After another disappointing season and a nine-year playoff drought, the Angels are getting desperate.
The Los Angeles Angels are searching for their fifth manager since 2018. Sam Blum of The Athletic was the first to report Phil Nevin will not return as the manager of the Angels in 2024. The status of GM Perry Minasian’s future is still in the balance.
Los Angeles hasn’t reached the postseason since 2014 and hasn’t had a winning season since 2015.
The Angels never fired Nevin – they don’t need to. His contract expired at the end of the season, and Los Angeles isn’t going to offer him an extension.
Nevin was promoted from third base coach to Interim Manager after the shocking firing of Joe Maddon last June. The Angels were in the midst of the longest losing streak in franchise history when the axe came down on Maddon. But the Angels were only two games under .500 and still in second in the AL West.
After Nevin grabbed the wheel, the Angels (46-60) plummeted and missed the playoffs for the eighth straight year.
Maddon became the second example of the Angels axing a manager too early. He had taken the job from Brad Ausmus, who lasted just one year in Los Angeles before getting beheaded. Two proven guys who had led a team to the World Series weren’t allowed proper time to sink their teeth into the team and create their culture within the locker room.
The Angels extended Nevin for one more year, a year that became very decisive for the franchise. Shohei Ohtani’s contract year was a special thing in the first half of the season. He had what will be known as the best month in baseball history during June of 2023.
In the third month of the season, Ohtani went absolutely bananas. He was slashing .394/.492/.952 with 15 home runs and 32 RBI. The AL MVP won the award in the third month of the season. But after that, the wheels came rattling off for the Angels.
Trout broke his wrist in early July and joined half of the Opening Day roster on the IL. Ohtani joined the rest of the squad a month later after tragically tearing his UCL and bringing his magical season to a screeching stop.
The Angels were four games over .500 in the tight AL West in early July and staying in the Wild Card conversation. The second half was pure chaos inside and out of the organization. Front office drama, injury drama, Shohei free agency drama, you name it. It morphed into the fourth-worst record in baseball during the second half and the ninth straight year without a playoff birth from the Angels. The Angels have wasted two of the best talents this generation has seen, and hopefully, this offseason, we will see Trout and Ohtani in threads that have their sights on a ring.
In August, the Angels sold the farm to make the final playoff push of Ohtani’s Angels career, a move that wound up a colossal failure. Every member the Angels traded for in August was on waivers by September.
Nevin is a 12-year veteran of the MLB, playing for seven different teams at the corner infield positions. He gathered 15.9 rWAR before swapping his spikes for New Balances. After he retired, he began his coaching career at third base for the Giants and Yankees before taking the job in Los Angeles.
He now joins Maddon and Ausmus as managers the Angels didn’t give a proper chance. With a team with as much potential as Los Angeles had coming into the season, it will be gut-wrenching to watch them fall into a dark rebuild.
