The Angels announced this evening that they have designated right-hander Shaun Anderson. Anderson’s departure would make room for right-hander Caden Dana, who Sam Blum of The Athletic notes is poised to join the club’s bullpen.
Anderson, 30, was a third-round pick by the Red Sox all the way back in 2016 who made his big league debut with the Giants in 2019. He’s pitched parts of six seasons in the majors but has never had much success in doing so. Across 162 innings of work between the Giants, Twins, Orioles, Padres, Blue Jays, Rangers, Marlins, and Angels, the righty has a career 6.11 ERA in the big leagues with a 16.8% strikeout rate and an 8.7% walk rate. He’s also had troubles with the long ball over the years, with 13.5% of his fly balls leaving the yard throughout his career.
It’s a rough profile, though a solid 2023 season in the KBO league where he pitched to a 3.76 ERA across 14 starts for the Kia Tigers offers at least some level of optimism about his ability to get outs at a higher professional level. He also has a 3.86 ERA in 349 1/3 career innings at Triple-A, suggesting he can at least be viable minor league depth for a pitching-needy club. The Angels will have one week to either work out a trade involving Anderson or attempt to pass him through waivers, at which point he would have the option to either accept an outright assignment or test free agency.
As for Dana, the 21-year-old has not yet done much at the big league level across parts of two seasons. He’s posted an 8.78 ERA in 13 1/3 big league innings so far, spread between three starts last year and one multi-inning relief outing earlier this season. Despite those lackluster performances in his brief time in the majors so far, Dana is a consensus top-100 prospect who dominated Double-A pitching last year with a 2.52 ERA across 23 starts (135 2/3 innings of work) with a 27.4% strikeout rate.
It was an extremely impressive showing, though Dana hasn’t been able to keep it up at Triple-A this year. In 38 innings of work across eight starts, he’s posted a 5.21 ERA despite a solid 24.6% strikeout rate. Much of that is surely due to the inflated offensive environment of the Pacific Coast League, however, and perhaps getting Dana into a more pitching-friendly environment is why the Angels have decided to work to continue the right-hander’s development at the big league level. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a top pitching prospect broke into the majors first as a reliever, with Chris Sale’s early years with the White Sox standing out as perhaps the most noteworthy example.
The competitiveness of the big league club may also be a factor in the club’s aggressive promotion of Dana. After all, the club entered the weekend with an eight-game winning streak that had brought them back up to a .500 record, which puts them just 1.5 games out of playoff position in a weak AL Wild Card field. After a playoff drought that has lasted nearly all of Mike Trout’s career, it makes plenty of sense for the Angels to be aggressive in trying to capitalize on that opportunity. That aggressiveness could include pushing Dana to finish his development in the big league bullpen rather than the Triple-A rotation, where he can get reps against big leaguers in a less hostile environment to pitchers while avoiding the need to build up to a full starter’s workload or pitch a third time through the order.