Angels Prospects Update: Christian Moore and George Klassen are silently struggling

Much has been said regarding the Angels' weak farm system despite the organization not making the playoffs in over a decade, and their marquee prospects are not performing too well to begin the 2025 minor league season. No one is going to overreact to George Klassen laboring through his outings, or Christian Moore barely doing any damage with the bat as of yet with regards to their future value. Their struggles are in silence right now, but they are worth illuminating without taking away a final conclusion...other than that the Angels evaluators were correct in not selecting them for the major league team.

Angels Prospects Update: Christian Moore and George Klassen are silently struggling at Double-A Rocket City

Moore, in particular, was a player who the Angels were giving serious consideration to as a potential regular on the big league team. He played in a ton of spring training games and was allowed the opportunity to stake his claim to make the Opening Day roster. Well, he came up short because his spring training infield defense was sub-optimal (a massive hole in his game) and his bat was not nearly as blazing hot as Kyren Paris' was and still is.

Stats are courtesy of TruMedia

Now, flash forward to the minor league regular season, and Moore is not exactly covering himself in glory now that he is not facing MLB or Triple-A pitching. He is currently slashing .136/.269/.182/.451 in seven games at Double-A Rocket City. That .451 OPS is the third lowest mark of any Trash Panda, only leading Tucker Flint and a third string catcher who's played in one game named Jaxx Groshans. Moore does have a solid 15.4% BB%, but he also has a poor 30.8% K% as well. Moore has four hits in 26 plate appearances, although two of those hits generated four RBIs which is second highest mark on the roster.

Let's flip to George Klassen, the no. 3 ranked Angels prospect according to MLB.com. He has made two starts, and has a batting average against of .385. The power arm only has a 21.9% K% so far. He has a 10.13 ERA, 2.63 WHIP, and a 6.37 FIP. Woof. Results are not everything at the minor league side, especially after a handful of April games, so Klassen will be fine as long as he continues to throw pitches like this:

Just to repeat: this is just a stat dump and not making any statement on Klassen or Moore's career. They remain tantalizing, toolsy prospects who will undoubtedly find success in their MLB careers. It's just slightly dismaying that two of the Angels' best three prospects are starting out so poorly for an organization that 100% would have considered promoting them in a month or so if they started out the season hot (see: Caden Dana, who has pitched well in Triple-A but did not in the Show).

The Angels do not have depth in their pipeline, so Moore and Klassen are dragging their system as much as they can in the eyes of the national rankings. If the Angels want to avoid other teams pointing and laughing at their prospects, Moore and Klassen need to turn things around. It's not the biggest deal right now, slumps happen, but avoiding prolonged slumps is what distinguishes the great prospects from the average ones. The two young studs need to learn how to deal with adversity, and they undoubtedly will find tweaks in their mechanics and/or approach in order to position themselves to be on the doorstep of their MLB debuts sooner rather than later.

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