Kurt Suzuki’s lone season in charge of the Los Angeles Angels is over after a 100-loss campaign, and the team is moving on.
The Angels announced Wednesday that Suzuki will not return as manager, ending a one-year run that produced a franchise-record 100 losses. He had a club option for 2027, but the organization also said it offered him a special assistant role to keep him in the fold.
Suzuki, 43, came into the job with no prior coaching or managerial experience. Before taking over this season, he worked as a special assistant to former Angels GM Perry Minasian from 2023 through 2025. The Angels handed him only a one-year deal, an uncommon setup for a manager.
Minasian was fired in June and replaced on an interim basis by John Mozeliak, who addressed Suzuki’s exit in a statement.
"Kurt has earned tremendous respect in our clubhouse, and I've seen firsthand how much he cares about our players," interim GM John Mozeliak said in a statement. "I do not believe our record this year was a true reflection of his abilities as a manager. I'm pleased we were able to offer Kurt a role to stay on as a special assistant, where his knowledge of our players and his perspective would continue to be valuable to the organization."
In September, Suzuki said he and Mozeliak had been talking, though not about what came next.
"We haven't really dove deep into it," Suzuki told The Athletic in September when asked about his future and his conversations with Mozeliak. "We've had really good conversations about philosophies and stuff like that.
We haven't really talked about next steps ... Would I like to be here?
Of course I would."
The Angels’ front office situation is still in flux, too. Owner Arte Moreno agreed in September to sell the franchise to Stan Kroenke for $4 billion.
Mozeliak has said he wants to take over baseball operations on a permanent basis, but he is still serving in the interim role. That job is expected to be settled before the Angels turn to their next manager.
Suzuki’s departure also adds another vacancy to MLB’s managerial carousel. The Angels will be looking for their fifth full-time manager in six years, following Joe Maddon, Phil Nevin, Ron Washington and Suzuki. Bench coach Ray Montgomery also managed part of this stretch, taking over for the final 88 games of the 2025 season while Washington was away from the team with a medical issue.
The pattern around the club has been bleak. The Angels have had five managers in the last six seasons and have lost at least 85 games in each of those years. In 2026, they went 62-100, the first 100-loss season in franchise history.
And the bigger droughts keep stretching. The Angels have not reached the postseason since 2014, and they have not won a postseason game since 2009, both the longest such droughts in baseball.
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