The Los Angeles Angels have started the search for their next head of baseball operations, but the biggest pieces of the puzzle still aren’t in place.
The club is without a manager, and John Mozeliak is set to leave when his contract expires in December. That leaves the Angels needing to fill a major front-office job while also sorting out the dugout situation.
According to Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register, the Angels have begun interviewing GM candidates. It’s a necessary first step, but the process is still murky from the outside.
Mozeliak has said he passed along a list of recommended candidates to KSE, the incoming owner Stan Kroenke’s holding company. That list includes people who are currently working for other organizations, but the names themselves have not been revealed.
For now, that means the Angels are moving, just not with much clarity. Mozeliak has also said the hire probably won’t happen until the sale of the team becomes official, though no one knows exactly when that will be.
The timing makes the whole thing even messier. A lockout is looming in less than a month, and there’s a real possibility the Angels could head into it without a manager and without someone officially steering the front office.
That wouldn’t be a shocking place for this franchise to land, given how long it has been viewed as something of a laughingstock. The hope is that new ownership changes that, but Kroenke and his group are stepping into the job at a very strange moment.
One question worth watching is whether Kroenke’s side will stick with Mozeliak’s recommendations. He may have identified candidates he believes fit the job, but that doesn’t guarantee they’ll be the names the new ownership group wants.
It’s a little like the George Lucas and Disney situation, at least in broad strokes: one side hands over ideas, and the new decision-makers may or may not want to follow them. In this case, Mozeliak’s suggestions could end up serving as a guide, or they could simply be one part of a much wider search.
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported that the Angels are casting a very wide net, which opens the door to candidates who may not have been on Mozeliak’s original list at all.
There’s still plenty unresolved here, and the Angels are clearly in a complicated spot. The hope is that the process settles down and leads to a hire who can help steer the franchise in a better direction.
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