Angels Notes: Stadium, Trout, Front Office

A bombshell dropped yesterday, with the news that there’s an agreement in place for Arte Moreno to sell the Angels to Stan Kroenke, with the franchise valued at $4 billion. That sale likely won’t be officially approved by Major League Baseball until 2027 but it has already led to a lot of discussion about what it means for the future of the franchise. Since Moreno’s tenure was marred by mediocrity and scandal, many fans in the Anaheim area are excited. That excitement extends to Anaheim city hall, with mayor Ashleigh Aitken speaking on the news to Sam Blum of The Athletic. “I feel like it’s my birthday,” Aitken said. “As a diehard Angels fan my entire life, I am so optimistic about the future of Anaheim Angels baseball.” The relationship between Anaheim and the club is notable, as it has hit some speed bumps in recent years. The city owns Angel Stadium and the land surrounding it. The facility is one of the older ballparks in the league, opening in 1966. Only Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and Dodger Stadium opened before that. Moreno once had grand ambitions of reimaging the site. A few years back, there was an agreement in place for the city to sell the stadium and land to a company owned by Moreno for $320MM. That deal was voted down in May of 2022, however, amid scandal. Harry Sidhu, then the mayor of Anaheim, resigned just before that vote amid an FBI investigation alleging that he shared insider information with the club in the hope of soliciting campaign contributions. Sidhu would later plead guilty to various charges and get sentenced to two months in prison. In August of 2022, just a few months after that land deal fell through, Moreno announced that he was exploring a sale of the team. He would later pull the club off the market, at least publicly. Now, about four years later, he has agreed to a sale. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that this news also follows a notable political development. As noted by Blum, California governor Gavin Newsom just signed the “Home Run for Anaheim Act”. Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times also provided details of that bill this week. Currently, if the Angels were to build a multi-use complex around Angel Stadium, California state law would require the club to prioritize affordable housing. The new bill would essentially allow the Angels to get around that affordable housing requirement if they changed the name of the club back to the Anaheim Angels. For a little refresher, the club was known as the Los Angeles Angels from its founding in 1961 until 1965, when they became the California Angels. They held that name until 1996, when the city gave funding to then-owners the Walt Disney Company for stadium renovations. As a condition of the funding, the team name became the Anaheim Angels. In 2004, shortly after Moreno purchased the team, he changed the name to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Moreno also changed the name of the stadium to Angel Stadium. It had originally been known as Anaheim Stadium and was Edison International Field of Anaheim during the Disney era. This was apparently an attempt to use the L.A. name to better market the club, while keeping Anaheim in there to comply with the lease with the city. The city sued over the change but lost. The “of Anaheim” part of the team name was never officially removed but essentially no one uses that terminology anymore and the club makes no effort to brand itself that way. The city of Anaheim clearly wants to have the name back in there in place of Los Angeles. As mentioned, they sued over the name change last time and are now trying to dangle incentives in front of the club to get it back. Shaikin wrote in 2006 that, as part of the legal proceedings over the name, the city cited expert analysis that the change to Los Angeles would cost Anaheim about $400MM through 2029 in lost exposure. What’s unclear now is if the new ownership group wants to develop that site or explore alternatives. The NFL’s Los Angeles Rams were based in Anaheim in 1995 when Kroenke purchased a 30% share and helped the club move to St. Louis. He became full owner in 2010 and later moved the club back to Southern California, but in Inglewood and not Anaheim. For her part, Aitken is optimistic. “Not to put the cart ahead of the horse,” she said to Blum, “but if the deal goes through, and if it’s approved by Major League Baseball, then I’m very hopeful that he’s going to want to work with the city to come up with a really innovative development plan that would benefit the residents. Youth sports fields and housing, and potentially hotel development. And make it a vibrant place.” For now, the Angels aren’t going anywhere. The club’s original lease with the city ran through 2029 but they recently picked up a three-year extension, so they are now locked in through 2032. There are two more three-year extensions which could keep the club at Angel Stadium through 2035 and 2038, respectively. As time goes on and the sale becomes official, more information about Kroenke’s long-term plans should become available. In addition to fans and the mayor of Anaheim, the excitement about the sale extends to the roster as well. “Seeing the reaction from the fans and some of the guys and the whole vibe, I think it was needed for a fresh start,” Mike Trout said this week, per Alden González of ESPN. “The biggest thing is getting that feeling of getting that winning culture back and having that vibe in the clubhouse.” Trout has spent his entire career with the Angels thus far and he is signed through 2030. The club’s poor on-field results have led to constant speculation about a trade away from the Angels but he has a full no-trade clause and has consistently said that he wants to stay and win in Anaheim. He was asked about the impact of this sale and said it doesn’t change his stance. Turning to other matters, Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com spoke to interim general manager John Mozeliak about the some front office changes. Mozeliak announced that Matt Swanson and Michael Lord have each been promoted to assistant general manager. The club is also dismissing some scouts and Ray Montgomery. Swanson has been working for the Angels for years but overlapped with Mozeliak with the Cardinals from 2006 to 2018. Lord worked with Perry Minasian in Atlanta from 2018 to 2020 and came over to the Angels shortly after Minasian got the general manager job with the Angels. Montgomery was bench coach for the club from 2022 to 2025 but became interim manager last year when Ron Washington had to step aside for health reasons. At the end of that season, the Halos moved Montgomery to a front office role and hired Kurt Suzuki as manager. Mozeliak still has plenty of other decisions to make. Suzuki is only on a one-year deal, so that’s one of them. Then there’s also himself. It was only in June that the Angels fired Minasian and brought in Mozeliak to take over on an interim basis and look for a new general manager. It has never been clear how long he plans to stick around or if he would consider tapping himself for the gig. He tells González that he will talk to the new boss before making any calls in those departments. “It’s a very fair question in terms of how we think about timing moving forward,” Mozeliak said. “Obviously I think the new ownership is going to have to give us direction in terms of how they want to see that to look like. I don’t know that answer, but I do think they should be part of that calculus.” Photo courtesy of Kirby Lee, Imagn Images