Andy Pages keeps making Angels fans relive a painful missed opportunity

Los Angeles Angels fans have known for years that the team made a huge mistake when it was unable to complete a trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers for outfielder Andy Pages. That has only become more clear this season as Pages is most assuredly the one that got away.

Back in February of 2020, before the whole world shut down, the Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers had a trade in place that would have sent Joc Pederson, Ross Stripling, and Pages to the Angels in exchange for Luis Rengifo and some minor league players.

The trade got nixed is that Moreno got frustrated with the Dodgers for taking so long to agree on the details of the trade. That impatience has come back to bite the Angels in a big way, and Pages reminded Angels fans of that fact recently by hitting a home run and driving in six runs total in the recent series between the Dodgers and Angels over the weekend.

Pages has turned into a great player with the Dodgers. He is hitting .299/.351/.514 with 10 homers and 41 runs driven in on the season. It's very easy for him to fly under the radar since one couldn't walk through the Dodgers' clubhouse without tripping over a superstar, but if that trade had gone through and he ended up with the Angels, perhaps he'd be a star player for the Halos by now.

Instead, the Angels decided to hold onto Rengifo, who was decent but certainly never phenomenal with the Halos. Now he is struggling with the Milwaukee Brewers, so obviously, if the Angels could go back in time, they would make that deal.

Andy Pages is the one who got away

Of course, a pessimist might say that if the Angels had landed Pages, they would have messed up his development somehow. While that's a fair point, the Angels' outfield would look a lot better with Pages in it right now.

Maybe Mike Trout, Jo Adell, and Pages would be the starting outfielders right now, which would not be too bad an arrangement. It would certainly be an improvement over what the team has right now.

The Angels acquired Josh Lowe in the offseason, hoping he would be the missing piece for the outfield, but his numbers have been dreadful this season. He is hitting .174/.220/.287 with four home runs and 10 runs batted in.

Pages would obviously be a huge upgrade over Lowe, but more importantly, he could have been the heir to Trout in center field. Obviously, Trout's resurgent 2026 shows he still has a little left in the tank, but the Angels do not have a huge star they can market around when Trout is no longer playing for the Angels.

It seemed like it could be shortstop Zach Neto for a while, but he is struggling this season, although he did have a clutch swing of the bat against the A's on Monday night.

But Pages could have been the guy for the Halos if that trade came to pass. Those sorts of opportunities do not come around all that often, so that mistake will be felt for years to come.

It's easy to second-guess things, and no one knows for sure how things would have turned out with Pages in the fold. But it's yet another example of Moreno's incompetence hurting the team, and all Angels fans can do is watch and shake their heads as they wonder what the Angels would look like with Pages in the lineup.

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