The Angels are in a strange holding pattern, and the first real names tied to the top job are starting to surface.
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic pointed to Matt Arnold of the Milwaukee Brewers and Erik Neander of the Tampa Bay Rays as the first head of baseball operations candidates new owner Stan Kroenke should be calling. It’s the kind of name-dropping that usually signals movement, even if it still leaves the Angels a long way from actually making a hire.
That’s the catch here: Los Angeles can’t formally bring in a head of baseball operations until Kroenke is approved by the owners and takes full control of the team. The vote is expected to be routine, but the timing could matter a lot. Rosenthal reported that it may not happen until next month, after the start of the lockout.
That would put the Angels in an awkward spot with the GM meetings set for next week. It raises the possibility that the club could be represented informally, even though it still doesn’t have the authority to make a real hire yet.
The bigger picture is what makes all of this so intriguing. The Angels sit in one of baseball’s biggest markets, and Rosenthal reported that Kroenke is worth $27.6 billion. If he chooses to make an aggressive move quickly - whenever “right away” actually becomes possible - the Angels could suddenly look very different.
For now, though, Rosenthal’s report is mostly a swirl of possibilities rather than hard answers. Even so, it marks the first meaningful sign of movement around the Angels in quite some time.
Since the trade deadline, most of the updates have been routine from interim GM John Mozeliak. The clearest one came when he announced that the Angels are moving on from manager Kurt Suzuki, who will not remain beyond his contract expiration date in December.
So the next checkpoint is simple: some kind of announcement, formal or not, about where this Angels search stands. Rosenthal’s reporting suggests there are multiple people feeding in possibilities behind the scenes, and that could lead to more clarity before the GM meetings begin.
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For now, though, this is just a scenario, not a confirmed front-office plan, and the questions around it are bigger than one name on a rumor board. Netos contract situation and the Angels roster needs both factor into whether anything like this ever gains traction, and the debate says as much about the teams long-term direction as it does about the shortstop himself. [Read more 🡒]