ANAHEIM -- Angels interim general manager John Mozeliak is leaning into a familiar kind of job: trying to help a struggling organization reset while the clock is already ticking toward the Trade Deadline.
Mozeliak, who spent three decades with the Cardinals and 18 of those years as their general manager, said Monday that he sees some resemblance between the Cardinals he joined in the mid-1990s and the Angels he inherited in late June after Perry Minasian was dismissed. He pointed back to a turbulent stretch in St. Louis, then to the long climb that followed once the Cardinals rebuilt their foundation.
“I reflect back to when I was first named general manager and that was a turbulent time for the Cardinals,” Mozeliak said. “And so for me, coming in here with an organization that is trying to get back to being a perennial winner, there are some similarities.
But clearly when you look at having a successful franchise year over year, it really comes down to how you're built. … Scouting and player development have to be a major force.”
That’s the lens he’s using now as the Angels prepare to sell. The club entered Monday’s series opener against St.
Louis with an MLB-worst 39-61 record and has not reached the postseason since 2014. Mozeliak said he has not yet turned his attention to finding a permanent GM, and he also said he has not thought far enough ahead to know whether he’ll still be with the organization after his contract expires in December.
For the moment, the focus is on Aug. 3 and how aggressive the Angels want to be.
“We are going to have to be very open-minded,” Mozeliak said. “Obviously, we're not having the year we hoped to.
When you think about the Trade Deadline, you think about the offseason, there's certain times where you have the ability to get better. And so understanding the market and where that's going, that's first and foremost my biggest thing.”
The Angels’ most obvious trade pieces are right-handers José Soriano and lefty Reid Detmers, though both are under team control through 2028. That makes them different from the usual Deadline rental, and it also makes them more complicated. Players with that kind of control are not often moved in July, but they can also command a stronger return.
Mozeliak didn’t go into specifics on either pitcher, but he made clear that change is coming in some form.
“I'm not going to mention names, but what I am going to stick to is we know things have to change,” Mozeliak said. “And what that looks like, who that looks like, that's to be determined. But not going into this with an open-minded approach, I think, would be a failure on my part.”
He said the Angels are still sorting out the value of players who remain under control beyond this season. The market, he noted, should be active because so few teams are out of contention. At the same time, the Angels do not appear to be headed toward a full teardown, which leaves the front office trying to strike a balance between moving pieces now and keeping an eye on next year.
“That's the question we're trying to answer, right?” Mozeliak said.
“So that's what we are asking for a little time and grace for, so we can understand what it looks like. But I don't want to ever think like we don't want to think about next year either.
If we can find a way to do both, that would be awesome.”
Mozeliak said he still doesn’t know whether the Angels can contend in 2026, calling it a difficult question to answer at this stage.
“That's a challenging task,” Mozeliak said. “Can I answer that like in a week and a half? I'm working through some things to sort of understand how to get there, and I don't know.”
Still, he said he believes he has the authority to make the necessary moves, including trades before the Deadline. He was hired by new club president Molly Jolly, with owner Arte Moreno’s approval, and said he’s operating with the freedom to shape the roster as needed.
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The Angels are headed toward the trade deadline in seller mode, but the bigger question may be how far they are willing to go. Interim general manager John Mozeliak is still sorting through player values and trying to gauge how much owner Arte Moreno is open to moving, which leaves the club in a familiar spot: talking about flexibility while knowing the real decisions might not come until later.
Mozeliak has already suggested the most significant moves could wait until the offseason, and that makes the next few weeks feel more like a test of the market than a full teardown. One name to watch is shortstop Zach Neto, who has drawn attention as a valuable trade piece, but there is still plenty of uncertainty about whether the Angels will actually part with him or keep him as part of whatever comes next. [Read more 🡒]
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The twist for Los Angeles is that Neto is still under club control through 2029 and has not even reached arbitration yet, so any talk of a move is coming well before the Angels would normally have to confront it. ESPNs estimate gives him a 30% chance of being traded, but for now the bigger question is whether this is just deadline noise aimed at a 2026 decision point or the first sign that a much more surprising conversation is starting to build. [Read more 🡒]