3 Angels players we can lower the bar for in 2024

The Los Angeles Angels are a team fans can lower the bar for entering the 2024 season. The Angels have been a team many have expected to make the playoffs year after year with Shohei Ohtani leading the way, but the team disappointed every single year he was with the team. Now a Dodger, it's hard to expect much from the Halos.

Perhaps the Angels can find a way to win a few more games if they stay healthier, but the playoffs seem very out of reach barring several big moves that we haven't seen yet.

Expectations for this team are at a different place than they were entering the 2023 season, and expectations for certain players who were supposed to play big roles last season but didn't have gone down too. We can safely lower the bar for these three players. Anything good from them is great, but it's hard to expect it.

1) Tyler Anderson

The Angels signed Tyler Anderson last offseason coming off a career year. The southpaw was an all-star for the Dodgers and seemed to have revitalized his career. Immediately after arriving in Anaheim, things went downhill for the journeyman.

Simply put, Anderson was one of the worst starting pitchers in all of baseball, posting a 5.43 ERA in 27 appearances (25 starts) and 141 innings pitched. The only positive we could say about him is he stayed mostly healthy, but even then he ended his season on the IL with several other Angels players.

Anderson's 2022 season was clearly an outlier, and expecting him to be anything close to that version of himself is just setting yourself up for disappointment. He can be better than one of the worst pitchers in the game, sure, but that's not where the bar was in 2023.

Angels fans did not expect the 33-year-old to be an all-star again, but they did expect Anderson to be an innings eater who can keep his team in games consistently. The southpaw simply did not do that. It's safe to expect him to look more like the fifth starter he was before his year with the Dodgers than anything close to how good he was with them in his outlier season.

2) Anthony Rendon

This past season felt like Anthony Rendon's last chance to prove himself to Angels fans. Yes, the injuries and underperforming seasons were annoying, but you could still see the talent in glimpses and management had talked him up to a point where at least some fans had bought in.

Rendon actually got off to a solid start this past season. No, he wasn't hitting for any power and his defense was atrocious, but Rendon was getting on base a ton and was doing something virtually nobody else on the team was doing. Hitting in the clutch.

He played well for the first month and a half of the season before his first injury occurred. After that, things just went downhill from there. Rendon played a bit in June and July but struggled and then a shin injury ended his season prematurely once again. For those keeping score at home that's three straight season-ending injuries for their highest-paid player.

Forget the fact that Rendon is always hurt. When healthy, he hasn't been close to what Angels fans envisioned. The last three years have seen him slash .235/.338/.364 with 13 home runs and 80 RBI total. He's been a below-average hitter in the last three years which is just beyond unacceptable.

Expecting anything different this season from Rendon would be foolish. He has yet to play more than 58 games in a season in an Angels uniform. He has yet to hit 10 home runs in a season in an Angels uniform. He'll begin the season as the team's third baseman and might look good at the start, but expecting him to be both healthy and productive is simply not wise.