The Angels stars-and-scrubs lineup lacks stars, has too many scrubs.
Welcome back to our overview of the 2025 AL West. This year, our season preview series will come to you in four parts for each club over the next few weeks. Each club will get a week, starting with the bottom of the 2024 table and working our way up. We’ll have pieces on the present and future of each club, with the first of these articles herein to focus on the pitching staff as we anticipate it, then the position players, then the farm systems. Lastly, we’ll have an overall prognosis for the club, as well as a projection of a miniature If It All Goes Right/Wrong for each club and how they stack up against the Mariners.
We’re working from the bottom up, which means starting with the fallen Angels. Yesterday we looked at their pitching, which you can catch up on here; today, a dive into their lineup.
Unless otherwise stated, the embedded projections come from FanGraphs, who as always we appreciate and recommend you read and support.
Position Players
2024 Team Statistics: .229/.301/.369 BA/OBP/SLG, .296 wOBA, 6.3 fWAR (28th)
Key additions: OF Jorge Soler, 3B Yoán Moncada, C Travis d’Arnaud, INF Kevin Newman, INF J.D. Davis (NRI), SS Tim Anderson (NRI)
Key subtractions: INF Brandon Drury, OF Kevin Pillar, C Matt Thaiss
With a few exceptions, the Angels will largely be running it back with the 2024 lineup that saw them fall to the cellar of the AL West, somehow beneath even the A’s, a team that was taking the 2024 season pass/fail. While Mariners fans are in no position to feel smug nor superior to anyone, some gentle mockery of the Angels is appropriate, if only because Anaheim’s stubborn refusal to tear it down means there was one less team selling in an off-season that seemed to depend on several dominos that didn’t fall. (Unless those dominos were pointed directly at Dodger Stadium.)
Traditionally, it has been the offense that’s kept the Angels afloat as their pitchers have been strapped to the rickety rollercoaster known as Angels pitching development. That lifeboat began to spring a leak a few years ago, when the devil came to collect on a bargain a young kid in New Jersey once made regarding the Philadelphia Eagles and Lombardi trophies, but didn’t start taking on water in dam burst-sized quantities until the departure of Shohei Ohtani prior to last season. The luck the Angels experienced in drafting the best home-grown player of his generation in Trout, plus somehow also landing the best international player of his generation, has run out. (As for handing a big long-term deal to a player who actively doesn’t like baseball or the playing of it, well, that one’s on you, Arte.) The stars-and-scrubs model the Angels employed for years has run out of stardust, apparently one other finite resource becoming harder to get in southern California.
You know those “you must be this tall to ride” signs? To be a 2025 Los Angeles Angel hitter, you must be over 31, or under 25. Mike Trout? Come on up. Logan O’Hoppe? Absolutely. Jo Adell? Technically still 25. (The annoying outlier to this rule is of course perpetual thorn in the side of the Mariners, Luis Rengifo, who is 28.) This bifurcation tells you what you need to know about the current incarnation of the Angels: a team that’s sunsetting its big-money contracts and looking for a new, young core. Forget the stars-and-scrubs model we’ve seen from the Angels for years; this is the Xarelto-and-Lexapro model.
The over-31 crew you probably know, unless you’re a newly minted baseball fan, in which case: welcome! And also, please start anywhere else! Mike Trout you’ve probably heard of, even if you are new here, although since his playing time has been so curtailed by injuries over the past few years, you’re forgiven if you need to jog your memory. The Angels will transition him to a corner position to try to preserve his health. Next, you’ll remember Murky Dismal cosplayer Anthony Rendon, performing his annual rite of spring (beginning it on the IL). Luis Rengifo is only 28, but I’m grouping him in with this crew because it seems like it’s been forever that he’s been conducting his revenge tour against Jerry Dipoto, specifically. Then there’s…wait, Taylor Ward is 31? Ah, I see here that he’s dealing with knee soreness, so that tracks. Welcome to your 30s, Taylor.
Speaking of injuries, the Angels added Yoán Moncada to fill in at third base, which feels like trading one older, injury-addled player for a slightly younger one. (Just to be clear, this is preferable to what the Mariners did at third base, which was nothing.) The Angels’ big addition this off-season was traded Griffin Canning to acquire Jorge Soler to inject some thump in the lineup; at 33, he’s not quite the fearsome power hitter of his prime, but FanGraphs still projects him for 27 homers
Then there’s the under-25 crew, which is the explanation for why the Angels declined to go full rebuild this off-season. The centerpiece of the Angels’ youth brigade is catcher Logan O’Hoppe, who’s like if Cal Raleigh was a little less good at hitting and a lot worse at defense, which, to be clear, is still a very good player and one worth building around. He’s followed closely by shortstop Zach Neto, who debuted last year but truly became an Angel this off-season (will open season on IL). Neto zapped 23 homers last year, but had off-season shoulder surgery, which might sap some of that zap. The senior member of this group, Jo Adell has no issues with his power, other than not getting to it often enough due to his elevated strikeout rate, but he actually lowered that to an acceptable 28% last season, leading to his first ever time eclipsing 20 homers in the majors. The youngest member of this crew is Nolan Schanuel, who can grind out a plate appearance with the best of them, but who hasn’t hit for power yet despite being legally required to as a gigantic lefty first baseman.
2025 FanGraphs Depth Charts position player projections: .245/.318/.421 BA/OBP/SLG, .321 wOBA, 24.2 fWAR (21st)
With the addition of Soler, the Angels should be better than they were last season, but FanGraphs still sees them as near the bottom third of the league. Over at Baseball Prospectus, PECOTA gives the Angels 19.9 WARP, so roughly the same, much like the Angels looked at their 2024 lineup and said “yeah, let’s just do that again.”