4 harsh truths the Angels may have to face regarding their young core's future

Nolan Schanuel's failure to improve jeopardizes his status as a foundational Angels' piece

When the Angels drafted Nolan Schanuel 11th overall in the first round back in 2023 and promoted him to the bigs after just 22 minor league games, hopes were high that he'd be a major part of the club's future rise to contention.

Upon his promotion, Schanuel showed off some real skills, highlighted by an advanced feel for the strike zone that was well beyond his years, one which yielded a stellar 15.2% walk rate and a .402 on-base percentage over his first 132 major league plate appearances.

There were some concerns, though. Despite looking every much the part of a hulking, power-hitting first baseman, Schanuel hit just one homer and slugged .330 in his first taste of big league action.

That power outage continued in 2024, his first full season in the majors. In 147 games and over 607 plate appearances, he slashed .250/.343/.362 with 13 homers. The lack of power combined with some shoddy defense led him to produce just 0.7 fWAR.

During the offseason, Schanuel pledged to get stronger and improve his bat speed in order to hit for more power. Given the rest of his offensive profile, he didn't need to transform into a 30-homer masher to provide value, but did need to consistently drive the ball into the gaps and crush the occasional mistake.

Instead, it's been more of the same from Schanuel in 2025. He's slugging .357 through 41 games and his ISO sits at .098, worse than last year's .112 mark.

That bat speed improvement hasn't come, as his average of 68 miles per hour ranks in the sixth percentile. Unsurprisingly, his hard hit rate of 28.9% also ranks near the very bottom sitting in the eighth percentile, his barrel percentage of 3.3% is 12th percentile, and his average exit velocity of 88.0 miles per hour underwhelms at the 25th percentile.

All the while, Schanuel also continues to be a butcher in the field, with -5 defensive runs saved and -2 outs above average in just 348 innings of field work.

The combination of power production commiserate with that of a backup shortstop combined with horrendous defense paints the picture of a well below-average player. If Schanuel can not find his power stroke he's going to have to play gold glove caliber defense, despite first base not being a premium defensive position.

This still time for him to turn it around, however, the longer these issues linger the less and less likely it becomes that he ever finds a pathway to acceptable performance in these key facets. If he continues to stagnate, the Angels might have to face the real possibility that he isn't capable of being a contributor on a winning ball club.

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