Angels officially wave white flag on 2023 with bizarre cost-cutting move

In a last-ditch effort to retain Shohei Ohtani for the future, at the trade deadline, the Los Angeles Angels traded the few quality prospects they had in an effort to go all in for the 2023 season. They were out of a postseason spot at the time, but still had a shot.

The Angels acquired players they expected to be key contributors like Lucas Giolito, Randal Grichuk, C.J. Cron, and Reynaldo Lopez just to name a few and make the postseason for the first time since 2014. It's safe to say that experiment failed spectacularly.

The Angels have officially places a whole bunch of key players on waivers for teams attempting to make the postseason to try and claim in what is clearly a cost-cutting move.

LA Angels admit defeat in bizarre way by releasing key players to save money

The Angels are currently 63-69 on the season and are 11.5 games back at the deadline. They've gone 7-18 since the trade deadline after going all in and have fallen completely out of the race. They traded their entire future to play a grand total of zero meaningful games in September. Not really the way to convince Ohtani to stay.

The Angels now are exposing these players to waivers meaning any of the 29 teams can pick them up. The Angels would get nothing in return, but Arte Moreno would get under the tax if these players are claimed. Good for him, I guess.

The best case scenario here is these guys are claimed and the Angels then bring up some young guys to take their places. This would give fans a glimpse into what appears to be a very dark near future.