ORLANDO, Fla. — The Angels still have the chance to try something new.
Gambling on low-risk players is their standard practice. The Angels have sprinkled their roster with plenty of those over the years, although they believe this batch has more upside.
What the Angels haven’t done this winter – not yet, anyway – is spend on the kind of middling free agents that have been a staple of previous winters under General Manager Perry Minasian.
No guys like Brandon Drury or Tyler Anderson or even Carlos Estévez.
There are indications that this year they’d like to aim higher. They’d like to take a big shot, even if they only have the money for one.
As the Winter Meetings came to an end on Wednesday, the Angels had actually cleared more payroll than they had spent.
Pitchers Grayson Rodriguez and Alek Manoah and infielder Vaughn Grissom – the three “lottery tickets” the Angels have purchased so far – will combine to make less than $4 million next year. They also trimmed about $14 million by trading away outfielder Taylor Ward.
According to calculations at FanGraphs, the Angels are about $38 million below last year’s payroll.
That won’t go very far if try to split it among players making $6 million to $15 million, which is where they’ve done most of their shopping in recent years.
The alternative is to spend almost all of that on one marquee player. Pick any of the top remaining free agents, and the Angels could use him.
If they are able to make that kind of splash, they’d likely spend the rest of the winter looking for more lottery tickets, and also leaving the door open for their own young players to win spots. (Nelson Rada in center field? Denzer Guzman at third base?)
It would be a risky strategy, for sure. The players they’ve gotten so far might all be busts, and their marquee signing could also be a whiff (see Rendon, Anthony).
On the other hand, doing it the way they have done it in the past hasn’t worked. The Angels have had a losing record 10 years in a row.
Over Minasian’s five years, they haven’t given anyone more than the $63 million they spent on left-hander Yusei Kikuchi last winter. The $21 million average annual value of that deal represented a small step, barely into what you’d call the “top” of the market.
Mostly, Minasian has shopped for players in baseball’s “middle class.” They are established major leaguers, usually coming off one productive season in the previous couple of years. They are usually at least 30. They are not difference-makers.
The best of those deals was Estévez, a reliever who signed a two-year, $13.5 million deal and gave the Angels a solid season and a half before they traded him for two pitching prospects.
After that, the “successes” are players like starter Alex Cobb, closer Kenley Jansen, Anderson and Drury. Each had had at least one productive season, but none moved the needle enough.
Others, like infielders Gio Urshela and Yoán Moncada, outfielder Hunter Renfroe and relievers Aaron Loup and Ryan Tepera came up short of even modest expectations. You could also throw reliever Robert Stephenson, DH Jorge Soler and catcher Travis d’Arnaud into that bucket, although those players still have a chance in 2026 to rebound.
The question now is whether the Angels are going to fill around them with more of the same, or go bigger.
RULE 5 DRAFT
The Angels didn’t select any players or lose any players in the major league portion of the Rule 5 draft.
In the minor league phase, the Angels took right-hander Eybersson Polanco, from the Boston Red Sox. Polanco, 22, had a 5.23 ERA in Class-A last season, with 71 strikeouts in 62 innings. The Angels do not need to put him on the major league roster to keep him.
The Angels also saw five of their players picked by other teams in the minor league portion. They lost right-handed pitchers Sandy Gaston (to the Washington Nationals), Sam Ryan (Minnesota Twins), Jake Smith (Miami Marlins), Jorge Marcheco (Athletics) and Yendy Gomez (Detroit Tigers).
The five players were the most that any organization lost in the two phases of the draft.
NOTES
Even though Mike Trout still seems destined to get a significant amount of time at DH, the Angels are no longer reluctant to put him back in center field on the days when he is playing defense, Minasian said this week. “I’m not ruling anything out,” he said. “If him playing center field on a certain day makes sense for us to try to win that game, we’re not going to be timid to do that.” …
Left-hander Reid Detmers will not have any innings limit in his return to the rotation after a year in the bullpen. “I’m not a huge believer in innings limits,” Minasian said. “We use our experience. We use the people we have, our medical staff, and we go start to start.”