ANAHEIM — Two weeks before the July 31 trade deadline, the Angels find themselves in that uncomfortable and too-familiar place known as “baseball purgatory,” not good enough to compete for a championship and too close to a playoff spot to punt on the season.
They are 47-49 and nine games behind the Houston Astros in the American League West but only four games out of a wild-card spot, fueling a belief in their clubhouse and among the most optimistic of their fans that they can end MLB’s longest active playoff drought of 10 years.
“There’s still a lot of time left to do something crazy,” veteran catcher Travis d’Arnaud said. “I’ve been a part of a team that was under .500 at the trade deadline and won the World Series, so anything can happen.”
This is true. The Atlanta Braves were 51-54 and five games back in the National League East at the deadline in 2021 but went 37-19 over the final two months to finish 88-73 and win the division by 6½ games.
Atlanta went on to beat the Milwaukee Brewers and Dodgers in the playoffs and the Astros in a six-game World Series in which the Angels’ current right fielder – Jorge Soler – hit three homers and had six RBIs to win MVP honors.
But those Braves had established stars in Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson, rising stars in Austin Riley and Ozzie Albies, two top-tier starting pitchers in Charlie Morton and Max Fried and a deep and seasoned bullpen.
And they were aggressive at the deadline after star right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr. suffered a season-ending knee injury on July 10, acquiring veteran outfielders Adam Duvall, Joc Pederson, Eddie Rosario and Soler, all of whom made significant contributions down the stretch and in October.
Could this Angels team be two or three players away from making a similar run?
“I think we have what it takes now,” said d’Arnaud, a reserve catcher on the 2021 Braves. “I mean, we’re in every game. We’ve beaten good teams.”
Angels veteran pitcher Kyle Hendricks, who won a World Series with the Chicago Cubs in 2016, agrees.
“We know we have everything we need in this clubhouse,” he said. “When we play our brand of baseball, play fundamentally sound and don’t make mistakes, we can beat anybody. We’ve seen that. We’ve proven it.”
This is also true. The Angels swept a three-game series from the defending champion Dodgers in Chavez Ravine to spark an eight-game win streak in May. They won three of four games in Yankee Stadium in mid-June, part of a stretch in which they won seven of 10 against the Yankees, Astros and Boston Red Sox.
In many ways, they have outperformed expectations after losing a franchise-record 99 games last season, but as they say in sports, you are what your record says you are.
The Angels have hovered around .500 all season because they have been unable to sustain the kind of play that propelled them during those hot streaks.
They have decent but not dominant starting pitching, an improved but still relatively thin bullpen and an all-or-nothing lineup that ranks fifth in baseball in home runs (139) but second in strikeouts (927) and 26th in walks (279). The defense is spotty. They’re 18-11 in one-run games but have a run differential of minus-62.
The flip side to those hot streaks are stretches in which the Angels lost 10 of 12 games against Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Seattle and Detroit in late April and early May and seven of eight against Miami, the Yankees and Cleveland in late May and early June.
The Angels would need significant upgrades to their rotation, bullpen and lineup to be championship-caliber, but in a weakened AL, they could sneak into the playoffs with 85-86 wins. The current sixth seed, the Seattle Mariners, are on pace to win 86 games.
“We’re seeing that with the third wild-card spot now, teams with lower records having a chance to make the playoffs,” Hendricks said. “And once you get in the tournament, it’s whoever is the hottest.”
How the Angels play over the next two weeks will determine whether they add players or sell veterans on expiring contracts such as closer Kenley Jansen, pitcher Tyler Anderson and infielder Luis Rengifo.
The word “rebuild” is not in owner Arte Moreno’s vocabulary, so if the Angels remain in the hunt, they will look to add before the deadline, though their thin farm system will make it tough to acquire star-caliber players.
What the Angels can’t afford is to make the same mistake they made in 2023, when they won eight of nine in late July to move to within three games of a wild-card spot.
First, the Angels announced they would not trade free-agent-to-be Shohei Ohtani, who would have netted a huge haul of young major-leaguers and prospects. Then they traded their top pitching and catching prospects for pitchers Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez and dealt two more prospects for first baseman C.J. Cron and outfielder Randal Grichuk.
The Angels opened August with seven straight losses to fall out of contention, and by the end of a month in which they went 8-19, they placed all those trade deadline acquisitions on waivers.
“We’ve been in this position before, in 2023, right?” Angels interim manager Ray Montgomery said. “We were still in the hunt, but the difference was, we had numerous injuries, and we were probably playing above our skis.
“I don’t think we’re playing above our skis now because I’ve seen what we’ve done, I know when we take care of what we need to do we can play with anybody. With a couple of breaks here and there, maybe a couple of better decisions by me, we’re a couple games over .500 easily.”