LA Angels: What the offseason budget looks like for Arte Moreno

Evan Desai

Arte Moreno, LA Angels. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

LA Angels‘ owner Arte Moreno has a net worth of about $3.6 billion.

He’s rich, and it’s an advantage to have a rich owner running your favorite baseball team. Last year, the Angels had the seventh-highest payroll in baseball at $180,349,558.

The crazy thing is, teams with owners worth $3.6 billion who are also in Los Angeles can spend even more than that. Moreno has had a reputation of going conservative in the past. He has a chance to erase that reputation this winter.

Currently, the LA Angels have $115,588,094 on the books for their 2022 payroll.

That means that right now, the LA Angels are a bit over $7 million over the league average 2022 payroll ($108,289,353). The Halos have the 12th-highest payroll of any team for 2022 right now.

That number needs to go way up. In an offseason where the Angels are expected to splurge in free agency, they need to be hitting that $200 million mark. If there’s any year to do it, it needs to be this year. Shohei Ohtani is still with the Angels for a cheap $5.5 million base salary.

That’s not going to be the case for every offseason. Soon, Ohtani is going to be due for a new contract and he is going to cost quite a bit. He may even end up being the most expensive player in baseball if he keeps this performance up.

That would mean that the Angels would be paying Mike Trout over an average of $35.5 million per year, they would be paying Anthony Rendon an average of $35 million per year, and then they could need to pay Ohtani well over that to keep him around. And not keeping him around isn’t an option. He needs to stay here, as he is the most valuable player in baseball.

If the Angels hit that $200 million mark, they know they have done their job. Last year, just two teams hit $200 million or more. The Angels should belong in that top three or so range.

They’re a big-market team with a rich owner and they’re located in the beautiful LA/Anaheim area that has the potential to have quite a bit of a draw for free agents in this league.

Even the New York Mets, who have a reputation for spending, but not spending at the New York Yankees’ level (even when the Yankees haven’t spent as much as they could recently), almost got all the way up to that $200 million payroll. They were third in spending last year.

The Angels were projected by many to win the division this past year, but the Astros took it. The Astros outspent the Angels last year, and have since 2018.

How is a team from Houston outspending us consistently? Houston is by no means a small market, but it’s nowhere near the size of Los Angeles. Pair that with a filthy rich owner in Moreno and the Angels need to outspend every team in this division this offseason, no excuses.

The Angels are looking at about a $200 million payroll this offseason. It’s hard to believe that Moreno could go much over that, but the pressure of winning with Trout and Ohtani will be great enough to where we reach that number.

Evan Desai

Evan Desai has covered MLB with FanSided for 3 years, first as a contributor for FanSided's New York sports publication--Empire Writes Back--and now as the expert at Halo Hangout, the Angels publication for the network. He also runs Reign Of Troy, the USC FanSided publication, and has covered college sports since 2019--most notably USC and UCLA for the Pac-12 Network, University of Arizona and Grand Canyon University for Arizona PBS, and Arizona State University for Sports Illustrated's ASU publication. He has also run the Clippers FanSided publication in the past, Clipperholics, and has made two stops at NBC Sports.