The Angels’ 100-loss season ended with one obvious takeaway: Kurt Suzuki should not be back.
Sunday’s season finale brought the kind of clean, immediate move the Mariners made when they fired manager Dan Wilson after their own disappointing finish. Seattle’s decision came after a year that ended 10 games under .500 and out of the playoffs in a bad division. The Angels, coming off a 100-loss campaign, need the same kind of swift action.
That’s the point of Black Monday in baseball. Fans shouldn’t be left waiting around for a message that change is coming. If the Angels are serious about turning the page, the change at manager needs to happen now.
Whether it will is another matter. New owner Stan Kroenke is operating behind the scenes at the moment, with interim GM John Mozeliak making the calls and most of the roster work already done at the trade deadline. Mozeliak has spoken positively about Suzuki, but that reads more like standard professional courtesy than a real endorsement.
The ownership picture is still murky, too. Kroenke is expected to be running the team in Q1 of 2027, but it’s still unclear whether Mozeliak will remain as the permanent GM. Arte Moreno remains in the ownership chair, and that leaves plenty of room for another bad call.
Suzuki’s case is hard to make. He may look like a manager who could work, but he inherited a mess of a roster, and this was the sort of situation where no manager was likely to come out looking good. Even so, he didn’t help himself in the areas that mattered most.
The Angels lost 100 games. Oswald Peraza and Denzer Guzman got off to strong starts, but Suzuki didn’t develop either player the way the club needed. The bullpen was a problem from opening day to the finish line.
There were also the in-game decisions, which Suzuki had a hard time explaining. Sam Blum of The Athletic and others have pointed to those moments, and nothing about Suzuki’s season suggests a strong case for keeping him.
These kinds of firings are often about symbolism as much as anything else, but that symbolism matters. They tell a frustrated fan base that the people in charge saw the same failures everyone else did. For the Angels, after the last decade, that kind of signal matters even more.
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Now the Angels have a decision to make with a pitcher who looks like part of the solution, not just a useful piece. Whether they see him as a long-term arm worth extending or as a player whose value might peak on the trade market, Detmers rise has put his future squarely in the spotlight. For a team trying to sort out its direction, that is the kind of choice that can shape more than just one offseason. [Read more 🡒]