Why are the Angels so horrid when they play at home and can it be fixed?

LA has been very obviously bad at home this year and, once again, their biggest organizational flaw appears to be the cause.

Eric Cole

Cleveland Guardians v Los Angeles Angels / Ronald Martinez/GettyImages

Whenever a team is 14 games below .500 in May like he situation the Los Angeles Angels find themselves in, there are going to be a lot of reasons why.

The offense has been inconsistent (at best) and both the rotation and bullpen have gotten knocked around this year. Between that and some ill-timed injuries to Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon (among others, although the latter should be the expectation at this point), that points to bad all-around results.

However, the great Bill Shaikin over at the LA Times pointed out something pretty odd over the weekend. When the Angels have been on the road in 2024, they have actually been very respectable. However, the results have been far worse at home as they now sport a 7-21 record at Angel Stadium this season and are on pace to post the worst home record since MLB went to a 162-game season.

The question, however, isn't that the Angels are bad at home, but why? As with most things with LA's troubles as an organization, it all comes down to pitching.

LA Angels' home woes come down to poor pitching development

Saying "the Angels' pitching is bad" isn't particularly groundbreaking or helpful, but the results when looking at home/road splits are pretty striking. When playing on the road this year, LA sports a collective 3.70 ERA and 4.25 FIP. Certainly not great because, again, this is the Angels we are talking about here, but they have ranked in the middle of the pack in away games.

As for home games, the results have been much, much worse. The Angels rank dead last in all of baseball with a 5.50 ERA and it isn't close. Their 4.54 FIP is a slight improvement, but only slight as they rank 29th there. Given that the offense shows no such home/road discrepancy or even close to it (106 wRC+ at home, 96 wRC+ on the road), we have our culprit.

The solution, unfortunately, isn't a simple one. LA has been terri-bad at developing pitchers for a long time now and the biggest issue is that their arms just aren't good enough. That means they are going to have to make moves at the trade deadline to fix that fundamental problem.

In the meantime, there has to be coaching changes that get the Angels' arms prepared for playing at home. We are operating on imperfect information here as we don't know what actually happens behind the scenes, but there is clearly something affecting LA at home and the coaching staff, especially pitching coach Barry Enright, needs to get to the bottom of it.

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Eric Cole

I started my career writing about baseball covering the Atlanta Braves for SB Nation's Talking Chop back in 2015 which has since been renamed Battery Power. After years of writing for those fine folks, I made the decision to take over as Site Expert at House That Hank Built before becoming a full-time MLB Staff Writer for FanSided in 2023. Along the way, I have been a guest on multiple ESPN radio affiliates as well as 680 The Fan and 92.9 The Game to discuss Braves baseball and especially Braves prospects and was a long-time host on the Battery Power podcast. These days, I continue to write about the Braves as well as covering the Astros, Padres, and Angels with particular expertise with minor league coverage, the MLB Draft, and bashing Anthony Rendon when possible. When I am not writing about or talking about baseball (which is seldom), I am an avid baseball card collector (Maddux and Soroka being my primary personal collections) and I also collect shark teeth. All other sports are mostly dead to me as my Bills have broken my heart too many times.