Perry Minasian got fired an hour before a Friday game. Sam Blum at The Athletic broke it like it was breaking news, but Angels fans felt nothing — no relief, no outrage, just the dull recognition of a franchise cycling through another scapegoat.
NEWS: The Angels fired Perry Minasian.
John Mozeliak is the interim GM.
— Sam Blum (@SamBlum3) June 27, 2026
Six years. 392 wins, 500 losses. Sixth-worst winning percentage in baseball over that span. Minasian didn’t build a contender, but he also wasn’t handed the keys to a functional operation. He was handed Arte Moreno.
The replacement isn’t even a real GM. John Mozeliak was brought in as “Baseball Operations Consultant / Interim GM” — his explicit job is to find the next permanent GM, not actually run the team as one. His contract expires in December. This is a franchise in such disarray that their stopgap hire is a longtime Cardinals baseball operations chief who’s already told them he’s not interested in the full-time role.
Meanwhile, the Angels are 34-49, last in the AL West, running a 28th-ranked farm system, and sitting on legitimate trade assets. Reid Detmers’s surface numbers (3-5, 3.88 ERA) undersell what he actually is: a pitcher with a 2.92 xERA and 2.91 FIP who’s posted a 1.36 ERA over his last five starts. He’s under contract for $2.63 million this year with two more years of club control. Bob Nightengale reported that Moreno does not want to trade Detmers, Soriano, or Adell. Per multiple people familiar with the situation, Detmers’s trade value reportedly exceeds what Detroit got for Tarik Skubal.
Jose Soriano is 8-4 with a 3.03 ERA, 142 ERA+, 2.8 bWAR, and costs $2.9 million. Jo Adell is slashing .315/.351/.411 at $5.2 million through 2027. These are the kinds of controllable assets that rebuild a farm system. The Angels are apparently just… keeping them. On a last-place team. In year ten of consecutive losing seasons.
This is the Moreno pattern in its purest form. He blocked a trade that would have sent Shohei Ohtani to the Rays in summer 2023. The Angels lost 19 of 26 games in August after that decision. Ohtani signed with the Dodgers for $700 million. The most damning self-own in modern sports ownership history. Moreno learned nothing from it.
He once said of Angels fans: “Believe it or not, winning is not in their top five.” The MLBPA criticized him publicly for it. He has proved himself right ever since — because he clearly doesn’t have it in HIS top five either.
Mozeliak can’t fix this. The next permanent GM can’t fix this. The problem isn’t the front office structure. Five GMs have cycled through this organization under Moreno — Stoneman, Reagins, Dipoto, Eppler, Minasian — and every single one of them eventually ran into the same wall.
The wall is the owner. It’s always been the owner.
