Kent Bewley's News Story Collection

After a rough season of close losses and fan protests inside the stadium, the Los Angeles Angels are finally being sold. According to multiple reports, Arte Moreno is going to sell the team to Stan Kroenke, who owns the Los Angeles Rams, Colorado Rapids and Colorado Avalanche and the English Premier League’s Arsenal soccer club. Moreno was under plenty of pressure from external forces from the Angels’ fan base, local and state politicians and even some of his fellow owners to sell the team. Now he finally will to Kroenke, who has led all of the teams he has owned to championship success. Moreno’s near quarter-century reign as owner of the Halos will finally be coming to an end after plenty of years of horrible losing records and failure to succeed with some of the best players in modern baseball.

Moreno had already faced a lot of pressure due to the motherlode of off-field scandals that faced the team, from a doctored baseball incident in the visiting team’s clubhouse in the mid-2010s to the tragic overdose death of Tyler Skaggs during the 2019 season that forced the Angels organization to face lawsuits from the family of the deceased pitcher and the inability of Moreno’s management group to purchase the land where Angel Stadium stands on due to a corruption scandal that embroiled the former mayor of Anaheim Harry Sidhu in May 2022. Moreno also failed to capitalize on some important free agent signings such as Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton, Shohei Ohtani and the biggest bust of them all in Anthony Rendon. Even though there were stellar draft selections of Mike Trout and other good stars such as Jo Adell, Reid Detmers, Zach Neto, Nolan Schanuel and Christian Moore by general managers who worked under Moreno, the free agent moves towards signing big-swinging batters and not being willing to pay premiums to pitchers on the market was a flawed move. The Halos’ pitching staff was mostly homegrown in Moreno’s time and unfortunately there were plenty of failures along with poor inconsistency in the bullpen as well. With plenty of playoff appearances during Mike Scioscia’s time as manager, Moreno was the leader of one of the better teams in baseball in the 2000s. But after winning three straight AL West division titles from 2007-09, the Angels started declining into mediocrity and missing the playoffs. With the beginning of Mike Trout’s career in 2011, the Halos were in the national spotlight and that only grew when they signed Pujols to a 10-year mega-contract. The Angels had the best record in MLB in the 2014 season and they had home-field advantage when they faced the Kansas City Royals in the ALDS. Unfortunately, they were swept by the Royals and they have not made it back to the postseason since.

Moreno also made some questionable moves when it came to the name of the team with the regional moniker, as he added Los Angeles onto the team’s name for the 2005 season. This was done to give the team a better television deal with a regional sports network and that was done with FOX Sports West. But the city of Anaheim didn’t let Moreno completely erase the name of the city from the team’s name, as they were called the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim for 11 seasons. Eventually, Moreno dropped the Anaheim moniker after the 2015 season and the Angels have had a losing record as their final record in every single season since. Now with the RSN model collapsing in on itself and the Halos having their own pay-per-view network of ABTV, the reason that Moreno put the Los Angeles moniker on the team’s name is no longer viable. From a geographic standpoint, MLB would prefer both teams in the Los Angeles metro area to share the same moniker. Even though the California State Legislature approved a bill proposed by Assemblyman Avelino Valencia(D) that would encourage the Angels to bring back the Anaheim moniker if they want to obtain an exemption from building affordable housing units on the grounds of the stadium for a future ballpark village, Kroenke’s associates could come to a different agreement with the city of Anaheim on that end.

With two Southern California teams who used to play together in the same venue in the late 20th century now in his portfolio of sports organizations, Kroenke will look to make the Angels into a playoff-contending team again. Kroenke previously attempted to purchase the Los Angeles Dodgers from Frank McCourt in 2011 before Mark Walter bought the team. Being 79 years old, Kroenke is around the same age as Moreno and he reportedly paid a high price tag of around $4 billion for the Angels. In terms of his group buying the land around the stadium, Kroenke might potentially be able to do that, but the certainty regarding that is unknown at the time. Kroenke could potentially build a new ballpark on the grounds of the Big A or he could move the team to another city in the Los Angeles metro area. Kroenke could also join the Anaheim Ducks in the OC Vibe project and a new ballpark village could be built around the current stadium, which would be renovated. The Halos had plans for building the ballpark village when the previous land sale attempt to Moreno was announced in Dec 2019.

The sale is pending the approval of the MLB owners and could be approved as soon as the first quarter of the 2027 season. Although there is uncertainty about whether a full season of games will be played next season due to the pending labor battle between the league office and the players union over the potential addition of a salary cap-and-floor system, the sale of the team will most likely be approved at some point in the near future. Now the Angels can look forward to a new era with a new owner and seek to start a third era of successful baseball in franchise history.