Angels' best development of 2026 is why this season's finish feels unlike anything before

There’s one thing that Los Angeles Angels fans haven’t had much of in recent years: hope. While many fans have been hurt too many times to fully buy the team’s new direction, it is hard to not feel at least more optimistic about where the team is headed compared to the start of the season.

The Athletic released its MLB Power Rankings and while the Angels are ranked as the No. 29 overall team out of 30, the publication notes that things are looking up because of the fact that Arte Moreno is no longer the principal owner of the team and Perry Minasian is no longer the general manager.

At the start of the season, both of those things seemed like long shots even though Minasian was entering the final year of his contract. When a team has been so and for so long, executives and owners as bad as Minasian and Moreno don’t even feel like people, they just feel like immovable forces of nature. The same way gravity dictates what goes up must come down, Minasian and Moreno seemed like permanent fixtures forever destined to weigh down the Angels franchise.

Angels got rid of the two people holding them back the most

Thankfully, that didn’t prove to be true. Plus, it’s not like Minasian got replaced by an underling or some 30-year-old whiz kid straight out of Harvard, the Angels got John Mozeliak to replace him. Mozeliak is one of the most respected executives in baseball who has a proven track record of success with the St. Louis Cardinals.

While it’s not a guarantee that he’s going to get things turned around, he’s already made some positive moves in the right direction and showed both during the MLB Draft and the trade deadline that he is not afraid to do things differently from his predecessor.

Not only is Mozeliak proving that he is far different from Moreno, new principal owner Stan Kroenke is already showing that he is not another Moreno. The Angels are reportedly planning to put “Anaheim” back in their name which only feels fitting since that’s the city they play in. He also seems likely to be much more hands off than Moreno which would be a breath of fresh air.

None of this guarantees success for the Angels, but at the very least it is something different. It is hope for the future which is more than the franchise has had in a long time. So even though the Angels are going to win 60-something games and might finish with the first 100-loss season in the history of the franchise, the ending of this season is probably the best fans have felt about the state of affairs in a while. 

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