The American League West just got tougher. It just added another team. The Los Angeles Angels

Well, the Angels have always been in the division, but they’ve just been irrelevant for so many years. They were a team that boasted having the two best players in baseball in Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani but still never made the playoffs. 

They were the team that seemed to be obsessed with signing Rangers free agents. They signed Gary Matthews Jr, C.J. Wilson, and Josh Hamilton as well as hired Ron Washington to manage them. They tried to outbid the Rangers on Adrian Beltre, and losing him to the Rangers enraged their owner so much, he went out of his way to outbid the Rangers on Anthony Rendon. Averting that disaster might have been the best thing that could have happened to the Rangers.

All of this and more futility was because they were the team owned by Arte Moreno, the overwhelming consensus for stupidest owner in baseball. And all of that changed on Tuesday when the Angels announced Moreno was selling the team—finally, after putting it on the market then abruptly taking it off three years ago. He’s selling it to Stan Kroenke, who owns the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets, and Colorado Avalanche. 

Moreno, you may recall, endeared himself to fans this year when he said that fans don’t care about winning, and in fact, winning wasn’t even in their top five. Not winning has been the hallmark of Arte Moreno since he bought the team in 2003 from Disney. It started out well, with the Angels making the playoffs six times from 2004 to 2009. Then, it all stopped. Los Angeles has made the playoffs once in 19 years.

According to a report in Sports Illustrated, over the years, Moreno has severely cut payroll, refused to go over the luxury tax, and neglected to invest in scouting and analytics, going through managers and general managers like a wino at a vineyard tour.

In Moreno’s defense, signing Anthony Rendon wasn’t, at the time, the worst contract in baseball history. He had no way of knowing Rendon would be more fragile than a China doll and a gutless quitter. But it was ugly all around. The problem was, Moreno overrode his baseball people and made free agent decisions himself, which is never a good move.

With both the Angels and Athletics in the American League West, it was always a three-team division. The Astros, unfortunately, made it a one-team division for the longest time. 

Stan Kroenke, unlike Moreno, has proven to be a guy who will spend to build successful franchises, and that means the division will have one more competitive team. If the Athletics actually back up their promise to be competitive once they get to Vegas for the 2028 season, it might become a five-team division for once.

Kroenke will take the keys to the team after the lockout of 2027. The Angles might not be a threat right away—it will take time to wash Moreno out of their system—but they will a winning franchise again. And that doesn’t bode well for a Rangers team whose ownership has been doing very Moreno-like things. 

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