3 LA Angels prospects who need to be called up before May 1

The Angels are a fun team, but not a perfect one. Despite a hot streak of late, their main issue right now is on the pitching side and they could easily swap out two to three of their major leaguers for an arm from the farm system for one reason or another. The Angels are stashing several veterans in Triple-A that could be viable call-ups (Jake Eder and Chase Silseth most notably), but there are several more fun options elsewhere in the minors. Plus, the Angels sure do love pushing their prospects with upside!

When you look around the league, you see several organizations making key call-ups as win-now moves. Whether it's the Milwaukee Brewers calling up Caleb Durbin and Craig Yoho or the Athletics calling up Nick Kurtz, several teams are dipping into their pipeline to pick up their big league squad. The Angels already skew young by rostering guys like Ryan Johnson (22-years-old), Kyren Paris (23), Nolan Schanuel (23), Zach Neto (24), or Jack Kochanowicz (24), and there are many avenues where they would want to add yet another talented youngster.

The big league position player group is set right now, especially when Yoán Moncada returns from the IL, and the team does not want to call up a top prospect simply to ride the bench. Basically, as well as Nelson Rada is hitting right now, there's no room for him in Anaheim right now.

Caden Dana (21-years-old)

Dana could come back up in a few different capacities as he continues to stretch out as a starter in Triple-A. His three innings did not go too well the first time around, but he might be a better a better long reliever option than their current guys.

Dana has been the Bees' best pitcher this season. Even amongst relievers, Dana leads the Triple-A Angels in many, many statistical categories -- ERA, WHIP, xFIP, innings per game, left on base%, and opposing hitters' OBP, OPS, and wOBA. He has a max velo of 97.0 MPH, too. He's clearly too good for Triple-A, and could be eased back into facing big league hitters again.

The Ian Anderson experiment is going poorly thus far -- Dana is simply a better pitcher than him right now. Dana's pitch modeling data in the bigs is better than Anderson's -- Dana's Stuff+ of 94 eclipses Anderson's of 88. Anderson's poor Stuff+ mark ranks second to last of Angels' pitchers, with Kyle Hendricks being the only pitcher to have worse stuff.

If Minasian wants to hold onto Anderson...if Jack Kochanowicz's performance keeps stalling and they find his behavior to be too juvenile to stay in the majors, then perhaps Reid Detmers goes back into rotation, Kochanowicz goes down, and Dana and Anderson take over as the team's long relievers. Keep giving the kid reps in the Show.

Samy Natera Jr. (25-years-old)

Yes, Natera Jr. is either older or the same age as many members of the Angels already.

Michael Darrell-Hicks has been better of late, but if his performance dips once again than the Angels should look no further than Natera Jr. as his replacement. The lefty completely balled out in the Arizona Fall League, and carried over that performance into the minor league regular season. Natera Jr.'s results are next-level good, and he is clearly not being challenged enough in Double-A.

The Angels love their left-handed pitchers, and a power lefty is a vital cog in a bullpen. They can trust the stuff with Natera, they can trust his "professionality" given his age, they can trust his size and athleticism (he stands 6'4), and they can trust the elite sinker-slider combination. He would be their truest left-on-left reliever coming out of the pen.

Jose Fermin (23-years-old)

For those of you who are unfamiliar with him -- here's Eric Longenhagen from FanGraphs on Jose Fermin, who he ranked as the Angels' 22nd best prospect in November, 2024:

"He has a high-effort, open-stride delivery that generates a 94-97 mph fastball with plus vertical break. More effective than his fastball is Fermin’s 84-88 mph gyro slider, which has nasty vertical movement for a pitch as hard as it is. All the effort in Fermin’s delivery makes him very wild, wild enough that he projects to middle relief rather than the late-inning role in which his stuff could conceivably play. If he can curb his walks against upper-level hitters in 2025, he’ll quickly have made a case to be on the big league roster."

Eric Longenhagen

Natera Jr. and Fermin have each thrown the same amount of innings for the Trash Pandas this season. While Natera Jr. has an otherworldly K/9, Fermin has a better strikeout to walk ratio. Natera might have 15 strikeouts to Fermin's 12, but Fermin has a 12:1 K:BB to Natera's 15: 4. He has a staggeringly low FIP of 0.18.

It sure looks like Fermin is cleaning up his walk numbers and turning himself into a big league-ready reliever. Another reliever who can turn up the velo never hurt anybody, especially if he can keep his big-time stuff in the zone.

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