More than a week after the news first broke of the Angels and Anthony Rendon restructuring the oft-injured third baseman’s contract, there are still more questions than answers about what it means.
General Manager Perry Minasian spoke to reporters Wednesday for the first time since they agreed to the restructuring, and he declined to explain exactly why they did it or what it means for the roster, besides the obvious.
“I won’t get into details of it,” Minasian said. “He won’t be in spring training. He’ll be rehabbing at home. I don’t expect to see him during the season.”
Rendon, 35, was due to make $38 million in 2026, the final year of a seven-year, $245 million deal. He missed all of last season after undergoing hip surgery, and his rehab was going slowly enough that there was little hope of him playing in 2026. He will end up playing in just a quarter of the Angels’ games over the life of his deal.
The restructuring shifts his 2026 salary from one year to an undisclosed number of years. Major League Baseball and the players’ union don’t allow teams to reduce the present-day value of contracts, so presumably the deferrals come with interest.
In the short term, it’s still unclear how any reduction in the 2026 salary will affect the Angels’ roster building.
As of now, the Angels’ payroll for 2026 is at least $30 million less than it was 2025. It’s impossible to know how much lower it is without knowing what the Angels are going to pay Rendon in 2026.
The other issue hanging over the club is the current financial issues of Main Street Sports Group, which operates FanDuel Sports Network’s regional sports channels. The Angels are one of nine baseball teams carried by FanDuel.
Main Street missed a payment last month to the St. Louis Cardinals, a development that has the other eight MLB teams uncertain of their television revenue for 2026. The network’s issues in recent years led to a restructuring of their deal with the Angels, which was largely responsible for owner Arte Moreno saying in February 2025 that the Angels would lose $50 million in 2025.
The combination of the Rendon deal and the TV situation raises the question of whether the Angels are going into spring training with their current reduced payroll.
Minasian wouldn’t go there.
“Offseasons are long,” he said “I think if you look at what we did last year, we signed Kenley Jansen and Yoán Moncada with a couple days left before spring training. There’s still a lot of good players out there. We’re looking for ways to improve the team, so I’m not going to get into … it doesn’t do me any good from a payroll standpoint or give me an advantage on anybody else to give information. We’re going to to do everything we can to make this team better. With that being said, it’s gotta make sense. We’ll see where it goes and what it looks like when we get to spring.”
The Angels still need a third baseman, and they’d also like to have a center fielder and another starting pitcher.
While Minasian wouldn’t provide much information on what the Angels are planning, he was happy to talk about the just completed deal with right-hander Kirby Yates.
The Angels signed the 38-year-old right-hander to a one-year, $5 million deal, which was official Tuesday. Yates is a former All-Star closer who had a 5.23 ERA in an injury-marred 2025 session with the Dodgers.
“Obviously, the ERA was high, but the underlying numbers in our eyes were pretty good,” Minasian said. “He has the ability to create some swing and miss. He’s a great, great human being, a plus clubhouse guy. He had some experience pitching in the ninth inning. He’s going to have to earn that. That’s going to be up to (Manager Kurt Suzuki) and the staff to pick who does that. In my opinion, if he’s the Kirby Yates we’ve seen, the Kirby Yates from April before he got hurt, he’s pretty good.”
The Angels’ other candidates to pitch the ninth inning are right-handers Robert Stephenson, Jordan Romano and Ben Joyce. All three are coming off seasons in which they were injured, ineffective or both.
That’s why Minasian wanted to have plenty of options.
“We went into the offseason and bulk was important,” Minasian said. “We were looking for two or three high-leverage guys who could pitch late in games, that have experienced different roles, and we feel like we’ve accomplished that. With that said, it’s an area we’ll look to improve. We’re happy to have Kirby.”