On Wed, Oct 21, three weeks after the 2026 MLB regular season concluded, the Los Angeles Angels announced that they had relieved manager Kurt Suzuki of his managerial duties. Suzuki was only signed to a one-year deal and had his introductory press conference occur almost one year ago to the date of his “hiring”, which was more of an internal promotion from assistant to the general manager. Suzuki inherited a team ripe with young talent and veteran players that had finished in last place in the American League West division the previous two seasons. Unfortunately, Suzuki could not improve the team’s record from what it had been in recent years and a combination of poor hitting and bad pitching from the bullpen plagued the Angels in 2026. In the end, the Halos finished with exactly 100 losses after losing the final two games of the season against the Seattle Mariners and had set a new franchise-worst mark for a record in a full season.
The news of Suzuki’s firing was partially delayed due to the pending sale of the Angels from Arte Moreno to Stan Kroenke and his enterprise named Kroenke Sports and Entertainment. There were rumors that Suzuki could be resigned as manager while the sale of the team still needed to be approved by the MLB owners committee and that vote could be potentially delayed by the impending labor dispute over the collective bargaining agreement set to expire in December. But Suzuki was fired after being hired in the 2025 offseason as one of the least qualified managers to lead a major league ballclub in recent memory.
Despite competing in one of the worst divisions ever in modern baseball history, the Halos could not find their footing and had bad stretches under Suzuki’s reign. An 11-10 record on Apr 18 turned into a 6-24 stretch over the next five weeks and after playing moderately good baseball from late May through late June, the Angels stumbled from a 36-49 mark down to 43-69 caused a 7-20 slump heading into the trade deadline. With John Mozeliak as the interim general manager, the Halos were major sellers at the deadline and they traded off valuable players such as Jo Adell, Jose Soriano, Ryan Zeferjahn, Brent Suter and others and received some important prospects in return.
Suzuki could not successfully manage a team that had a mostly-healthy Mike Trout(who had an offensively inefficient season by his standards), Zach Neto(who led the team in most major offensive categories), Nolan Schanuel(whose season was hampered by injuries), and a solid pitching staff with great numbers from starters such as Soriano, Reid Detmers and Walbert Ureña. The bullpen was the biggest bugaboo as bullpen coach Dom Chiti was fired along with Mike Maddux and John Mabry in mid-August for the amount of blown saves that this team incurred. With faulty performances from veteran arms such as Jordan Romano, Kirby Yates and Drew Pomeranz along with struggles from young relievers like Jose Fermin, Luke Murphy and Blake Weiman, blown leads in late-inning situations were all too common for this roster. It can be argued that with a better bullpen and more clutch offense, the Angels could have gotten close to winning or maybe could have won the entire AL West division, with the Houston Astros winning it with a mediocre mark of 81 wins and 81 losses. Alas, no Halos team has gotten close to maintaining an over-.500 record in many years and no team in Anaheim has fielded a winning record over a full or even shorted season since 2015.
With a 12-year active playoff drought, the Angels have much rebuilding to do and the rebuild process really started when Perry Minasian was fired in-season from the general manager position in late June. With the sale of the team to Kroenke being announced on Sept 1, the fans of the Halos can look forward to a new era beginning soon under new ownership and a new front office. The search for a new manager might be conducted and led by Molly Jolly, whose role as president of baseball operations is in uncertainty with a new owner coming in. But there are plenty of worthy and experienced candidates available to potentially hire and a couple of those options currently work on a part-time basis in the Angels organization. Whoever the Halos hire and whenever it happens, it will definitely be an upgrade from Suzuki, whose experience as a reliable catcher in his playing career was unable to sufficiently help him as a manager of a big league club.
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