4 Angels moves from 2023 that didn't work out as planned

The Los Angeles Angels are wrapping up their ninth straight season without a postseason berth and their eighth straight season finishing below .500. This team that was in contention for the entire first half and through the month of July has completely faltered down the stretch and instead of fighting for that elusive playoff berth, all this team really has to fight for now is to remain under 90 losses.

Injuries and regression from the Angels starting pitchers are two areas to look at when disecting why this Angels team missed the postseason, but Perry Minasian making some moves that aged horribly is another reason this team failed to improve.

These five moves were supposed to help the Angels in a big way get back to the playoffs, but instead, didn't make much of a positive impact at all.

1) The LA Angels signing Tyler Anderson turned out to be a disaster

When the Angels signed Tyler Anderson, they did not expect him to be the all-star pitcher he was in 2022. No team did. That's why he only got a deal that paid him $13 million annually when pitchers like Taijuan Walker and Jameson Taillon got closer to $20 million annually for more term. Anderson was simply expected to be a productive mid-rotation starter that ate innings. Unfortunately, he turned into one of the worst pitchers in the sport.

Anderson's first season with the Angels was bad really from start to finish. He had a couple decent stretches when he was doing alright, but he was mostly subpar on the mound, failing to give the Angels quality performance or length.

The southpaw had a 5.43 ERA in 27 appearances (25 starts) and 141 innings pitched. His ERA was the sixth-worst among pitchers with at least 140 innings pitched. Not where he wanted to be.

The one saving grace Anderson had was he was able to stay healthy. This Angels team has been ravaged with injuries all season long, but even that went away as Anderson's season ended prematurely due to injury. The Angels are stuck with Anderson who will be entering his age 34 season for another two seasons. The contract looks like a disaster, and he's a huge reason this rotation regressed as much as it did.

2) The Hunter Renfroe trade aged very poorly for the LA Angels

The Hunter Renfroe trade was one I was so sure was going to work out. The Angels gave up pitchers who had shown next to nothing in exchange for one of the game's most consistent power bats. The Brewers traded him because they wanted to save some money, not because of his performance.

Unfortunately, even the trades that look the best on paper don't always end up working out. Renfroe got off to a scintillating start in the month of April, posting an .844 OPS with seven home runs in 28 games. His performance the rest of the way was quite bad.

From May 1 until the day he was claimed off waivers, Renfroe slashed .237/.297/.407 with 12 home runs and 36 RBI. He hit seven home runs the first month of the season and combined to only hit five more through the next four months.

Renfroe was horrific all year with runners in scoring position, and his swing decisions made fans lose their minds at certain points. In every full season he had played with the exception of the shortened 2020 season Renfroe had hit at least 25 home runs. That's five years of 25+ home runs, and even in that 2020 season he was at a 30 home run pace with eight long balls in 42 games. He hit just 19 for the Angels and one for the Reds before they had enough.

Renfroe was great that first month and made a couple of fine plays in the field including a game-saving throw in Baltimore, but other than that, was pretty invisible on the field for most of his Angels tenure.

3) The Lucas Giolito trade was one of the biggest LA Angels flops in recent memory

In an effort to snap their long postseason drought and to also show Shohei Ohtani that the Halos were capable when it came to fielding a competitive team, Perry Minasian pushed his chips in at the deadline and went for it.

Going for it wasn't a horrible idea to me, as the Angels had hung around in postseason contention all season, were going to get some injured players back (or so we thought), and the prospects they were going to trade aren't too important to the team's future anyway.

Trading away a guy like Edgar Quero, while he should be good in the future, doesn't hurt as much when you have Logan O'Hoppe behind the plate. Trading away Ky Bush doesn't hurt as much when the rotation is already full of lefties that have potential but haven't put it together yet. Trading those two prospects hurt when the prize was Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez both on expiring deals.

Lopez was mostly solid for the Angels, he isn't to blame for this trade aging so poorly. The Giolito acquisition wound up being just awful for the Angels. His 6.89 ERA with the club is skewed from that one horrific start in Atlanta, but he still wasn't anything special in his five other starts with the Halos.

Giolito didn't help the Angels at all in his six starts with his hometown team, as his 1-5 record indicates. The Angels presumably made this deal with an extension in mind, but were already fed up with the right-hander just one month after acquiring him, placing him on waivers for anyone to get essentially for free. If Quero and/or Bush turn into anything with the White Sox, that'll be a deal the Angels look back at and wonder what if.