Ron Washington provides ironic Anthony Rendon injury update given his history

At this point, Anthony Rendon's tenure with the Los Angeles Angels is a meme. The reality is that the Angels are paying Rendon a lot of money to play in few games as he has dealt with injury after injury. The whole situation would be more sad than infuriating, except that Rendon hasn't made friends when discussing his commitment to his job as a baseball player.

However, it did feel like, at least a little bit, that 2024 could be different for Rendon. He was playing pretty well, seemed to be engaged, and, more importantly, was actually playing in games.

But reality came crashing down when Rendon hurt his hamstring running to first base with a lengthy and indeterminant timetable to return this season. Some things just never change.

For those looking for positive Rendon updates, Angels manager Ron Washington had you covered on Tuesday, although his declaration that Rendon was about to begin "light baseball activities" was too good of an opportunity for jokes to pass up.

Anthony Rendon's rehab is progressing well, but fans shouldn't get hopes up

First, it is obviously good news that Rendon is progressing in his recovery from what was a pretty rough hamstring injury. LA's offense has be very inconsistent this season, especially with Mike Trout suffering a torn meniscus, so any sliver of a chance that Rendon could return and provide something of value is nice to think about. However, we are still weeks away from finding out if he can clear even that low bar.

In a lot of ways, Rendon's entire time with the Angels can be considered "light baseball activities." Rendon only averaged 50 games played a season from 2020-2023 which, at $35 million a year, is pretty good work if you can get it. One also wonders what "light baseball activities" could mean in Rendon's case. Is he going to be brave and actually throw a baseball? Is he going to practice drinking Gatorade? Will he get spotted by a trainer while putting his uniform on? These are the real burning questions here and it would be very on-brand if Rendon had an injury setback doing something entirely mundane like tying his shoes or answering a reporter's question.

Jokes aside, things are getting to the point that Rendon should be running out of chances with the Angels to actually contribute. More and more, Rendon's odious contract is looking like it is going to be a sunk cost whether he can take the field or not.

If Rendon can't return relatively soon and be a productive player for longer than five minutes, the Angels just need to stop trying to make it work and give guys who can actually play every day the opportunity.

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