Angels face a pre-MLB lockout nightmare if Scott Boras' free agency warning proves true

The Los Angeles Angels do seem to finally have a direction. Only now they don’t have anyone to point them in it. After declining the club’s option on Kurt Suzuki’s 2027 contract following their first 100-loss season in franchise history, John Mozeliak confirmed he will not be the full-time general manager of the team.

He also made it clear that the next manager won’t be picked until there’s a new front office in place. And as of earlier this week, no candidates had been interviewed. The order of operations makes a lot of sense, but in this offseason, it could cost them dearly.

Scott Boras' November warning puts the Angels' hiring timeline on a collision course

Scott Boras has his motives, but he made the point that teams would be smart to sign players now, before a new collective bargaining agreement changes the rules, rather than waiting until after. Yes, he represents Tarik Skubal and others, but the executives and agents in the same piece on The Athletic largely agreed with him. 

With the owners expected to lock out the players on December 1, taking the Winter Meetings with it, the consensus is that the market will look a lot like it did in November 2021 and go at a rapid pace. Agents are already angling for player meetings at the GM meetings in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks. Boras summed it up pretty clearly. “In a talent-run world, there are no rules until there are rules.”

Let’s do the math. The World Series will be over soon. Free agency opens up five days after the final out, which means it’ll start somewhere between November 1 and 5. That leaves roughly four weeks of open shopping before everything goes dark.

And here’s where the Angels’ math kicks in. Over the next five weeks, they have an interim GM on an expiring contract that runs out in December. They have no manager, no coaching staff, and an incoming owner whose purchase doesn’t close until the first quarter of 2027. While Kroenke Sports & Entertainment is running the search, KSE doesn’t technically own the team yet. So yes, this is the definition of too many cooks in the kitchen, only it might also somehow not be enough.

The hiring itself isn’t just one decision either. Plenty of clubs now have a president of baseball operations with a general manager underneath. We don’t know if that’s the model Kroenke wants or not, but they could easily go that way. If they do, that means they need two front office hires before a managerial search even starts. Then they need a manager. Then a staff. Doing that in five weeks is a pretty tough task. Doing it quickly isn’t ideal either because it can lead to poor decisions.

And the Angels can’t sit on the sidelines because the part of the market that should move the fastest is the group the Angels need the most. This is a particularly weak free-agent class, which is saying something because free agency has gotten weaker and weaker over the years. Outside of Skubal, there aren’t very many obvious nine-figure players. There’s a crowded middle tier of outfielders, mid-rotation arms, and relievers. The Angels need all that, but so do so many teams, and if nobody is expensive, every team can be involved.

Last winter, Devin Williams signed with the Mets on December 1, and most of the top relievers were gone in short order after that. If you put that same domino effect into November, a team without a decision-maker could finish their pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving and find empty shelves.

That’s not even getting into how tough it might be to recruit. This franchise hasn’t made the playoffs since 2014. They haven’t won a postseason game since 2009. It’s a hard sell to someone when there is just so much missing from this team. 

They can make a big swing, sure, if the Kroenke group wants to make a statement before even actually owning the team. It’s certainly possible that they could go after someone like Skubal. But there are questions about how much he might be able to earn after a lockout. One proposal would have capped his earnings at five years and $202 million for a new team. That isn’t likely to ever be a thing, but we also have no idea what the financial landscape will be when this ugliness ends. So you never really know.

Mike Trout’s future works the same way. This offseason could end up being the last real chance to explore a trade before the lockout. That’s not a decision an outgoing interim GM should make. And it’s not one a new hire should make in his first week or two on a new job. 

This doesn’t mean the Angels are just done. They could sit out the November flurry of moves and pick through what’s left in the spring. There will be teams who do that on purpose. But the leftovers after a compressed market are still leftovers. And we still don’t know what the rules on the other side of the lockout will be. They might be far less friendly to a team wanting to spend its way back to relevance. 

For so long, the Angels were a step behind everyone else. The first test of the new era is pretty simple. Get the people in place before the clock strikes zero. If they can’t, the new era starts just how the last one ended. The Angels will be left to watch everyone else get better.

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