Arte Moreno might do the most Arte Moreno thing possible after Angels shake up

With the regular season now over, it's time for Arte Moreno to just follow his gut and not put any stock into what his knowledgable employees believe. As everybody in the baseball community knows, nothing the Angels do gets signed off on without Moreno's approval...which is normal, but Moreno is a notorious meddler in the affairs of his baseball operations and player development departments. Moreno is the Jerry Jones of baseball -- he believes he knows what to do and how to do everything, and all the while his team is losing over-and-over-and-over again/becoming the laughingstock of the sport.

So, it should surprise nobody that Moreno is just doing whatever he wants right now. He does not have a care in the world, and is reportedly flying solo on the Angels managerial search...but also making his general manager fire/re-assign the current coaches....BUT ALSO has not scheduled an end-of-year press conference because the general manager does not know whether he is keeping his job.

Arte Moreno might do the most Arte Moreno thing possible after Angels shake up

On "The Baseball Insiders Podcast," (on the FanSided Podcast Network) MLB insider Robert Murray said: "My feel has been he [Perry Minasian] was probably going to return, but this [Pujols] stuff kinda makes me question exactly what his future might be with the Angels." Murray essentially said outright that Moreno was not consulting Minasian on who the next Angels manager should be, probably because Moreno knows he wants it to be Albert Pujols but does not know whether he wants Minasian to stay on as general manager.

At the very least, Moreno shirking Minasian's responsibilities as general manager when discussing managerial hires is ludicrous. The only owner that would circumnavigate his general manager when looking for a new big league manager is Arte Moreno. The relationship between a general manager and manager is precious, but clearly Moreno operates as the general manager, the real general manager just does his bidding, and the manager is just whoever Moreno likes. Everybody who is reporting on the Pujols situation has stated that Moreno admires Pujols and that's why he is the favorite to land the manager job.

Again -- Minasian's status with the Angels is still incredibly unclear. There has been no word on when the end-of-year press conference is going to be (it was supposed to be today, but they normally take place the Monday after the regular season ends), who is going to be running it (normally it's the GM), and why it's getting delayed. Despite the uncertainty with Minasian's job...guess what Moreno did? He made Minasian deliver the news to Ron Washington that they are not picking up his club option (after Washington stated publicly he wanted a face-to-face talk with Moreno at Angels Stadium that he did not get), and also made Minasian tell Ray Montgomery that he was not going to be the team's manager next season but they could re-assign him elsewhere (at a position that is TBD at the moment).

Can you think of a more quintessential Moreno move than making Minasian firing a couple of guys before then firing Minasian himself? To paraphrase Fabian Ardaya, that is the perfect distillation of where the Angels are as a franchise.

Publications are running stories on which of the open manager jobs/soon-to-be/potential open managerial jobs are best, and all of them rank the Angels job last...because Arte Moreno does Arte Moreno things constantly (wild stuff that makes no sense), which causes the Angels to Angels (lose constantly). Winning organizations are derived from stable, sane ownership, and the Angels have not had that in over two decades.

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