Check out Daniel Schultz’s 2023 Season Preview Article for the Los Angeles Angels here.
Image: AP Photo / Ashley Landis
2023 Record: 73-89 (.451 win%, 4th in Division)
2023 Payroll: $230,534,276 (8th)
2023 Lineup:
1. C Matt Thaiss, .214 AVG/.319 OBP/.340 SLG, 0.3 fWAR
2. 1B Brandon Drury, .262 AVG/.306 OBP/.497 SLG, 2.5 fWAR
3. 2B Luis Rengifo, .264 AVG/.339 OBP/.444 SLG, 1.9 fWAR
4. 3B Anthony Rendon, .236 AVG/.361 OBP/.318 SLG, 0.2 fWAR
5. SS Zach Neto, .225 AVG/.308 OBP/.377 SLG, 1.1 fWAR
6. LF Taylor Ward, .253 AVG/.335 OBP/.421 SLG, 1.5 fWAR
7. CF Mike Trout, .263 AVG/.367 OBP/.490 SLG, 3.0 fWAR
8. RF Hunter Renfroe, .242 AVG/.304 OBP/.434 SLG, 1.1 fWAR
9. DH Shohei Ohtani, .304 AVG/.412 OBP/.654 SLG, 6.6 fWAR
10. UTL OF Mickey Moniak, .280 AVG/.307 OBP/.495 SLG, 1.5 fWAR
2023 Rotation:
1. Shohei Ohtani, 132.0 IP/3.14 ERA/1.06 WHIP, 2.4 fWAR
2. Reid Detmers, 148.2 IP/4.48 ERA/1.35 WHIP, 2.5 fWAR
3. Patrick Sandoval, 144.2 IP/4.11 ERA/1.51 WHIP, 2.4 fWAR
4. Tyler Anderson, 141.0 IP/5.43 ERA/1.49 WHIP, 1.1 fWAR
5. Griffin Canning, 127.0 IP/4.32 ERA/1.24 WHIP, 1.8 fWAR
2023 Top 4 Relievers:
1. Carlos Estévez, 62.1 IP/3.90 ERA/1.49 WHIP, 0.9 fWAR
2. Aaron Loup, 48.2 IP/6.10 ERA/1.75 WHIP, 0.2 fWAR
3. Jaime Barria, 82.1 IP/5.68 ERA/1.47 WHIP, -0.7 fWAR
4. Matt Moore, 44.0 IP/2.66 ERA/1.02 WHIP, 0.5 fWAR
Regular Season Recap:
Story of the Season
It comes as news to no one, from the most casual baseball fan to the strongest Fangraphs-perusing diehard, that the 2023 Angels campaign left a lot to be desired. After many years of failure to capitalize on potentially the greatest star duo in the history of baseball, this season acted as a nail in the coffin for the current, disappointing era of Halos baseball.
The Angels have spent money in years prior like a team that is at least going through the motions of trying to build a contender, spending big money on players like Anthony Rendon to support the core of Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout.
The offseason continued this trend; additions of Tyler Anderson, Hunter Renfroe, and Brandon Drury among others sought to add much needed depth to an Angels squad that looked like they might have some narrow path to playoff success.
Achieving success this year was more important than it has ever been, with the lingering free agency of Shohei Ohtani, the overwhelming feeling was that making the playoffs this year wasn’t just important, it was a matter of saving their franchise.
The season started off with reason for optimism. Shohei continued to prove why he is not only the best player in baseball now, but perhaps the greatest talent the sport has ever seen. In a season in which he will inevitably go on to win his second AL MVP, Shohei hit the ball harder than anyone else while also throwing a pitching arsenal nastier than almost anyone else.
Well into the season, it looked like he had a genuine chance to meet or surpass Aaron Judge’s single season AL home run record. He would end up with a season that is genuinely difficult to wrap your head around, a 180 wRC+ from the DH spot signified him as the best hitter in baseball, while his 143 ERA+ placed him well within the AL’s best pitchers. All that the rest of the team had to do was just play well enough and allow for Shohei’s singular superstardom to carry the Angels to October baseball.
At that point in July, they had done that. The Angels left the 2nd game of a July 27th doubleheader against the Tigers with a 54-49 record, having won 8 of their last 9. They were well situated to be in the Wild Card chase, and even had an outside shot at the AL West.
Mickey Moniak, former top prospect who had to this point failed to establish himself as an MLB player, had a .982 OPS leaving the 27th. Moniak sought to demonstrate that getting on base was the fool’s game as long as you hit the ball hard and in the air. He wouldn’t maintain these heights, but Moniak had a solid offensive season and proved critical to this midseason surge.
The Angels did this in spite of the fact that Mike Trout had a down year…for Mike Trout, his 134 wRC+ was the lowest of any season since his 40 game cup of coffee in 2011. While it might not be the level of quality baseball fans had come to expect out of the center fielder, Trout was on pace for nearly six fWAR before a series of injuries limited him to only 82 games, perhaps accelerating his inevitable shift to a corner outfield position.
It wasn’t just Trout. Injuries plagued the Angels. Anthony Rendon has often been extremely frustrating for Angels fans, once signed to a 7 year, $245 million contract, intended to be the third star of the franchise. He ended up only playing an unremarkable 43 games.
Rookie catcher Logan O’Hoppe looked like one of the best offensive rookies of the year, sporting a barrel rate of 15.7% (league average is 6.9%) before a labrum tear prematurely ended his year. Gio Urshela’s broken pelvis injury pushed already pretty dastardly infield depth to a point of absolute chaos.
So what does a team do when they’re fringe playoff contenders with question marks in late July? They buy at the trade deadline. The Angels didn’t only buy, they spent with a reckless abandon that can only be attributed to a team who knows they have to win this year. They sent highly ranked catching prospect Edgar Quero to the White Sox in return for Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez.
They bolstered positional depth by picking up CJ Cron and Randal Grichuk from the Rockies. Sure, these moves may have drained an already bottom-tier farm system, but can you really blame the Angels front office? This was the time for them to win, a loss means floundering the best player baseball has ever seen. It definitely risks their future, but in the moment one can see the logic used to come to this decision, all we need is for Trout to come back hot and maybe the Angels are knocking on the door of greatness.
Maybe there’s a world where these trades work out great, however, we don’t live in that one. 54-49 marked the high point for the Angels season, they went on a 7 game losing streak to start August, and things only got worse from there. Injuries only worsened; Trout played one game back from injury before being shut down for the season and Rendon’s mystery injury was oddly revealed to be a fractured tibia.
By mid-August the Angels were both realistically and emotionally eliminated from the playoffs. It seemed as if nothing could get worse, until the most devastating news possible occurred: Shohei Ohtani had torn his UCL, ending his pitching for the rest of the season and all of 2024. This reveal marked an absolute bottom for the Angels season. Further, many of the deadline acquisitions far underperformed expectations, Giolito in particular went from above average in Chicago to one of the worst pitchers in the league, sporting a ERA well north of 6 in his short LA stint.
The Angels admittance of their own failure came in early September as they put every single player acquired at the deadline, plus Hunter Renfroe and solid lefty reliever Matt Moore (had a 169 ERA+ in 44 IP up to that point), on the waiver wire, a capitulation never before seen in the sport. This marked the end of the Angels season for all intents and purposes.
Hitters
The final numbers reflect the mediocrity of the Angels 2023 campaign. With a 101 wRC+, the Angels overall offense was essentially completely average, extending to nearly every single offensive category.
Besides the aforementioned Ohtani/Trout duo and Moniak, one of the bright spots for the offensive side of the ball was Brandon Drury. Drury built upon his solid 2022 campaign to continue to be a good power bat, hitting 26 home runs with an Angels’ 2nd best .497 SLG%. Drury combines solid batted ball numbers with positional versatility that guarantees he is a very good infield option.
First round pick in 2022 Zach Neto started the season in AA ball, but worked his way up to an April callup, and played a majority of the season as the Angels’ starting shortstop. Neto’s bat isn’t quite there, as he sports below average power along with only a 6.1% walk rate, slashing .225/.308/.377 on the year. However, as a plus defensive shortstop, Neto should look to project very well in the future, as long as he can hit at a serviceable level.
Besides these guys, Hunter Renfroe, Luis Rengifo, and 2022 breakout Taylor Ward all played a lot for the 2023 Angels, all at varying levels of decent. Luis Rengifo in particular showed promise, improving his godawful 2022 walk rate of 3.3% up to a roughly average 9.2%. This improvement was driven by improved plate discipline, cutting down his chase rate from 34.9% to 28.7% and resulting in the addition of nearly .40 points of OBP. This offense was a largely uninspiring unit outside the stars, but looking ahead, contains some intriguing players down the lineup.
While the offense was mediocre, the Angels pitching staff was among one of the worst in the league. With the 8th worst ERA and 7th worst FIP in baseball, this staff was flawed from top to bottom. This occurred even with the Angels 9.08 K/9 ranking within the top third of the league, as the 4.00 BB/9 and 1.31 HR/9 were simply too poor to allow for quality pitching.
Pitchers
The starting rotation, outside of Shohei, was at least somewhat serviceable. Sophomore lefty Reid Detmers may have ended the year with an uninspiring, exact 100 ERA+, but his ability to limit barrels and strike batters out at a respectable clip show that he’s a very promising young starter. In particular, Detmers breaking stuff is some of the most potential in baseball, his slider and curve move more than almost any pitcher’s. In addition to Detmers, Patrick Sandoval continued to be a quality option.
He did drop in essentially every category from his stellar 2022, but his 4.18 FIP over 144.2 IP marked him as a pitcher who should continue to be a good middle rotation piece. Griffin Canning was able to put together his longest season yet, overcoming injuries and inconsistent play. Canning didn’t exactly deliver Cy Young caliber pitching, but his solid whiff rates paired with low walk rates certainly shows a future in the rotation.
Finally, free agent Tyler Anderson was unable to continue the excellence of his 2022 late career peak, due to a bloated walk rate up to over 4 BB/9. This rotation was not excellent thanks to the 4th worst walk rate of any in baseball, but was overall ok enough.
On the other hand, this bullpen was just short of dreadful. Losing Raisel Iglesias was always going to be a pretty big blow for an already thinly stretched pen, and the Angels were not able to fully recover from that loss. This Angels bullpen finished bottom 5 in nearly every single pitching category and tallied a pitiful 0.5 fWAR as a unit.
The silver lining for the Angels was Carlos Estévez, who was converted to a full-time closer role in the wake of Igelesias’ departure. Estévez mastered the art of the reliever rollercoaster: super high strikeout rates, walk rates, and hard hit balls, equaling super variable results. Estévez has nice stuff, and his results from 2023 demonstrate that, as he converted 31 of 35 save opportunities. The inevitable side effect of the reliever rollercoaster is that a reliever can go from lights out to borderline unplayable at a moment’s notice. Maybe Estévez is unable to replicate his success next year, but that’s just baseball.
Besides Estévez and the already discussed lefty vet Matt Moore, the rest of the bullpen had a range of semi-reliable options. Jose Soriano threw some quality innings with a super high K/9, former first round pick Sam Bachman showed off some really sick velocity potential until a shoulder injury ended his season, and Aaron Loup pitched 48 innings of 6 ERA ball.
One interesting cameo was from Ben Joyce, who once threw the hardest pitch in NCAA baseball history. Joyce recorded 2 strikeouts in the first inning he pitched and made his PitchingNinja debut. Unfortunately Joyce would go on to have injuries end his season. However, his stuff looks utterly unhittable when he’s going, so he likely has a part in the Angels future plans.
Finally, Jaime Barria was able to record a pretty astonishing -0.7 fWAR in 82.1 IP, most of it as a reliever. This total was good for the 9th lowest of any pitcher in MLB this year. If one wants to blame something or someone for the Angels’ failure that doesn’t start with “Arte” and rhyme with “Loreno”, then this really bad bullpen is probably the way to go.
M-SABR Predicted Record (76-86) vs. Actual (73-89):
Daniel Schultz wrote M-SABR’s season preview for the Angels, and he ended being essentially spot on. Many of the issues that he pointed out for the Angels’ roster construction, the depth, bullpen, and injury concerns, ended up being the reasons contributing to the Angels lack of success.
The prediction also highlighted a key issue facing the Angels: the AL West is pretty stacked. Between the continued dominance of the Astros, the big-spending Rangers, and the ever persistent presence of the Mariners, it really does feel like there was no way the Angels were not thoroughly outmatched in their division. In hindsight, betting against the Angels turned out to be a rewarding gamble.
Surprise of the Season:
In April of 2023, FAU student Nolan Schanuel was probably taking his final exams at the end of his junior year. Four months later, Los Angeles Angels player Nolan Schanuel was starting at first base in a game against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Schanuel, a lefty, was picked 11th overall in the 2023 draft. His turnaround of a mere 22 games in the minors before being promoted to MLB is the fastest rise any draft pick has seen in decades. It is exceedingly rare to see any player make it to the majors that quickly, even less so a position player who is now seeing on average about five more MPH on fastballs.
Now, it is possible to attribute Schanuel’s fast rise to the Angel’s organizational philosophy more than his individual merit. After all, the Angels have basically promoted every first round pick in recent years extremely fast; in 2021, 2022, and now 2023 the first player from every MLB draft to make it to the majors has been an Angel. But even within this context of the Angels trigger-happy promotions, Schanuel’s rise is unbelievable.
Right from his debut, Schanuel showed why he deserved the quick promotion. He displayed the elite bat to ball skills that made him such a highly touted prospect in the first place. Schanuel got a hit in each of his first 10 games, along with getting on base in every single one of his first 29 MLB games he has played up to this point.
While there is some natural variance to streaks such as these, Schanuel has a skillset that lends itself naturally to good contact outcomes. In his small sample size, he chased pitches out of the zone rarely and almost never swung and missed. This resulted in him putting the ball in play a lot and at good launch angles (40% Sweet Spot%), which is an extremely impressive set of results for a 21 year old that was hitting against college pitchers less than half a year ago.
His skillset as a hitter is reminiscent of Vinnie Pasquantino, who is, in his own way, a sort of budget Freddie Freeman. No matter what lofty comparisons or doubts Schanuel may face, he showed fantastic contact skills in his first MLB experience, and looks to project as one of the brightest young pieces in the Angels future.
Players We Watched:
Player we watched #1: OF Mike Trout
The Fish Man is still really, really, good at baseball. It is genuinely absurd that anyone could play at a pace of 6fWAR/162, have a wRC+ of 134, and a Baseball Savant page consisting almost entirely of red circles and be considered a disappointment. This year did not live up to our expectations of Mike Trout because he has played at such an elite level that those expectations exist beyond the realm of reasonable. He does strike out a lot these days, but his still awe-inspiring bat speed and power more than make up for it. He may not have been the 10 WAR, 5-tool player he once was, but 2023 Mike Trout was still a superstar.
Yes, he has struggled to stay on the field. Yes, his days in center field are certainly coming to an end soon. But Mike Trout still deserves to be ranked among the best players in Major League Baseball.
Player we watched #2: C Logan O’Hoppe
I discussed O’Hoppe briefly earlier in my article, and for good reason, O’Hoppe was pretty great before he got hurt. The Angels snagged the catcher from the Phillies at the ‘22 deadline in return for Brandon Marsh, a pretty nuts return in hindsight. O’Hoppe was instantaneously one of the highest ranked prospects in the Angels farm, and set up to be the starter heading in 2023.
Throughout the beginning of the year, O’Hoppe showed why he earned that high ranking pedigree. Out of all 54 rookies with at least 190 PA this year, O’Hoppe ranked 17th in wRC+ and 6th in hard hit rate. He hit 14 homers in 51 games, an awe-inspiring 44 homer pace. If nothing else, O’Hoppe absolutely hammers baseballs.
Now, his defense behind home plate is not quite there yet, ranking well below average in framing and throwing metrics. But for a rookie who only played 51 games before a shoulder injury ended his season, O’Hoppe showed more than enough promise to be considered an integral part of the Angels core.
Player we watched #3: LHP José Suarez
José Suarez is a pitcher who had shown a decent amount of promise after rising quickly in the Angels farm and having solid, if compressed, 2021 and 2022 seasons. Unfortunately, 2023 was an absolutely awful year for Suarez. He was given some starts early in the season and got put through the ringer; he allowed 5 home runs to the dreadful Oakland A’s and had an ERA north of 9 in early May. After this start, Suarez was sent to the 60 day IL.
Maybe the injury was to blame, Suarez returned in September and pitched a somewhat serviceable 9 innings out of the pen over a couple of games for the already eliminated Angels. However, injury to blame or not, 2023 is not a campaign that Suarez is likely to remember fondly.
Offseason Outlook:
Yeah, it stinks. I find it really, really difficult to envision an offseason ahead that makes Angels fans happy.
First, the obvious. Shohei Ohtani is almost certainly gone. Maybe his UCL injury causes the Angels to be the only team desperate enough to offer a satisfyingly large enough contract to Shohei, but I doubt it. After years of Shohei failing to make the playoffs due to a multitude of reasons, we have likely seen the last of Shohei Ohtani in an Angels uniform.
There’s only one direction the Angels can go from here, the tank is upon us. The Angels lack significant trade capital, but looking to deal contracts like Tyler Anderson or Brandon Drury can be a good way to restock the absolutely brutal farm system. Other than that, the only true recourse for the Angels is to start on the long, painful tank.
Gone are the days of spending large amounts of money on aging free agents, in are the days of dumping expiring contracts in return for prospects. They still have large amounts of money committed to Anthony Rendon and Mike Trout, so Arte Moreno will probably approach this offseason with a philosophy of spending as little as possible.
All is not lost, the Angels still possess a pretty quality lineup and some solid pitchers, but there is definitely not a path to contention in the near future barring a miracle. This offseason will likely be an underwhelming one, ushering in a new beginning for the Angels franchise.
What to Pay Attention to in the Future:
Alright, let’s assume Shohei Ohtani does not play the 2024 season in an Angels uniform. The assumption would be that the Angels approach this offseason with the mindset of a team about to embrace a tank. Who would be the most valuable asset to start a tank for the Angels left on the roster? It has to be Mike Trout.
Yes, the contract is massive. Whatever team pays the rest of it will almost certainly be paying many years of a contract that won’t come close to being financially sound. But there has to be some team out there at least willing to take that decision, because come on man, it’s Michael Nelson Trout. Maybe the team is his hometown Philadelphia Phillies, willing to spend money and in need of outfield help. Maybe it’s Steve Cohen’s New York Mets or the Dodgers’ Death Star getting bigger.
Now, a Trout trade is probably happening. At least not any time soon, Ken Rosenthal reported that the indication is that Trout (who has a full no trade clause) will not demand a trade anytime soon. Weirder things have happened, if something happens over the offseason or the Angels look really rough next year, there’s a chance the days of Mike Trout in an Angels uniform are numbered.
Categories: 2023 Season Review, Articles, Season Analysis
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