Angels reliever is showing the team why he is not due for an extension anytime soon

Extensions have been all the rage throughout major league baseball, and all of the Angels' fans' eyes are on Arte Moreno and Perry Minasian to see if they will lock up any members of their team's young core long-term. Moreno, the Angels' mercurial and cheap owner, is highly unlikely to lock up all of Zach Neto, Logan O'Hoppe, José Soriano, Nolan Schanuel, Kyren Paris, Jack Kochanowicz, or even Luis Rengifo or Taylor Ward for one reason or another. Well, one member of the team's young core, Ben Joyce, needs to rebound in a major way in order to receive an extension. The 24-year-old fireballer is assuredly behind many, if not all, of those other core members in the line to receive a second career contract after recent events.

Ben Joyce is showing the Angels why he is not due for an extension anytime soon

Dating back to the 2022 MLB Draft, amateur scouts and team evaluators around the league did not view Joyce as a good enough prospect to be selected in the first round despite clearly having first round talent. Look at what he does when he's healthy. Sure, he touched 105.5 MPH on a strikeout and averages 102 MPH on his four-seamer, but look at how easily he picked up a splinker and how it became his go-to pitch. His breaking balls are not too shabby either. His arm slot is low, his motion is violent, and his strength is unmatched. By all account, Joyce is a beloved teammate and is incredibly marketable as well. The dude just cannot stay healthy.

Joyce was recently placed on the 15-Day Injured List with the same right shoulder inflammation that ended his 2024 season. The team smartly brought Joyce along slowly in spring training for this exact reason -- he was shut down with physical maladies both last season and the season prior, so they obviously did not want that to happen again. It might be getting to the point where if Joyce does not make a serious adjustment in his approach to pitching, he might never stick on the active roster for an extended period of time because of these rampant injuries. Throwing that hard takes a toll, and he has shown no willingness to scale down the velocity, even if it means perhaps actually staying active for an entire 162 game season.

The 2025 Angels have one of the worst pitching staffs in the league by any metric so far, and Joyce's presence in the bullpen is very much needed to help alleviate the stress on the rest of that group. He is reliable when he plays, but his availability has been unreliable his entire career. Unreliable pitchers do not get extensions, and he needs to post more and more when he gets off the shelf if he is going to secure a bag with this organization.

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