Do the Angels have a worthy player to add to growing list of MLB contract extensions?

A wave of contract extensions has hit Major League Baseball, with many deserving extension candidates receiving big financial bumps. Whether it was Jackson Merrill, Ketel Marte, Garrett Crochet, Kristian Campbell, Cal Raleigh, Alejandro Kirk, or Brandon Pfaadt, it's clear that organizations are constantly evaluating and subsequently negotiating with players they deem worthy of pay raises. So, one team's lack of activity in this regard is notable, especially given their general manager's history -- your Los Angeles Angels.

Perry Minasian left his beloved Atlanta Braves in order to man the helm of the Angels, meaning that he brought over many of their practices (and several members of the Braves' front office, including Alex Tamin as his assistant general manager). One thing that the Braves have made their bones on is extending their young players while they are in the early-20s, as it gives the prospect/unproven big league player generational wealth but also it gives the club a team-friendly contract. Braves players enter their prime and start out-playing their contracts immediately (see: Ronald Acuña, Austin Riley, Ozzie Albies, etc). The Braves are a perennial playoff team (well, we'll see how they fare this season) largely because of being on the cutting edge of sports economics.

Do the Angels have a worthy player to add to growing list of MLB contract extensions?

Does Minasian having Arte Moreno as an owner disallow him from locking up young players -- that's probably a factor. Moreno's philosophy entails waiting and seeing with the players before locking them up, as they are more blue-chip stock purchasers with their money rather than buying lower-level stocks. They will happily give Mike Trout a historic contract and pay huge money to Anthony Rendon, but are more reticent to being like the Braves and seek value withing their own pipeline. The Angels are a big market team that operates like a mid-tier franchise, and normally opt for the advantage of having promising players on pre-arb deals.

So, the question is -- do they even have a player worth extending? Zach Neto is the first choice for a pay raise, given what he showed last season. Well, the Angels might have waited too long and the framework of a Neto extension might not be as team-friendly to lock in right now. The time to extend Neto was when there were questions regarding his giant leg-kick and defense, as the former first rounder was a middle-of-the-road prospect in baseball and would have been very cheap a couple years ago.

Look at what the Red Sox with Kristian Campbell. He was a top 10 prospect in baseball who turned in a great spring training, so they extended him for eight-years, $60 million five games into the season. A $60 million deal for Neto feels too low for the kind of caliber player he is now and what the 24-year-old could turn into. Moreno might be too cheap to pay Neto what he is worth now, and was too short-sighted to get ahead of a Neto extension. The Angels have too shallow a farm system to consider extending anybody in the minor leagues right now.

Has the team seen enough from José Soriano, Jack Kochanowicz, or Logan O'Hoppe? Of those three, Soriano might be the most worthy. Despite semi-concerning walk rates and a shaky injury history, Soriano is a rock-solid starter now given his ability to generate ground balls, throw a slider that was given a Stuff+ mark of 150 after his first 2025 outing, and a 97th percentile fastball velocity. He could be locked up on the cheaper side as well. Ben Joyce and Nolan Schanuel seem like reaches right now despite there being a lot to like with them.

Do the Angels promote their players to the big leagues out of need or because they think they will be high impact players down the road? You would think that when the Angels suspect that they are going to add a young prospect to their team, they would engage in good-faith negotiations with their agents to keep them around long-term. Minasian provides glowing remarks on his players, but talk is cheap...and the Angels are acting cheap.

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