Angels fans cringe as 3 former players tear it up with their new teams

The Angels rightfully cut ties with a litany of members of their 2024 team before this season, but several castoffs have emerged as legitimately good players on their new teams. This is anything but a new trend, as fans have become used to players leaving this bad organization and thriving with teams with better ownership, plans to utilize them, facilities, culture, history, et cetera.

Three players in particular come to mind as ones that Angels fans are face-palming the hardest over. Not in the sense that they are cheering for their downfall or would take the transactions back, but simply because they are free of the Angels and now are taking their game to a level that was seldom seen in Anaheim. The worst part: this list does not even include Shohei Ohtani...

Angels fans cringe as 3 former players tear it up with their new teams

Griffin Canning

The Angels would do the Canning-for-Soler swap ten times out of ten. However, when the trade happened, many Angels fans complained that the Braves would assuredly get the best out of the former second round pick that the team that drafted him never could. Well, the Braves cut ties with him immediately, but he is reviving his career with their division rivals.

Canning has a 0.5 bWAR so far in his five starts with the Mets, which already surpasses his entire total from last season and is easily on pace to break his career high he set in 2023. Canning's success with New York is hardly a surprise -- his stuff has always been tantalizing but the Angels lacked the provisions and coaching to maximize his talent. His slider usage is way up, and the depth on his changeup is much better.

Adding insult to injury, Canning has an above average K% while Angels pitchers cannot strike out anybody this year. Again, Angels fans are happy for him but it just stinks to see yet another example of other franchises being much better run than their favorite team's.