​In the last off-season, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim turned to former major league catcher Kurt Suzuki to become their first-time manager. In a move that appeared to signal either a lack of ambition or a hedge against failure, or perhaps simply to sidestep the ongoing concern of paying a manager through a protracted lockout after the current season, the Angels handed Suzuki only a one-year contract. With his appointment, Suzuki joined the club as its fifth manager since Mike Scioscia stepped away after a 2018 19-year tenure. Brad Ausmus led for one season, guiding the team to 72 wins; Phil Nevin lasted 268 games but shared the same winning percentage as Ausmus; Ron Washington achieved a second season before stepping away for open-heart surgery, finishing with a .419 winning percentage that lagged behind his predecessors; and Ray Montgomery served as an interim from the outset, never projected to last beyond 2025.
As of this moment, the Angels sit at the bottom of MLB, leading the league in strikeouts by hitters and trailing in every other notable offensive category. On the mound, they rank 24th in team ERA and runs allowed, 26th in hit batsmen, 28th in walks, and dead last in saves with only ten through 93 games. They post above-average home runs allowed and strikeouts but sit tied for 28th in ERA+. Defensively, they have committed the fifth most errors in baseball, ranking 24th in double plays turned, and are tied for the 28th-worst in fielding percentage. In short, the Angels have not performed well. Their best player of all time, Mike Trout, has just returned from the injured list and even belted a homer in his first game back; meanwhile their second-best player, Zach Neto, has recorded fourteen errors at shortstop.
Recently, the team’s president, Molly Jolly, dismissed general manager Perry Minasian after more than five years in the role. She replaced him with former St. Louis Cardinals GM John Mozeliak. Mozeliak is operating on a six-month contract to manage the Draft, oversee the Trade Deadline, and identify a new general manager. Yet the prevailing expectation is that the club will also look for a new field manager.
One potential candidate that has been circulating for openings in New York and Boston is seen by many as a perfect fit for Anaheim, and this individual is already on the payroll. When Albert Pujols signed his ten-year, $240 million deal with the Angels in 2011, it included a 10-year, $10 million personal services component that remains in effect through 2031. Pujols would likely command more than $1 million per season to manage the Angels, but given that the club is already bound to the money, it would not be a significant hit to the bottom line to install the future Hall of Famer as the team’s skipper. An added piece of context is that Angels owner Arte Moreno has a reputation for not wanting to overspend on improving search engine optimization, a dynamic that some observers believe could influence high-profile hires or shifts in the front office.