving up solo homers to David Hamilton, Rafael Devers and Tyler O’Neill in the third, José Suarez giving up a three-run shot to Reese McGuire in the sixth (en route to a day of five RBIs) and the Red Sox pile up in the ninth with four runs against Guillermo Zuñiga.

Learning experience, right? There will be more games like this — baseball’s law of averages says so, just as it says the Angels will earn a few laughs, too — but keep in mind that this team’s magic number is not 2024. When manager Ron Washington talked during the Baltimore series about how his players needed to learn to win, just like the Orioles had to do during their rebuild, it was a wake-up call. Think 26, maybe, or 27.

Did we say Angel fans are loyal beyond reason? In that sense, they may be the most stubborn fans in SoCal. Their team hasn’t reached the playoffs since 2014 and hasn’t won a playoff game since 2009, the red on the “2002 World Champions” pennant at center field is fading more and more every year, and it’s fair to say that a majority of Angels fans can’t stand the owner.

The fans filling my inbox were ready to party two seasons ago when Arte Moreno decided to consider selling the team, and most of them plunged into the funk that winter when Moreno withdrew the team from the market. We haven’t yet reached the point where Angels fans wear “SELL” T-shirts at the ballpark like they do in Oakland, and I’d be curious how stadium ushers would react if they did.

But Moreno’s unpopularity has not diminished. As the stadium elevator headed upstairs Sunday morning, it stopped on the second floor, where Moreno’s dressing room is located. A passenger started to get off by mistake and his friend stopped him saying something like, “We don’t want to watch the game with him anyway.”

It could be worse, remember. It’s worse, much worse, in Oakland, where East Bay A’s fans are on the verge of losing their team and owner John Fisher remains impervious to public opinion, unshaken not only by the idea that the Oakland fans hate him, but also by those of the A’s. The future home of Las Vegas hasn’t rolled out a welcome mat either. (For the record, This Space remains convinced that the Vegas ballpark project will fail. Who knows? They might end up being the Sacramento A’s permanently.)

There is no hope in Oakland. There are possibilities in Anaheim, albeit distant, and perhaps there should be a reality check here as well.

The Angels – and I assume that means Moreno – have resisted a complete teardown throughout this non-playoff drought. The reasoning is that this simply isn’t possible in the continent’s second-largest media market because fans won’t stand for it, and in most cases that’s true.

As recently as last August, general manager Perry Minasian made moves at the trade deadline in a last-ditch attempt to stay in contention and convince Ohtani to re-sign. The strategy failed when the Angels lost seven games in a row in early August and 11 of 14 to lose 13½ games from first place and eight games from a wild-card spot, and Minasian eventually gave up to Lucas Giolito, Dominic Leone, Matt Moore, Reynaldo. López and Hunter Renfroe to get the team under the luxury tax threshold.

So when Moreno demurred last winter after having the last chance to re-sign Ohtani, then fired the five free agents represented by Scott Boras – Blake Snell, Cody Bellinger, Jordan Montgomery, Matt Chapman and JD Martinez – as February turned into March, the strategy was pretty obvious.

And to be honest, a rebuild is as solid a strategy as the Angels have. Yes, Snell and maybe Martinez would have looked great in red for the Angels, but would they have provided enough of a boost to catch the Rangers, Astros and Mariners in the AL West?

At this point, it’s best to start again, and that means not only giving the big league kids a solid chance, but also committing additional resources to scouting and player development and shoring up the foundation.