New hope in Orange County?
Arte Moreno says he is exploring the Angels, and fans seem thrilled. Was he that bad an owner?
Baseball puts itself on the clock — what took so long?
It’s about time.
After putting this off for years, MLB has finally decided to change some rules that are aimed at making the game more watchable.
The two most obvious are adopting a pitch clock and ending defensive over shifts.
Let’s start with the clock. This has only been an issue for . . . decades, really. There have always been pitchers who worked, shall we say, deliberately. That was tedious for the spectators.
Now we have more pitchers who work slowly and batters who like to step out of the box between each pitch, gather themselves, make sure their batting gloves are on tight, take two practice swings . . .
The average time it takes to complete a game — which held pretty steady in the 1960s and the 1970s — has been creeping up. The average elapsed time for a nine-inning game went from 2 hours and 26 minutes in 1978 to 3:10 last season.
Next season, there will be a 30-second timer between batters, a 15-second timer for the pitcher with the bases empty, and a 20-second timer with runners on base. Pitchers only get to throw over to a base two times. So no more stalling that way.
MLB has had a time limit for pitchers delivering the ball at least since the 1950s. It was never enforced. Now it will be.
The second major change is the elimination of the over-shift. No more putting five players on the hitter’s pull side or having a fourth outfielder.
This is a move that is about a decade overdue.
Although the Dodgers sainted announcer, Vin Scully, said he found a reference to a shift in 1880s, which helped MLB TV announcers defend the strategy as “always it has been part of the game.”
Not really.
The shift was rarely used until 2010 when Joe Maddon of the Rays started employing the tactic every game. It spread from there.
By 2012 it was evident that the hitters either couldn’t or wouldn’t adjust. To me, it was a no-brainer. Get rid of it.
MLB’s collective batting average has dropped from .262 in 2009 to .242 this season — and I think the shift is a major reason why.
The shift also robs spectators of great some great defensive plays. If you are playing short right field and a left-handed pull hitter rockets a low liner between first and second right where you are stationed, it doesn’t take much to get an out. And it’s not much to see.
TV announcers loved the shift, particularly in the early years. It gave them something to talk about while we watched pitchers and batters collect themselves between pitches.
Baseball’s mistake was letting it go on this long.
Everyone hates Arte
The Angels won early under Moreno, but the last decade has been one of futility. He is ready to sell the team, and plenty of people are glad to see him go.
“WE ARE” read the headline in big yellow letters in answer to the question posed on the other side of the magazine: “WHO’s NUMBER ONE?”
Arte Moreno was front and center on the back cover of ESPN the Magazine in the summer of 2009, surrounded by Angels players, manager Mike Scioscia, and club employees The Angels had finished first among all major pro sports teams in North America in the magazine’s survey of fans for the delivering the best value.
Moreno bought the team in May 2003 and under his leadership, the franchise was by 2009 more successful on and off the field than it had ever been.
The Angels were on their way to drawing more than 3 million fans for the seventh season in a row, an attendance mark the team had never achieved even once before Moreno took over.
And the Angels would be going to the postseason for the fifth time under Moreno’s ownership that season. The franchise, which began playing in 1961, had only been to the postseason four times before Moreno became the owner.
That was then; this is now
“Owner Arte Moreno’s Exit From the Angels Can’t Come Soon Enough” read the headline from SI.com.
“Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno surrenders after two decades of futility, read one from USA Today.
“Will Arte Moreno's possible Angels sale remedy bad decisions?” the Los Angeles Times chimed in.
Many Angels fans were echoing the same sentiment.
Moreno announced on Aug. 23 that he was exploring selling the team.
How did a guy who was getting rave reviews in 2009 become such a reviled figure in 2022?
In a nutshell, the Angels have missed the playoffs every season but one since 2009, despite spending lavishly on free agents. With Moreno at the helm, the Angels wasted the best years of Mike Trout’s career as well as the prime years of Shohei Ohtani.
Bad stretch
The Angels are finishing their seventh consecutive losing season, matching their drought from 1971 to 1977.
The Angels’ minor-league system is held in low regard.
“The infrastructure needs to be improved. There’s a lot of things that need to be improved there,” Joe Maddon, the manager Moreno fired early this season, told Marc Tompkin of the Tampa Bay Times. “These guys can’t do it alone, obviously. It’s the non-sexy stuff that has to get better. It’s not just bright, shiny objects — they have that.
“They need to do the infrastructure better in order to get to where we had been in the past. That was my goal, to get the Angels back to where we had been in the past. That was it. Nothing but pure intentions. I was an Angel. They had every ounce of me. And now that’s done.”
There are off-the-field problems as well. The team is being sued by the family of Tyler Skaggs in connection with the pitcher’s death in 2019 from a drug overdose.
And there are allegations that city officials gave the Angels secret information when the team was negotiating to buy Angels Stadium. When details became public, the FBI got involved, the city backed out of the deal and the mayor resigned.
First Latino
There is something of a honeymoon with media and fans for new owners of sports teams.
And Moreno certainly had one.
He had a good back story in becoming the first Latino majority owner of a major sports team in North America.
He had grown up in a large family of modest means in Tucson, Arizona. His father owned a small print shop and published a Spanish-language newspaper.
Moreno served in the Army in Vietnam, went to the University of Arizona, and then went to work for billboard magnate Karl Eller.
After a decade of moving around the country in service to Eller’s company, he resettled in Phoenix and bought into another billboard company, Outdoor Systems. As a partner in the company, he helped take it public in 1996. He and his partners sold the company to Infinity Broadcasting for $8 billion in 1998.
Not his first rodeo
The Angels were not Moreno’s first foray into sports ownership. He was part of an investment group that bought the Triple-A Salt Lake Trappers and ran the team for a decade. Comedian Bill Murray was among the group. The investors sold for a handsome profit after a decade
Moreno became a part owner of the NBA Suns. And when Suns general partner Jerry Colangelo was looking for investors for his expansion baseball team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, Moreno bought in.
After a dismal opening season on the field, Colangelo decided he needed to win immediately and started paying big bucks. The Diamondbacks went from a 65-win team in their first season to a 100-win team n their second season.
In their fourth season, the D-backs won the World Series. But the team rolled up heavy debts.
Colangelo required the investors to pony up more money to keep the franchise on solid financial ground. Moreno did not like the idea of paying more for the same stake in the team.
Moreno offered to buy the team. Colangelo declined. So Moreno sold his portion back, then leaked the details of the team’s financial structure to my competitor at The Arizona Republic.
When Disney put the Angels up for sale, Moreno was happy to spend $183 million and some change for the team
Big bucks
The Angels had won their only pennant and World Series in 2002, but they dropped to a 77-85 record in 2003.
Moreno made no secret that he wanted to win — and win now.
He announced his presence with his wallet during the first offseason he owned the team. The Angels signed pitcher Bartolo Colon to a four-year deal worth $51 million, pitcher Kelvim Escobar to a three-year, $18 million deal, and Vladimir Guerrero for five years and $70 million.
All three signings worked out pretty well
In the next four seasons with the Angels, Escobar started 100 games and compiled a 43-35 record with a 3.60.
Colon won 21 games and the Cy Young Award in 2005.
Guerrero won the AL MVP in 2004 and finished in the top 10 in voting the three seasons after that.
Moreno and then General Manager Bill Stoneman insisted that although they were willing to spend money on free agents and make trades for immediate results, the Angels realized the future was the farm system.
In late July of 2004, the Diamondbacks were reportedly willing to trade pitcher Randy Johnson for two of the Angels’ top four prospects -- third baseman Dallas McPherson, catcher Jeff Mathis, first baseman Casey Kotchman, and pitcher Ervin Santana.
“How much of a mortgage do you put on your property?” Moreno told the LA Times.
He added later in the interview: “One of the things I did with Bill Stoneman is make a commitment to the minor league system.”
The list of the top prospects is telling.
Mathis was an outstanding defensive catcher, but he never hit well enough (.194 batting average in 17 seasons) to merit being the No.1 backstop for any length of time. McPherson hit with power but didn’t get on base enough to become a force. Kotchman lasted 10 years in the majors and had two decent seasons, one with the Angels.
Only Santana became an All-Star performer.
Major problems with the minors
The Angels player development pipeline didn’t live up to the hopes and hype of the parent club — with can’t-miss prospects doing just that
There was Brandon Wood, a third baseman who was drafted in the first round. He hit 43 homers at Class A Rancho Cucamonga in 2005 and followed up with 14 more in the Arizona Fall League. But despite several cracks at the major league level, Wood couldn’t stick.
The Angels repeated the cycle a few years later with Kaleb Cowart, another third baseman drafted in the first round. Cowart showed promise at the upper levels of the minors but was never able to duplicate his success with the big club.
There was the tragedy of Nick Adenhart, a promising pitcher who worked his way through a long rehab. Adenhart made it to the majors, pitched brilliantly in his first start of the 2009 season, and was killed later that night when a drunken driver hit the car that was carrying Adenhardt and some friends.
The curse of Bo Belinsky?
Consistent player development has always been something of an Achilles’ heel for the Angels.
There have been periods —the 1990s and the 1970s come to mind— when the farm system consistently produced major league players.
But it doesn’t seem to be part of the organization’s DNA the way it is or the Cardinals or the Dodgers.
You need only look at this stat: Since 1961, the Los Angeles Dodgers have produced 13 rookies of the year. The Angels have produced three. Actually, we shouldn’t count Ohtani for the Angels and Hideo Nomo of the Dodgers because they were already polished pros from Japan. So let’s make 12 to 2 in favor of the Dodgers farm system.
Owner Gene Autry’s Angels won a surprising 70 games in 1961, their inaugural season. That is the best first-year record of any of the 14 expansion teams.
In their second season, riding the arms of Bo Belinsky and Dean Chance, the Angel did the unthinkable in an era without free agency. In July 1962, the Angeles were in first place in the 10-team American League.
Belinsky’s brilliance and the Angels’ hopes faded in the second half of the season. The team finished a distant third. Still, it was quite an accomplishment.
There’s a school of thought that success came to the Angels so quickly that the team didn’t think they needed to put a great deal of energy into building a minor-league system.
Win now
When the Angels’ player development system failed to produce stars in the early years of Moerno’s stewardship, he decided to go back to the well.
Moreno wanted to keep winning — on and off the field.
Make no mistake: The Angels had been successful at the box office and concession stands.
Moreno, who had apparently passed an Econ 101 course (unlike most baseball club owners it seems), realized he might make more money if he increased demand by cutting prices.
Free agency had worked both from baseball and business standpoints before. After all, nothing excites the fan base about the next season like a big free agent signing.
The parade of high-priced free agents who came to Anaheim included Gary Matthews Jr. (2007–11, $50 million), Torii Hunter (2008-2012, $90 million), Albert Pujols 2012–21, $240 million), C.J. Wilson (2012–16, $77.5 million), Josh Hamilton (2013–17, $125 million), Justin Upton (2018–22, $106 million), Zack Cozart (2018-2020, $38 mlllion), and Anthony Rendon (2020–26, $245 million)
Of those, only Hunter could be considered a success. In his five seasons with the Angels, he was a two-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove winner and had a total WAR of 20.7. Signed going into his age 32 season, Hunter averaged .286/.352/.462. for a .814 OPS.
Which was the worst? There’s a lot to choose from, but a strong case can be made for Hamilton. After two seasons with the Angels, Hamilton, the 2010 AL MVP and a recovering substance abuser, relapsed. Moreno went ballistic and tried to get the contract voided. When that failed, the club traded the outfielder to the Texas Rangers, reportedly paying $68 million of his salary to play for a division rival.
We would be remiss if we left out the trade that brought high-priced Vernon Wells from the Blue Jays before the 2011 season.
Wells had a 86 OPS in his two seasons with the Angels - — earning he was about 14 percent worse than the average hitter - — and a WAR of minus 0.1. For that, he was paid $47 million.
In the deal, the Angels sent Mike Napoli to Toronto, which promptly slipped him to Texas, where he had a career year.
The verdict
So basically, Moreno was an owner who dropped prices on concessions and tickets and wanted to win so badly that he spent millions — of his own money — on high-priced talent.
Up until COVD-19 broke the world, his teams exceeded the best attendance marks of the previous ownerships EVERY YEAR. This is while the team 30 miles up Interstate 5 has been on a pretty good run, making the playoffs 14 seasons since 2005.
He signed a big contract for regional TV rights. And I think it is safe to say, the Angels are in better shape today, at least in comparison to other MLB teams, than when he bought the team.
Do you think fans of say . . . the Cincinnati Reds — who got to enjoy seeing their team conduct a fire sale in the run-up to Opening Day and then were treated Phil Castellini, president and chief operating officer of the team and the owner’s son, telling them that since the Queen City is a crappy, small market, the fans are lucky to have Castellini family owning the team — might appreciate an owner who was so hellbent on winning?
The Angels could do a lot worse.
New hope in Orange County?
I'm surprised the Angels haven't done better, with Trout and Ohtani, two of the very best players, on the team. Free agents haven't panned out for them, but it's not like they haven't tried. Joe Maddon as manager wasn't the answer after surviving past his sell-by date with the Cubs. While the owner doesn't hit or pitch, he does set the direction of the team with the decisions he makes. Arte Moreno was ahead of his time in snagging big TV rights deals, but that was years ago. He could sell the team, or be patient and put people in charge willing to draft and develop baseball talent instead of going for the splashy free agent signings. That doesn't fit the "win now" mentality, though.