Who says miracles don’t come to Southern California?
Longtime Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno shocked the baseball world on Tuesday, announcing the sale of the majority stake in the franchise to billionaire Stan Kroenke. Kroenke, who is also the owner of the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Rapids, Colorado Mammoth (of the National Lacrosse League) and Arsenal Football Club, already boasts one of the greatest ownership portfolios in sports.
With the purchase of the Angels, Kroenke becomes the sport’s richest owner, passing New York Mets owner Steve Cohen in terms of estimated net worth. Moreno reportedly sold the franchise to Kroenke Sports & Entertainment for an MLB-record $4 billion. Earlier this month, the San Diego Padres finalized the sale of the team to husband-and-wife duo José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones for $3.9 billion, then an MLB record.
For the Angels, the sale has the potential to be massively impactful because this franchise has been in desperate need of an organizational facelift for a while. When Moreno bought the team in 2003, there was optimism surrounding the franchise, with the team coming off a World Series victory in 2002. In Moreno’s first seven years as majority owner, the team remained one of the AL’s best, making five postseason appearances.
But since 2010, Moreno’s ownership had left much to be desired. With just one playoff appearance in that span — an ALDS sweep at the hands of the Royals in 2014 — the Angels have become one of the laughingstocks of baseball. And as the Dodgers have grown into a global brand over the past several years, the Angels have diminished from laughable to irrelevant.
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As the Angels stopped being successful on the field, organizational problems gradually became exposed. With a deteriorating ballpark and a team that consistently finished at the bottom of the standings, it became clear that attention to detail was no longer one of Moreno’s priorities. It also became apparent that Los Angeles was behind the times in the front office infrastructure as it relates to analytics. And while Moreno would occasionally invest in the roster, unsuccessful free-agent outlays — notably for Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton and Anthony Rendon — left the team in a difficult position financially.
The lack of consistency within the organization is evidenced by the team’s four general managers since 2011 and five managers since 2019, two revolving doors that never gave the operation a chance to find a consistent voice in the front office or in the dugout. The team never entered full rebuild mode, yet never seemed to have the pieces to truly contend. What’s more, Moreno’s harsh demeanor and demanding style built a reputation as arguably the most difficult person to work for in the sport.
Yet the greatest indictment of Moreno and the headline for his legacy will be his failure to build a winning team around two of the greatest players baseball has ever seen in Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. The two all-time greats played together in Anaheim for six seasons from 2018 to 2023 — and reached the postseason a grand total of zero times, an organizational failure that is difficult to comprehend even now.
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One of the biggest complaints going into the expiration of the current CBA in December and negotiations for the next one is that there aren’t enough baseball owners who care about winning.
Well, regardless of the sport, Kroenke’s commitment to winning has always been apparent and effective. Nearly every franchise he owns — the Rams, the Avalanche, the Nuggets, the Rapids, the Mammoth and Arsenal — has won at least one championship under his stewardship. When it comes to the new Angels’ owner, not only has winning become the norm, it has also become his legacy with every franchise he puts his stamp on.
For the better part of the past 15 years, Angels fans have had little to be excited about. Even the greatness of Trout and Ohtani was overshadowed by the fact that the organization’s ineptitude kept the two MVPs from fulfilling their potential in Anaheim.
But Kroenke’s arrival brings an overnight change from what has been a series of dark chapters, and suddenly, the Angels’ future is brighter than it has been in 20 years.
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