The Angels are 20-34. Tied for the worst record in baseball. More than a decade without a playoff game — the longest active drought in MLB, stretching back to 2014. And the man who owns this franchise stood in front of microphones in February and said, with a straight face, that winning isn’t even in fans’ top five priorities.
“The number one thing fans want is affordability,” Arte Moreno told reporters. “Believe it or not, winning is not in their top five.”
The Angels just got outscored 31-3 by the Dodgers in a single series. Shohei Ohtani — the best player on earth, who spent years in Anaheim hitting tape-measure shots and throwing 100 mph and doing things that made you forget baseball had rules — is now wearing Dodger blue on a $700 million contract. And Moreno’s theory is that the people paying to watch this team are mainly concerned about the price of a hot dog.
One hundred fans showed up to protest outside Angel Stadium on May 24. They had signs. They chanted. A flyer advertising the demonstrations racked up over 800,000 social media views. Three days earlier, fans in the upper deck took their shirts off in the nosebleeds during a game against the Athletics and screamed “Sell the team” loud enough for it to land on the broadcast. That’s where we are. Shirtless protests in the right-field foul line. A high-ranking Angels executive confirmed to SI that “the players clearly hear them.”
The "affordability" of Angel Stadium does not seem to be appeasing a vocal contingent of fans in left field, who continue to chant "Sell the team!" and "Arte sucks!" It seems many have reached a breaking point with this losing franchise and owner Arte Moreno. #Angels
— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) May 20, 2026
The most maddening part isn’t even the losing. It’s that Moreno already blinked once. In August 2022, he announced he was exploring a sale. Potential buyers circled. Then in January 2023, he pulled the team off the market and said, in two words that have haunted Angels fans ever since: “Unfinished business.” What was the unfinished business? Finishing last? In 2024, the Angels went 63-99 — a franchise record for futility. In 2025, they improved all the way to 72-90 and finished last in the AL West again.
Mike Trout is 34 years old, hitting .897 OPS with 13 home runs this year, and still capable of being the best hitter on any playoff roster in baseball. He is actively playing. He is not injured. He is just trapped on a team that has no coherent path to contention, no aggressive rebuild, no visible plan of any kind — because the owner has decided the team is a nice thing to own and the fans should be grateful for the parking.
The Ohtani situation is worth dwelling on, not because Moreno maliciously drove him out, but because the structural failure was so total. The Angels had Trout ($37.1 million per year through 2030) and Anthony Rendon ($38.5 million per year through 2026, deferred over five years) locked up in contracts that would have made a third megadeal basically impossible. You know who knew that? Ohtani. He watched the math, watched the franchise spin in circles since 2014, and signed with the team 45 minutes up the freeway on the richest contract in baseball history. Seven combined MVP awards between him and Trout as Angels. Zero postseason appearances.
Compare this to the John Fisher situation in Oakland — which is instructive in exactly the wrong direction. Fisher endured years of “Sell the Team” chants, a mass protest with fans in green “SELL” T-shirts, sustained public pressure from every direction. He didn’t sell. He relocated the team to Las Vegas. The lesson the Angels fan base may not want to hear is that protest movements draw attention, but they do not typically force the hand of a billionaire who has decided this is how he spends his time. Moreno said in February that he has “no plans to sell” and that he “loves being an owner.” That’s the whole answer. He loves it. Not the winning — the owning.
The Angels’ 2026 payroll sits at around $180 million, down from $206 million in 2025, in large part because of the Rendon deferral structure. Moreno says the payroll will eventually get back to $200 million once the TV rights situation gets sorted. It has been getting sorted for years. The team hasn’t made the playoffs since 2014. The owner won’t leave.
Protest organizer Johnny Gonzalez called it “a boiling point.” That’s accurate. But boiling points require something to break for the pressure to escape, and right now there is no mechanism forcing Arte Moreno to do anything he doesn’t want to do. MLB isn’t stepping in. The stadium lease isn’t forcing his hand. The fans are furious and the players hear the chants and Moreno is reportedly silent and largely out of sight.
He bought this team in 2003 — one year after the previous owners delivered a World Series title — and has spent the two decades since convinced the franchise can find its way back if he waits long enough. Trout is 34. The Angels are 20-34. The wait isn’t working.
