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3 players the Angels should trade to kickstart the post-Ohtani rebuild

With Shohei Ohtani gone, the Angels are better off rebuilding.

By Terrence Jordan |
Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels
Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels / Dustin Bradford/GettyImages
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You may have heard, but Shohei Ohtani has left the Los Angeles Angels to move across the freeway and join the Dodgers, signing a contract worth more than the GDP of seven countries. The Angels must now pick up the pieces and do what they can to remain competitive, a tall order considering the current state of the team and the fact that the A.L. West is home to the past two World Series champions.

The Angels haven't made the playoffs since 2014, and their last actual playoff win occurred way back in 2009. This is to say that even with Ohtani, the team never found any real success. A pivot in the way Arte Moreno does business is in order, and that means committing to a full rebuild.

Short of signing Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Josh Hader, and two or three premium bats, there isn't much the Angels can do to compete in the stacked American League next year.

General manager Perry Minasian has his work cut out for him, but where to start? The first step is identifying which players can grow from building blocks into franchise cornerstones. A rebuild will take time, likely at least three years, so which players will be entering their primes when the Angels are ready to be competitive, and which will be on the back nine of their careers?

Young Halos that have shown they may have staying power include Chase Silseth, Logan O'Hoppe, Zach Neto, Reid Detmers, and Nolan Schanuel, all of whom are 24 or younger. The Angels need to place an emphasis on their development, as well as the development of their top prospects, like Ben Joyce, Kyren Paris, and Jack Kochanowicz.

This needed emphasis on youth logically leads to the conclusion that veteran players should be on the move. Minasian can kickstart a rebuild by dealing older players for prospects that fit more with the team's updated timeline. Here are three that should be at the top of the list.

1) It's time to give Mike Trout a fresh start somewhere else

Before Shohei Ohtani tilted the baseball world on its axis, Mike Trout was the consensus pick as the best player in baseball. The five-tool centerfielder has put together a shoo-in Hall of Fame resume in Anaheim, following up his Rookie of the Year win in 2012 with 12 All-Star game appearances and three MVP awards.

Trout's ability has given Angels fans a reason to tune in year after year, but at 31 years old, it's difficult to see him being at the height of his powers when the Angels are finally ready to field a playoff-caliber team around him. It hurts to say it, especially after losing Ohtani, but the time is now to trade Mike Trout.

As the saying goes, the best ability is availability, and Trout, for all his talents, hasn't provided that in recent years. He's played in less than 45% of the Angels' games in the past four seasons as his time on the injured list has mounted, and conventional wisdom doesn't suggest that rate will improve as he approaches his mid-30s.

Trout has a no-trade clause, but the Angels need to approach him to see if he would be open to moving on. Despite a contract that still has seven years and nearly $250 million remaining, there's no doubt there would be deep-pocketed suitors willing to take a chance on such a generational player.

Moving on from Trout will signal once and for all that it's a new era in Anaheim. Trout has been brilliant for the Angels, but it's time to see what life is like without him.

2) Tyler Anderson is looking like the odd man out in the Angels rotation

Now that Ohtani has left, the Angels have professed a desire to return to a five-man rotation. Patrick Sandoval, Griffin Canning, Reid Detmers, and Chase Silseth are all 28 or younger, but Tyler Anderson, who was signed last year after putting up a career-best year with the Dodgers in 2022, is a player that no longer fits the team's future plans.

Anderson regressed in a big way last year, more than doubling his ERA from 2.57 with the Dodgers to 5.43 with the Angels. That's a difficult pill to swallow, especially when you consider that Anderson is behind only Trout and Anthony Rendon as the third-highest paid player on the team.

Despite his down year, there figures to be a decent market for Anderson. He's 31, and many teams could easily convince themselves that he is due to bounce back towards the player he was two years ago. Starting pitching is always at a premium, after all.

It wouldn't kill the Angels to see if Anderson can have that bounce back for them, but trading him now, while he still has two years of team control, would net the best return. As for that fifth rotation spot, the Angels could easily get a cheaper option on the free agent market to buy a couple years of time until some of their talented but extremely young minor league arms, such as Caden Dana or Barrett Kent, are ready to step up.

3) Carlos Estevez could be a hot name on the trade market if the Angels made him available

Angels closer Carlos Estevez made his first career All-Star game last year, and teams would be lined up around the block to add him to the back of their bullpen if the Angels ever made him available.

Estevez's 2023 was a tale of two seasons. The righthander was one of the best relievers in baseball through the All-Star game, but the wheels came off shortly after, and his blown save against the Mariners on August 3rd (when he gave up a grand slam to Cade Marlowe) was the beginning of the end of the Angels' season.

This was Estevez's first experience as a team's full-time closer, so he can be forgiven for not being able to dominate wire-to-wire. Even with his rough final two months of the season, Estevez is still in the top 50% of closers in baseball, and he would be one of the best setup men in the game for a team that already has an established closer.

The problem is that the Angels don't figure to be closing many games next year. The Halos finished 73-89 last year, and that was with Shohei Ohtani. With him gone, a 100-loss season is very much in play, especially if Perry Minasian follows our advice and bottoms out by trading Mike Trout.

Estevez will have much more value to a team that plans on contending for the playoffs, which is why the Angels should begin shopping him now. In-house options to step up as closer include Ben Joyce or the recently signed Adam Cimber.

Early indications are that the Angels don't plan on tearing things down and starting over, but that would be a mistake. Arte Moreno needs only to look to the division rival Astros to see the proper way to rebuild, as Houston bottomed out for multiple years, collecting top draft picks and young assets, and has since been the most consistently great team in baseball. Trading the three aforementioned players would hurt in the short-term, but it's the right move for a franchise that needs to press the reset button.

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