This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95
using your PayPal account or major credit card. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)
--
Today we’ll pick off the last of the no-hopers. You can make playoff cases for as many as 27 teams, though the ones for the Marlins and White Sox are pretty pie-in-the-sky. The three teams I can’t see being relevant under any circumstances this year are the Nationals, Rockies, and today’s team, the Angels. The Angels have managed to squander Mike Trout’s career and six years of Shohei Ohtani’s without a playoff appearance since 2014 or a postseason win since 2009. The Angels haven’t finished above .500 since 2015, their streak of ten straight sub-.500 seasons the longest in the game. Over those ten years, they have the seventh-worst record in baseball despite sharing the game’s second-largest market.
Their player development has been a problem, even granting some front-line successes. The Angels have emphasized drafting players who can make a quick impact. Since 2021, they have pushed seven players to the majors in the season they were drafted or the one following it. That hasn’t produced wins at the MLB level, and despite some success by Zach Neto and Nolan Schnanuel, it hasn’t produced much of a major-league core. The farm system today is ranked 23rd by ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel, 29th by Keith Law of The Athletic.
