Sam Blum unveils concerning information about the Angels' Japanese scouting process

The Angels have long been unable to round out their roster around their superstars, and their inability to do so has effectively eliminated them from playoff contention every year for a decade. A growing number of high-impact players are coming over from Japan, a country that many would think the Angels are adequately resourced in. Well, The Athletic recently posted an article that discussed the explosion of talented, MLB-ready Japanese players, and it touched on which teams have boots on the ground there...and which do not.

One of the Angels' beat writers, Sam Blum, dropped disheartening nuggets about the Angels' scouting methods in Japan:

""Some clubs, like the Dodgers, Padres, A’s, Pirates and Rangers, have been active for years. Some teams, like the Angels, just added a full-time scout... When the Angels signed Ohtani in 2017, they did not have a scout based in the area full-time. They won his services anyway, stunning the industry. It wasn’t until before last season that the club hired a scout, Taisuke Sato, to cover the area.""

Blum, Dodd, Jennings

(There were contributions to the article by Blum, Justin Dodd and Chad Jennings, but Blum is an Angels' beat writer so he probably added that intel).

Scouting is becoming a part of the past, which the article discusses as well, given that the rapid influx of data and technological integrations are making it easier and more affordable for clubs to evaluate players. The Research and Development and Player Development departments are being added to, while Scouting is being torn down. It is not imperative for organizations have a massive team of scouts in Japan, but many teams still do so and reap the rewards.

Not the Angels, however. For the Angels to JUST NOW, before the 2024 season, add a full-time scout is ludicrous. It appears they did not have anybody scouting full-time in Japan even before the wave of data technological innovation made the practice easier. They have staffers in International Scouting, but overall they have a thin front office and nobody who was full-time in Japan until recently. Arte Moreno has failed at resourcing his Player Development, R&D, International Scouting, Amateur Scouting, and Pro Scouting departments adequately enough to keep up with other clubs. It is no surprise why the team cannot find the right players to round out the roster: the owner is not empowering and weaponizing his front office.

The Angels lack the proper infrastructure, in both America and Japan, to entice future stars to come to Anaheim, and did not profit off of Shohei Ohtani's fame and influence on Japanese players (Mike Trout is also extremely popular amongst Japanese baseball players too). Yoshinobu Yamamoto's decision to sign with the Dodgers was heavily influenced by Ohtani being on the team already.

If the team had the foresight to utilize Ohtani's rising stardom to help court his countrymen, like the Dodgers are currently doing, then they could have been in on the ground-floor of this talent boom. Now, the Dodgers are the prohibitive favorites to sign Roki Sasaki, and will likely lean on Ohtani to nudge Sasaki towards them. Ohtani never played with a Japanese teammate during his Angels' tenure, other than Junichi Tazawa for approximately 5 minutes. Also--the Angels were able to shock the world and sign Shohei Ohtani because of then GM Billy Eppler, who had personally scouted him for years. It was a miracle for the Angels to get Ohtani, NOBODY expected it.

Only two Japanese-born players have debuted with the Angels franchise: Shohei Ohtani and Shigetoshi Hasegawa. Until the Angels signed Yusei Kikuchi, the team has only rostered 5 Japanese born players: Ohtani, Hasegawa, Tazawa (for one season, he retired after the season), Hideki Matsui (for one season, he retired two years later), and Hisanori Takahashi. The Angels are attempting to court Tomoyuki Sugano, an NPB legend. It's better late than never to get in on this.

The article talked about how an MLB team's presence alone can put a team over-the-top, as it shows respect to the league and players. It's unclear what the Angels' presence was before they added a full-time scout, but the organization is behind in many facets of the game when it comes to bringing in premier talent. This has led to a giant wave of Japanese players coming over, turning into stars, but none of them signing with the Angels. Whether it's Yamamoto, Sasaki, Seiya Suzuki, Shota Imanaga, Kodai Senga, Masataka Yoshida, Jung Hoo Lee, or Yuki Matsui, the Angels have watched the teams around them bolster their rosters around win-now players coming over from Japan.

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