2 Arte Moreno messes new Angels ownership must fix to turn franchise around

Going from one of the cheapest owners in North American sports to one of the most lavish will send shockwaves through every person who is even minorly connected to the Los Angeles Angels franchise. There is not one Angels player, coach, staffer, or fan who is even mildly perturbed by Arte Moreno selling a "controlling interest" to Stan Kroenke for a record $4 billion.

The Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (Kroenke's holding company) will be taking over an absolute tire-fire of an organization. If the new ownership group is to finally end the longest active playoff drought in MLB, they are going to have to spend their exorbitant amount of money wisely. Sure, the new ownership group will be more active in big-ticket free agents...but there are at least two other prudent ways that Kroenke and Co. can help modernize this Angels organization that has been dreadfully behind every other team in professional baseball for 10+ years.

2 Arte Moreno messes new Angels ownership must fix to turn franchise around

Angels have a pair of core players begging for an extension

Moreno’s Angels never started, let alone followed, any league-wide trends. Perhaps the most notable business trend that the Angels stuck their nose up at was extending the organization’s up-and-coming prospects/young MLB players before/during their pre-arbitration eligible seasons.

I know what you’re thinking – well, the Angels don’t have any top prospects or talented young players to extend in the first place! Well, a businessman with any sense would have OK’d any type of extension with Shohei Ohtani while he was in-house and still relatively cheap. Where are the extensions for Zach Neto and Reid Detmers, who were both Super-Two eligible due to their early-career success? Detmers is set to hit the market following the 2028 season, and Neto after the 2029 season. Both players will not take any hometown discount now that Kroenke is the owner, and especially after being subjected to Moreno’s reign of terror during their formative years in MLB.

When Moreno hired Perry Minasian, the idea is that he would bring over fresh ideas from the Atlanta Braves to help springboard a turnaround in Anaheim. The Braves were one of the pioneers in extending their studs early in their career. Moreno's interfering ways/black cloud presence over this franchise assuredly impeded Minasian's ability to extend Neto, Detmers and other promising youngsters like a Jose Soriano to team-friendly deals.

Angels would be wise to lean into modern technolog

The Angels finally showed a willingness to adopt a philosophy that revolves around weaponizing data and technology when they fired pitching coach Mike Maddux, assistant pitching coach Darryl Scott, and bullpen coach Dom Chiti. The org cited that trio's lack of knowledge around deploying technology to develop winning pitchers as the main reason behind their termination.

The Angels finally started investing in technology at the spring training facility in Tempe, AZ...albeit it was years after every other organization did. However, the Angels need to start leaning more on their Research and Development department in the front office and technology-forward members of the Player Development department in order to invest into pieces of tech that the team can actually use at the major and minor league levels.

The Angels pitching staff has been amongst the worst in baseball during the technology era. Since 2019, Angels pitchers have a 4.59 ERA. That is the third-worst ERA in baseball and the worst ERA in the American League in that span according to TruMedia. The lack of ability to develop/identify pitchers with premium stuff is almost directly due to the org's lack of weaponizing Hawkeye, Trackman, KinaTrax and the myriad other pieces of data and tech that every other company purchases.

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