A baseball writer lives two places at once—online with the baseball-sick obsessives, and among the in-real-life neighbors who usually know a handful of players and a couple of storylines about the local team. I live in Angels country in real life. And, more than any time I can ever remember, the storylines are the same whether I’m G-Chatting with the sickos or making small talk with the supermarket cashier. They are:
1. Is Shohei Ohtani having the greatest season ever?
2. Can you believe the Angels had, like, the two greatest players ever, at the same time, and they’re not going to win squat?
So this is an attempt to put some perspective behind that second storyline. The Angels’ failures over the past six seasons defy simple narratives, and this article won’t have snazzy transitions—maybe not even a coherent point. Scattered observations, here we go:
1. Since playoffs expanded in 1995—with first eight teams, and then 10, and now 12, making the playoffs each year—there have been 42 players who have had 9-WAR seasons. (Ohtani, at 8.6 so far this season, will almost certainly be the 43rd by the end of the season.) Of those 42, fewer than half—20—made the playoffs. Trout (with four of those seasons) and Ohtani (two1 and counting) are dragging down those numbers, but all the same: It’s not just the Angels. Even a 9-WAR player is nothing like a guarantee of success, even in the Wild Card era.
That is, of course, baseball. The effect of the greatest player is throttled by various factors—the length of the lineup, the size of the field, the limits of how much one pitcher can pitch, the amount of luck present in every pitch and play. Even two 9-WAR players isn’t enough to guarantee success, if you can believe it. Since 1930, four teams have had two of those—the 1932 Phillies, the 1965 and 1966 Giants, and the 1996 Mariners. None made the playoffs. That’s misleading, though, because there were fewer playoff spots. Under the current expanded postseason rules, all would have at least tied for a playoff spot, even those 85-win Mariners. So maybe two 9-WAR players at the same time is enough to guarantee success.
2. Despite the story we’ll tell about this cursed team for the next 100 years, the Angels haven’t had two 9-WAR players. They had one for a while, and now they’ve had a different one for a while, but Trout the greatest of all-time and Ohtani the greatest of all-time didn’t overlap.
In his first three seasons, Ohtani was the 120th most valuable player in baseball, by WAR. He threw a total of 53 innings in those three seasons; he was mostly a DH who hit about like Joc Pederson. In 2020, hampered by injuries, he hit .190 and described himself as “more like pathetic.”
His next three seasons—his GOAT seasons—coincided with Trout’s injuries and still-very-good decline. Trout is 42nd in WAR over those three years.
The simple story we’ll tell about this team is that they had the best 1-2 in baseball but lost anyway. But last year was the only time that Trout and Ohtani (or Ohtani and Trout) actually finished 1-2 on the team in WAR, and their best concurrent finish in the majors in a season was 2nd and 12th. That’s not to minimize the disappointment of this all, but if you’re talking to somebody who wants to know how the Angels wasted the two best players of their generation, it’s a key detail.
3. That said, it is rare for a 9-WAR player—and especially a 9-WAR hitter—to be on an actual bad team, a sub-.500 team. Of the 9-WAR players since 1961—excluding Trout and Ohtani—only a quarter (20 out of 81) played on a sub-.500 teams, and fewer than 10 percent of 9-WAR hitters did. The Angels are currently under .500 for the eighth year in a row, and in six of those years (if we include this one) they’ve had a nine-WAR player.
4. So then, imagine how deficient the rest of the team must have been.
Mostly yes, though in some ways no.
There are seven offensive positions that Trout and Ohtani don’t play for the Angels. Over six years, at those seven positions—so, 42 total performances—the Angels have been above average at… nine of them. Below average at 33 of them.
2023 (so far): Above average at SS (0.2 Wins Above Average), LF (0.4)
2022: Above average at RF (0.1)
2021: Above average at nothing
2020: Above average at C (0.6), 3B (1.5), SS (0.7)
2019: Above average at 2B (0.4)
2018: Above average at 2B (0.8), SS (3.4)
There’s also the pitching. Their bullpen has been better than average zero times in those six years. Their starters (excluding Ohtani) have been above average three times in those six years:
2022 Above average at SP (7.1 Wins Above Average)
2020 SP (0.4)
2018 SP (0.1)
Take Trout and Ohtani out of a query, and pretty much everything about these teams sinks to the bottom. Neither Trout nor Ohtani plays infield; the Angels are 29th in OPS by infielders since 2018. Neither Trout nor Ohtani catches; the Angels are 26th in OPS by catchers. They’re 21st in OPS by corner outfielders, which neither Trout or Ohtani is. They’re 19th in bullpen ERA.
5. The Angels’ third-best player (hitter or pitcher) over the six years they’ve had Ohtani is David Fletcher, a shortstop with a career 86 OPS+ who has played 81 games or more twice and been worth about 10 total WAR.
6. David Fletcher is a fine player, but it’s not as though the Angels tried for him to be their third-best player. They tried over and over to make him the fourth or fifth or sixth best and each time thought (with some good reason) that they’d succeeded.
People who spend time with me will inevitably hear about the parable of the farmer who lost his horse:
The Angels have regularly added really good players to the roster, players everybody agreed were good. That’s part of why the narrative around this team is so muddled: They have signed huge stars (Anthony Rendon) and lost, they’ve signed (or traded for) big stars (Justin Upton) and lost, they’ve signed very good players (Zack Cozart) and lost, they’ve added solid depth (lots of examples, but lets pick Trevor Cahill) and lost. It’s not that those players were not enough, or that they cost a lot. It’s that they were way worse than anybody expected, way faster than anybody expected. These big pickups became the bad players who needed to be replaced.
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