SEATTLE — Taylor Ward put Seattle ahead with a pinch-hit two-run single in the seventh inning, J.P Crawford followed with a two-run homer and the Mariners beat the Angels 8-4 on Saturday night.
Mariners left-hander Kade Anderson threw 3⅓ scoreless innings but left in the fourth after taking a 104-mph line drive to the left arm hit by Christian Moore. Michael Rucker came on in relief. The Mariners (75-86) said Anderson had a left forearm bruise.
Ward, who has struggled since joining the Mariners from Baltimore at the trade deadline, drove in Cole Young and Michael Arroyo with his hit off Angels lefty Mitch Farris (1-4).
Crawford hit Farris’ next pitch into the right field stands.
The Angels (62-99) tied the game with four runs in the sixth. Bryce Teodosio drove in a two-run single off reliever Jose Ferrer, Wade Meckler scored from third on a sacrifice bunt from Tyler Heineman and Jose Siri tied it on a groundout to third base that scored Teodosio.
In the ninth inning, Josh Naylor reached on a walk and stole second base, becoming the first first baseman since George Sisler in 1920-1922 to have consecutive 30-steal seasons.
Gabe Speier pitched a scoreless ninth inning for the Mariners. Carlos Vargas (3-0) got the win.
Up next: Angels left-hander Yusei Kikuchi (1-6, 4.88 ERA) will face Mariners right-hander Logan Gilbert (12-11, 3.81 ERA) in Sunday’s season finale.
SACRAMENTO — Donovan Walton hit a three-run homer and rookie Henry Bolte had his first four-hit game to help the Athletics beat the Angels 7-3 on Wednesday night.
The Angels (60-98) are trying to avoid the first 100-loss season in franchise history.
Lawrence Butler had an RBI single and Walton hit his ninth home run, a two-out shot off rookie Walbert Ureña (9-11) for a 4-0 lead in the first inning.
Bolte went four for five, scored two runs and had an RBI double in the second that put the Athletics (63-95) up 5-0.
Mike Trout and Vaughn Grissom hit back-to-back homers off Jeffrey Springs in the fourth to make it 5-2. It was the 22nd homer this season for Trout the 426th of his career, all with the Angels.
Grissom followed his 13th homer with an RBI single in the fifth to cut it to 5-3 and chase Springs.
Alika Williams and Bolte had singles off José Fermin in the sixth and both scored on a double by Shea Langeliers for the final margin.
Springs gave up three runs on five hits in 4 1/3 innings. The left-hander was 3-0 after his first four starts, but went 1-14 over his final 25. Geoff Hartlieb (2-1) got five outs for the win and Elvis Alvarado struck out two in the ninth to close it out.
Ureña yielded five runs and seven hits in four innings. The right-hander had given five runs in his previous three starts covering 21 innings.
Athletics catcher Brian Serven fouled a bunt off his left eye in the sixth and had to leave the game.
SACRAMENTO — Carlos Cortes and Zack Gelof each hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning as the Athletics rallied past the Angels9-7 on Tuesday night.
Cortes launched a drive to right-center off Sam Bachman (1-3) to give the A’s a 7-6 lead, and Gelof cemented the comeback from a 6-0 deficit they faced just two innings before.
Cortes came off the bench as a pinch-hitter in the seventh and finished two for two with a triple and three RBIs. He also scored twice.
Hogan Harris gave up a run in the ninth but earned his 16th save by striking out pinch-hitter Oswald Peraza with two runners aboard.
Luis Medina (6-3) pitched a scoreless inning for the win as the Athletics clinched the season series with one game remaining between the bottom two teams in the AL West.
Alan Roden hit a three-run homer and drove in a career-high four runs, and Dean Kremer yielded one hit over six stellar innings in the Minnesota Twins’ 8-0 victory over the Angels on Sunday.
Josh Bell had three hits and two RBIs for the Twins (73-83), who have won three of five overall after splitting four games at Angel Stadium with two shutout victories. Brooks Lee added three hits and scored three runs.
Roden had three hits in his first major league game this month, punctuated by a shot to right in the seventh for his third career homer, his first since Aug. 6, 2025.
Kremer (3-1) shut down the Angels in the third consecutive strong start by Minnesota’s deadline acquisition. He walked three, but struck out eight for his most in a start since April.
Minnesota allowed just two singles by the Angels, with Bailey Ober pitching the final three innings to earn his first career save.
Ryan Johnson (5-9) yielded three runs on seven hits and couldn’t get out of the fifth inning despite striking out six for the AL-worst Angels (60-96) in the home finale of their 11th consecutive losing season and their 12th straight non-playoff campaign, both the longest active streaks in the majors.
Bell and Roden singled in runs with two outs in the third, and Bell added another two-out RBI single in the fifth to chase Johnson.
Emmanuel Rodriguez got credit for a double in the sixth even though Jose Siri dropped his catchable fly ball to the warning track in center. Rodriguez beat Siri’s throw to score on a single by Ben Ross, who then stole second and scored when Zach Neto let the throw trickle into center.
Up next for the Angels: Yusei Kikuchi (1-6, 5.02 ERA) makes the 13th start of his injury-plagued season in West Sacramento against the Athletics on Tuesday night.
You’ve probably never seen Michael Araujo, but if you’ve attended an Angels game since 2013, you’ve definitely heard him.
On Sunday, Araujo will work the final game of his 14th season as the Angels’ public address announcer. During that time he has started more home games than Mike Trout and finished hundreds more than any reliever to come out of the bullpen.
Yet for most fans, his voice has been little more than background noise, an acapella Muzak that only gets noticed when Araujo makes a mistake.
And mistakes just don’t happen, said Davin Maske, the Angels’ director of entertainment and production.
“I don’t remember any,” said Maske, Araujo’s boss. “There isn’t that one major mistake since I’ve been here that I could recall.”
Araujo, who is also the stadium voice for the Galaxy, has worked Gold Cup and Copa América soccer matches, eight World Cup games and the 2003 Women’s World Cup final. But the Angels’ gig is his dream job and he passed 1,000 games as the team’s PA announcer last month.
“He loves sports,” said his wife Kathryn Casey. “He really does enjoy being there and being part of it because he’s a huge fan. It’s not just a job.”
It is a job that comes with high expectations, though. Because if the broadcasts of the late Vin Scully were the soundtrack for baseball fans in Southern California, for people of a certain age, the booming baritone of John Ramsey will forever be the template for what a PA announcer should sound like.
Ramsey, who died in 1990, was the original PA voice of the Angels, as well as the Dodgers, Kings, Lakers and L.A. Raiders. He also did the Rams and USC football with a calm, articulate and authoritative delivery that was so powerful, it had its own echo.
“Would you all please rise (rise, rise, rise) and honor America in the singing of our national anthem (anthem, anthem, anthem).”
It was like being spoken to by God, an impression aided by the fact that Ramsey, hidden in a small booth near the press box, was heard but never seen.
“That’s not me, Araujo said. “So I try not to emulate that.”
Angels public address announcer Michael Araujo overlooks the field in his booth before a game against the Minnesota Twins on September 17.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Still, like Ramsey, Araujo’s gift is his voice. And though his delivery isn’t nearly as deep and commanding as Ramsey’s, it is unique in that it has a distinct, enthusiastic lilt, one he’s been able to maintain through what will likely be the Angels’ first 100-loss season.
“I try to bring the energy,” he said.
“It’s all about riding your vibes,” Maske added. That’s why Araujo’s perch on the club level behind home plate is exposed to the crowd rather than enclosed, like the booths to his right used by the radio and TV broadcasters. The idea is to feed off the fans, not lock them out.
“Baseball is gnarly. It’s repetitive. It’s a sport that’s inherently, at times, very boring,” Maske said. “So you’ve got to find those little moments to make it entertaining.
“It’s not NFL. It’s not the NBA. It’s baseball. Mike’s good at kind of finding that balance of excitement and traditionalism.”
And the excitement, even at the end of a blowout loss, is genuine, he said.
“The Angels were my team growing up, so the Angels was my dream job,” said Araujo, a former season-ticket holder. “I’ve been very fortunate.”
“I want to get paid to watch sports and that’s it,” he continued. “So whatever I’ve got to do to be invaluable so that I stay there, that’s kind of my mission.”
It’s not a mission that pays much, however, with most PA announcers across the majors earning between $100-$500 a game to announce each hitter as he comes to plate, read commercial copy between innings and, in Araujo’s case at least, to handle the play-by-play for the cartoon races that run on the scoreboard late in the game.
“It’s fun money,” said Casey who, like Araujo, is a teacher as well as the clock operator at Galaxy games, where she works alongside her husband. “We use it for travel.”
The job is one Araujo stumbled into. Despite a rich voice and a lifelong passion for sports, pairing the two was something that just happened, not something that was planned.
A teacher at an alternative-education high school in La Puente, Araujo, 54, has worked for the Galaxy since the MLS team’s second game in 1996, filling a number of roles from glorified errand boy to assistant game-day producer. That last job required him to stand behind the PA announcer and relay silent cues, and since he knew the gig, Araujo was handed a microphone and asked to fill in a few times during absences, sick days and other emergencies.
The biggest emergency came when Victor Villalba, the Galaxy’s regular announcer, left in the middle of a season to join the Dallas Cowboys radio team. Araujo was the natural choice to finish out the year and he’s been there ever since.
“That was 2002,” he said. “So I’m in my 25th season.”
It was similar desperation that led to his job with the Angels. When David Courtney, who had been with the team for nearly two decades, died at 56 two months after the 2012 season, the Angels began asking around for a replacement and Araujo’s name was the one they heard most frequently. So he was invited to spring training the following year to audition and he beat out two others to claim the job.
On game days Araujo gets to the ballpark about 2½ hours before first pitch, pausing in the parking lot to pull on an Angels cap and jersey with his name on the back. If the team wins, he’ll wear the same jersey the next day; if not, he’ll rotate through a closet of red, white, gray and City Connect jerseys.
Araujo’s only other tools are a microphone and a laptop, on which he’s installed an interactive software program he created that tracks the lineups of both teams. He can also call up pronunciation guides for players on all 30 major league teams, though he’s found the radio broadcasters for the visiting clubs are often more helpful.
Angels public address announcer Michael Araujo has worked more than 1,000 games at Angel Stadium and has been the Galaxy’s public address announcer since 2002.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
His cramped work space, about 90 feet from the field, has enough room for two green vinyl chairs, though Araujo prefers to stand when he’s working. And unlike many people whose vocal chords are their livelihood, Araujo says he has few ritualistic habits to protect his voice.
“In my bag I have a gazillion cough drops; a couple of different kinds, some with honey,” he said. “I definitely wouldn’t do anything carbonated before a game. Makes you burp and all that kind of stuff.”
Araujo is one of three Latino PA announcers in the majors, alongside Marysol Castro, who works for the New York Mets, and Frank Fernandez of the Miami Marlins. Given that 30% of big-league players are from Latin America, the fact that just 10% of the PA announcers are Latino is something Araujo said he thinks about during Hispanic Heritage Month.
“Did I grow up in Boyle Heights or anything like that? No, I’m no poster child or miracle story or anything like that,” said Araujo, who was raised middle class in La Verne, where his father, a sheriff’s deputy, and mother, a nurse, often spoke to one another in Spanish.
“We are here in 2026 and it’s not a little more prevalent. It can be an aspiration to any kid, even one of my students, that bigger things are possible.”
For a PA announcer, it turns out, there are times when it’s important to be heard and seen.
Christian Moore hit an infield single with two outs and the bases loaded that bounced off reliever Taylor Rogers’ leg to score Zach Neto and give the Angels a 6-5, 11-inning victory over the Minnesota Twins on Saturday night.
Vaughn Grissom hit a solo homer in the ninth off Twins reliever A.J. Minter to tie it at 5.
In the 10th with one out, the Twins’ Royce Lewis hit a shallow flyball out to Angels right fielder Josh Lowe. Ben Ross tagged at third, but Lowe’s strong one-bounce throw got to catcher Moisés Ballesteros in time for a sweeping tag of Ross at home to end Minnesota’s threat.
In the eighth, Angels’ pinch-hitter Adam Frazier doubled down the right-field line against reliever Yoendrys Gomez to drive in two runs to narrow the Twins’ lead to 5-4.
Angels reliever Tayler Saucedo (1-1) got the win an inning of scoreless relief. Rogers (6-4) took the loss in 1⅔ innings of work.
Minnesota remains technically still in the race for the American League wild card, but has almost no chance. The Twins are at least 6½ games behind five teams for the last wild-card spot with seven games remaining.
The Angels’ Jose Siri hit a two-run homer in the fourth and the Twins’ Ryan Kreidler launched a solo shot in the fifth.
Twins starter Joe Ryan gave up two runs and seven hits while striking out five in five innings.
Angels starting pitcher Reid Detmers lasted five innings, surrendering four runs and six hits while striking out five. He has 204 strikeouts this season, the most of any Angels pitcher since Shohei Ohtani had 219 in 2022.
Cal Raleigh had two hits and three RBIs, Josh Naylor had two hits and two RBIs and the Seattle Mariners kept their slim playoff hopes alive with a 7-2 victory over the Angels on Wednesday night.
Randy Arozarena also walked, singled and scored three runs for Seattle, which is 5 1/2 games behind Texas and Houston in the American League West and 6 1/2 games behind the Chicago White Sox for the third AL wild-card spot with nine games left.
It was 2-2 when Angels starter Yusei Kikuchi (1-6) walked Arozarena and Dominic Canzone with one out in the fifth. Raleigh roped an RBI double to left for a 3-2 lead, and Julio Rodriguez was walked intentionally to load the bases.
Angels first baseman Vaughn Grissom made a sliding, backhand stop of Naylor’s potential double-play grounder, but his throw to second sailed into left field for an error, two runs scoring on the play for a 5-2 Seattle lead.
Mariners reliever Carlos Vargas (1-0) struck out Josh Lowe and Christian Moore — each on three pitches — with the bases loaded to end the bottom of the fifth, and Seattle pushed the lead to 7-2 on RBI singles by Canzone and Raleigh in the sixth.
Kikuchi threw 37 pitches during a two-run, three-hit first in which the Mariners scored on Raleigh’s sacrifice fly and Naylor’s RBI single.
As the fall equinox approached from a week away, the Primetime Emmy Awards made its 78th visit, leaving trophies in some hands, the honor of just being nominated for others and bupkes for the rest of the thousands who make what we call television. Once again I have been called to witness (from afar) and report, so let’s get down to it.
It was the turn of NBC (and Peacock) in the round robin of major networks who broadcast the show, and to keep things literally in-house it was hosted by Mariska Hargitay, “America’s sweetheart sex cop Olivia Benson” from the network’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and broadcast from the Peacock Theater, formerly the Microsoft Theater, formerly the Nokia in #DTLA, formerly downtown Los Angeles.
When reviewing the Emmys, or any awards show, as television in its own right, the only real questions are what distinguishes it from its many previous appearances on the karmic wheel of life — how it tricks up the basic, immutable form, like different decorations on the same sugar cookie recipe you have been using forever. Anything unexpectedly or especially moving, rousing, funny or strange, things that go against the grain of a production that wants to keep things controlled in order to bring the ship in on time.
This year the critic has been given the gift of Hargitay, primarily a serious actor (and director and producer), following in a long line of comedians and comic actors. There have been other serious actors as host, for example, Raymond Burr in 1959, Tom Selleck in 1984 and Angela Lansbury in 1993. And certainly, if you’re looking for someone to represent the medium rather than merely to comment on, celebrate or joke about it, you could do no better than Hargitay, the longest-serving actor on the longest-running prime-time live-action series on American TV. She’s beautiful, glamorous, self-possessed. She was recently on Broadway in “Every Brilliant Thing,” which involved a degree of what comedians call “crowd work,” so standing up in front of a live audience of people no more famous than she wasn’t going to throw her. Professional comedian Nate Bargatze, who hosted last year, was much more of a dark horse.
Emmys host Mariska Hargitay with singer Taylor Swift and her cat Olivia Benson on screen during a skit the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards.
(Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images)
Although I would have bet on a pre-filmed “Special Victims Unit” routine to open the show, which is why I’m not a gambler, it wasn’t until an hour in that it appeared. (It involved murder-style boards, concerning the Case of Whether Taylor Swift would be making an appearance; she did, in the bit.) The pre-filmed production number that did open the show began with Hargitay and her actual good friend New York Knick Jalen Brunson steaming their clothes when Hargitay suddenly realizes she is due across the country to host the show. This led to Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ’N Roll” reconceptualized as “I Love TV Screens,” which included the “Widow’s Bay” sea hag revealed to be Jennifer Coolidge, bringing boba tea (rhymes with “TV”); other rhymes matched “eating beef” and “watching ‘Beef’” and “Ed Gein” and “mean.” It moved to the live stage, with Hargitay flanked by dancers with television heads. Both segments felt more effortful than funny, but not unfunny.
On her own, however, Hargitay was above all a woman having a good time, never less than likable and game and enthusiastic, managing the scripted patter as well as anyone might have. Her monologue included several jokes about age, one about “L&O” producer Dick Wolf’s real name (Richard Penis), and another about her inability to pronounce “finale” because she’d never been in one. As is practically an Emmys tradition, some of these were confusing (even to the people performing it), or went on too long (Nick Offerman, cornered at his table, describing his work as an erotic house painter), or just had the effect of having been put on their feet without much, if any, rehearsal. Presenting the final award, for outstanding comedy, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, told to stretch — the show was actually running short — described the plot of their upcoming Apple series, “Brothers,” until they were allowed to move on.
As to what the Television Academy calls “creative elements,” everything that isn’t a presentation or a speech, they advertised tributes to the 30th anniversary of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” certainly a typo, and the 50th of “Charlie’s Angels,” a logical impossibility, but these were really just themed groupings of presenters — Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz in the former, Kate Jackson, Cheryl Ladd and Jaclyn Smith in the latter. (The Angels managed a few words for Farrah Fawcett, but none for Shelley Hack, Tanya Roberts or David Doyle.) But there were full tributes to Dolly Parton (Sally Field enthused, Reba McEntire sang); to James Burrows, with Jamie Lee Curtis pivoting emotionally to talk about old friend Rob Reiner, who won a posthumous guest appearance Emmy this year for “The Bear”; and to Catherine O’Hara, with her “Home Alone” child Macaulay Culkin and “Schitt’s Creek” children Annie Murphy and Dan Levy, who spoke to “helping her build a TV character over the age of 60 that wears leather miniskirts and eight-inch heels and speaks in a strange, sometimes unintelligible transatlantic accent, and know that she will not scare an audience away.”
And there was Julianna Margulies presenting the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award to Michael J. Fox, who, in his usual way, was eloquent and funny, and let the people know about the goodness of Bob Hope, setting up a punchline in the bargain. Like a lot of you, I love Michael J. Fox, and I’m just going to leave that here, with a pile of soaked-through tissues.
John Mulaney stole the show as a presenter at the 78th Emmy Awards ceremony at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
But what America will mostly remember from this night was John Mulaney, introducing the award for lead actor in a drama, and burning the house down with a routine that went wherever it wanted. “They can play anything, these nominees. Not just doctors. They can play a cop or an FBI agent or a secret agent. And then that’s it. No other examples.”
“Since the creation of television, men have been historically underrepresented,” Mulaney said, explaining that the medium was all “beauty contests and children talking to hand puppets until the early ’60s. Until a man walked out and said, ‘Enough. My name is Fonzie and the president’s been shot.’” Mulaney is a man who has convulsed crowds in arenas and stadiums, but, as a local, nothing made me laugh harder than the words, “You know, I was shooting down Barham last night at 90 miles an hour.”
Nothing against Hargitay, but it’s clear that Mulaney should host this show, and every awards show, from now on.
WASHINGTON — Andrew Alvarez pitched seven innings of one-hit ball, and the Washington Nationals earned a 6-5, 10-inning victory over the Angels on Saturday when CJ Abrams scored on an error despite another bullpen collapse.
Andrés Chaparro’s single off Angels closer Ben Joyce tied it in the bottom of the ninth. Abrams scored an inning later against José Fermín (4-3) when shortstop Zach Neto could not handle Harry Ford’s grounder with the infield in. The Angels fell to 4-14 in extra innings.
Before that, the Angels rallied to a 5-4 lead while handing Washington’s bullpen a record-extending 39th blown save. Vaughn Grissom connected for a two-run homer in a three-run eighth against Brad Lord, and Wade Meckler, Denzer Guzman and Moisés Ballesteros also had RBIs.
Washington’s Abimelec Ortiz hit a two-run single during a three-run second. Jacob Young and Keibert Ruiz also drove in runs to help Washington to a 4-0 lead against Angels ace Walbert Ureña, who gave up four runs and a season-high nine hits in six innings.
Alvarez struck out a career-best eight — including three-time MVP Mike Trout twice — while working around four walks and Jose Siri’s sixth-inning double inside the left-field line.
The 27-year-old Alvarez threw 61 of 97 pitches for strikes in his 20th and longest career start, retiring 13 of the last 14 batters he faced.
Jack Sinclair (1-0) retired four batters for his first career win.
BOSTON — Reid Detmers struck out nine and gave up one hit over six shutout innings, Zach Neto was four for five with a two-run homer, and the Angels beat the Red Sox 6-1 on Tuesday night to end Boston’s five-game winning streak.
Vaughn Grissom and Jose Siri hit RBI singles and the Angels scored twice on double-play grounders, providing ample offense for Detmers (5-8), who got his first win since a 1-0 decision over Kansas City on Aug. 15.
Detmers struck out at least one in all six innings he pitched and allowed only three runners. He retired the last 10 batters he faced after hitting Jahmai Jones with a pitch in the third, then was pulled before the seventh after throwing a career-high 112 pitches.
The Angels outhit Boston 15-4 and won for the just the third time in their last 15 games. They also avoided a potential season sweep, improving to 1-4 against the Red Sox.
Boston went without a hit from Wilyer Abreu’s single in the first until Trevor Story led off the seventh with a double off of José Fermin, who gave up Boston’s run when Nick Sogard drove in Story with a single.
Neto gave the Angels a cushion in the eighth with his 24th homer to left-center off Raymond Burgos.
Patrick Sandoval (1-5) struck out seven in six innings for Boston, but also gave up four runs, 10 hits and two walks. His two-out walk of Mike Trout in the third helped lead to two runs when Siri and Grissom followed with consecutive singles to put the Angels up 3-1.
BOSTON — Adley Rutschman hit a three-run homer off the Pesky Pole in right field, Brayan Bello pitched five scoreless innings in his first start since early June and the Boston Red Sox beat the Angels 5-2 on Monday for their fifth straight victory.
Jarren Duran hit his 20th homer, a solo shot, to spark a four-run second inning for Boston, which improved to an MLB-best 34-17 since the All-Star break and closed to two games behind the Yankees for the American League’s top-wild card spot. New York owns the tiebreaker by winning the season series.
Moisés Ballesteros hit a solo homer for the AL West’s last-place Angels, who have lost 12 of 14 games.
Making his first start since giving up a career high-tying eight runs on June 4 before he was sent to triple A for nearly a month, Bello (6-7) worked around a high pitch count to keep the Angels (54-90) to four hits with seven strikeouts.
The 27-year-old Bello, who had a solid run out of the bullpen the past two months, started because interim manager Chad Tracy decided to move back every starter.
Garrett Whitlock, the third reliever, pitched the ninth for his third save.
Duran hit the first pitch from Grayson Rodriguez (4-7) deep into the right-field seats to open the big second inning. Rutschman hooked his down the line, smacking the pole to make it 4-0.
Eli White added an RBI single in the third.
Boston (80-65) swept a three-game series against the Angels in Anaheim in early July.
Rodriguez gave up three earned runs or fewer in six of his previous seven starts before surrendering five over four innings Monday.
Up next: LHP Reid Detmers (4-8, 3.44 ERA) is set to start for the Angels against LHP Patrick Sandoval (1-4, 4.41) on Tuesday night in the middle game of the series.
PITTSBURGH — Jared Jones pitched six strong innings, Jake Mangum had an RBI double in the second inning and the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the skidding Angels 1-0 on Friday night.
The MLB-worst Angels (53-88) lost for the 10th time in 11 games. The Pirates have won five of six games.
Jones (3-6) blanked the Angels on three hits to win for the first time in eight starts since beating Cleveland on July 18. He struck out nine, walked one, and threw 63 of 91 pitches for strikes.
Wilber Dotel pitched two innings, and Mason Montgomery worked the ninth to complete the four-hitter and the Pirates’ ninth shutout of the season. Montgomery had his ninth save.
Ryan Johnson (3-8) was the hard-luck loser, giving up one run and four hits over six innings with six strikeouts and two walks. He has a 1.67 ERA in his last six starts and has given up zero or one run in five of those outings.
Prized rookie shortstop Konnor Griffin returned from the injured list for the Pirates and made an immediate impact when he scored the lone run from first base on Mangum’s one-out double to right field in the second inning.
Griffin had been sidelined since July 6 after undergoing surgery to repair a torn tendon in his left ring finger. The Pirates signed the 20-year-old to a nine-year, $140-million contract, the richest in franchise history, in April.
The Angels hit back-to-back singles to open the top of the second, but Jones got Christian Moore to foul out, then struck out Jose Siri and Adam Frazier. The Halos have been shut out 12 times.
Up next: Angels LHP Yusei Kikuchi (0-5, 5.65 ERA) faces RHP Braxton Ashcraft (14-5, 3.59) on Saturday night in the middle game of the series.
Could Stan Kroenke do the same thing in his first offseason as the Angels’ owner?
Kroenke is not expected to be approved as Moreno’s successor until early next year. By then, players might be in spring training — or might still be sitting home, awaiting the end of a lockout and a subsequent free-agent signing frenzy.
The best player in this fall’s free-agent class is certain of one thing: Whenever Kroenke takes over, Anaheim instantly becomes a preferred destination for stars across the major leagues, with a new owner not just promising to spend to win but a demonstrated history of doing so.
“Absolutely,” Dodgers pitcher Tarik Skubal told The Times. “Not only an owner that has obvious financial backing, but an owner that has turned the Rams into what the Rams are. I think they’re the Super Bowl favorite this year. There’s an owner that cares about winning.
“The impact he brings to the Angels? You bring an owner that really cares about winning and is willing to do whatever it takes to win and invest, not only with players on the field but all the stuff behind the scenes, like clubhouse renovations. I’m sure there will be a lot of stuff there that changes to make it state-of-the-art, because all that stuff matters.”
Under Perry Minasian, the Angels’ general manager from 2021-26, the largest free-agent signing approved by Moreno: pitcher Yusei Kikuchi, for $63 million.
Kroenke would be the richest owner in baseball, with a net worth estimated by Forbes at $24 billion.
Skubal said he is focused on helping the Dodgers toward a third consecutive World Series championship and has not thought much about his free agency. Speaking generally, he said, it is likely that players that might not have considered signing with the Angels might now do so.
“You want to feel wanted,” Skubal said. “And you have an owner that is willing to do whatever it takes to win. Winning is the most important thing in sports. When you get yourself in that environment, I think guys do want to play there.
“Just look around the league: Guys tend to gravitate toward teams that are winning and teams that are in the playoff hunt every single year, with World Series aspirations every single year. I think free agents gravitate toward that in general. I’m sure that will be the case.”
From the players’ viewpoint, the successive sales of major league franchises at record values — the San Diego Padres at $3.9 billion, then the Angels at $4 billion — reflects good economic times. From the owners’ standpoint, the mid-market Minnesota Timberwolves of the NBA just sold at a $4.5 billion valuation.
Commissioner Rob Manfred has cited lagging franchise values in baseball as a reason owners want a salary cap, which the NBA has. Yet the Padres and Angels sold before their owners found out whether they could secure the salary cap the league insists is a primary objective in collective bargaining.
“I think it’s pretty obvious what that says, right?” said Skubal, one of eight players on the union’s executive subcommittee.
“If that’s the complaint that ownership and MLB is holding onto, I think they’re proving themselves wrong by selling these teams for record values. I think those clubs selling continues to support the argument that our game is in a really good spot.”
The owners also pitch a salary cap as a tonic for competitive balance, citing what they say is a $441-million gap between the Dodgers’ top-ranked payroll and the Miami Marlins’ bottom-ranked payroll.
The players point to franchise sales as another economic indicator. The Padres last sold for $800 million, in 2012. The Angels last sold for $183.5 million, in 2003.
“It’s a very profitable business venture,” Skubal said. “The sport itself is great. The product on the field is outstanding.”
Cam Schlitter gave up one run and two hits in eight superb innings, and the New York Yankees scored five two-out runs in the 10th in a series-clinching, 6-3 victory over the Angels on Wednesday night at Angel Stadium.
New York loaded the bases with one out in the 10th when Jose Caballero singled, the automatic runner holding at third, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. walked against reliever Luke Murphy (0-2).
Murphy got Luis Garcia Jr. to pop out, but Austin Wells stroked a two-run single to right, Cody Bellinger hit an RBI single to center, Trent Grisham hit an RBI single to left, and Ben Rice had an RBI single to right for a 6-1 lead.
David Bednar (7-3) struck out three in a scoreless ninth for the win. Yankees reliever Michael Fulmer gave up a two-run homer to Moisés Ballesteros in the bottom of the 10th, but New York won its second straight after dropping the opener, despite enthusiasm in Anaheim over an announced agreement for Arte Moreno to sell the team to Rams owner Stan Kroenke.
A marquee matchup between two of baseball’s best pitchers did not disappoint, Schlittler striking out nine and walking none, and Angels left-hander Reid Detmers giving up one run and six hits in seven innings, striking out eight and walking none.
Schlittler, who has an American League-leading 2.04 ERA, retired 20 of the first 21 batters he faced, his only blemish a soft single to left by Vaughn Grissom in the second inning.
But Schlittler grooved a 95-mph cutter to Grissom in the seventh, and the Angels first baseman drove it over the center-field wall for a a 1-1 tie.
It was Schlittler’s franchise-record 19th start this season in which he has given up one or no runs, moving him ahead of Ron Guidry (1978), Whitey Ford (1964) and Jack Chesbro (1904), who had 18 each.
Detmers, who has a major league-best 1.52 ERA since the All-Star break, gave up a run in the fourth on Amed Rosario’s double.
The game was delayed for about 10 minutes in the sixth when a 79.5-mph line drive off the bat of Rice hit a photographer in the head in the first-base camera well. The photographer was able to walk to a medical emergency vehicle and shake Rice’s hand before being carted away.
The deal marks the end of Arte Moreno’s turbulent ownership of the Angels, with the news triggering shock followed by celebration among beleaguered fans whose team owns baseball’s longest playoff drought.
The transaction runs through Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, Kroenke’s holding company, which also owns the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, the Colorado Avalanche of the NHL, the Colorado Rapids of MLS and Arsenal of the English Premier League.
The Angels are being sold for an MLB-record $4-billion valuation, a person with knowledge of the deal not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times. The previous high was the $3.9-billion sale of the San Diego Padres that was completed last month.
Forbes had valued the Angels at $2.8 billion in March. The sale is “subject to customary closing conditions” and MLB approval, with the expectation it will close in the first quarter of next year, according to a news release announcing the deal.
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Light the Big A! Stan Kroenke just made Angels fans big winners
Angels fans hold up signs on Tuesday thanking Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, led by Stan Kroenke, for buying the majority share of the Angels from Art Moreno.
This is huge. This is landscape altering. This is like Southern California just added an expansion team led by one of the best owners in sports.
For the Angels, currently the second-worst team in baseball and on track to finish a league-worst 12th consecutive season out of the playoffs, this is downright life changing.
Angels exuberant about Stan Kroenke buying the franchise
Angels star Mike Trout, center, was excited to learn Rams owner Stan Kroenke bought the majoirty share of the Angels.
(Joe Scarnici / Getty Images)
From Bill Shaikin: Mike Trout was practically beaming. He dropped the phrase “fresh start” four times in an interview that barely lasted five minutes.
The burden of the Angels’ failures has been disproportionately his to bear. He has insisted that his path to Cooperstown would run through Anaheim and only Anaheim. He has played 16 seasons for an owner that blessed him with half a billion dollars, treated his family like royalty and stranded him in position to conclude a star-spangled career without ever winning a postseason game.
Sluggish Dodgers open homestand with lopsided loss to Cardinals
Dodgers right fielder Kyle Tucker can’t reach a fifth-inning homer by Cardinals shortstop Thomas Saggese at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
From Maddie Lee: The Dodgers’ August woes followed them into the first day of September.
Roster expansion, returning three players from the injured list, the mental relief of turning the calendar page — none of that gave the Dodgers the boost they needed against the Cardinals on Tuesday.
Instead, the Dodgers lost 13-8 to a team that entered the day 4 ½ games out of the last National League wild-card spot.
“I just think tonight we just got behind the eight ball,” manager Dave Roberts said.
Ignore the out-of-town trolls. Los Angeles sports fans are the nation’s best
USC fans brace for the heat before kickoff of the Trojans’ game against San José State at the Coliseum on Saturday.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
From Bill Plaschke: The coach was mad. Sections of his home stadium were empty for a blowout win against an overmatched opponent, and he couldn’t understand why.
“I can honestly say I was a little disappointed there weren’t more students at the last game,” the coach said, adding, “There’s got to be a spirit that makes it special to play here, because that’s what makes it special to be here. And if that’s not here…”
Hmmm. Empty seats even at the royal palace of the king of college football, huh?
There has been much similar chatter this week after the sports landscape witnessed a virtual ghost town at the USC opener against San José State Saturday at the Coliseum. There was an announced crowd of 51,444 but only about half that many showed up, immersing a national television audience in a giant bowl of empty red that left outsiders in a rage.
They called the Los Angeles sports fans a disgrace. They said they weren’t real sports fans. They whined so loudly on social media that USC embarrassingly felt compelled to issue a statement promising better turnouts.
“We understand the factors that impacted Saturday’s attendance,” read the statement. “We have high expectations and a premier home schedule this season, and we know the competitive advantage an electric Coliseum atmosphere can provide our program. We thank our fans who showed up Saturday and look forward to seeing increased attendance the rest of the season.”
With all due respect, I would like to issue a second statement to all you arrogant dummies spouting lazy cliches about a market you don’t understand.
1901 — Seven-year-old Ogden wins two races in a single day at Sheepshead Bay race track in Coney Island, New York. Ogden edges Cameron by a head in the second race on the card, a six furlong sprint on the main track. In the sixth race, a 1 1-16 mile distance on the turf, Ogden beats Monarka by a length.
1908 — Tommy Burns knocks out Bill Lang in the sixth round in Melbourne for his last successful defense of his heavyweight title.
1924 — Bill Tilden wins his fifth straight U.S. men’s singles title with a 6-1, 9-7, 6-2 victory over Bill Johnston.
1940 — Byron Nelson wins the PGA by beating Sam Snead 1-up at the Hershey Country Club in Pennsylvania.
1945 — Frank Parker wins the men’s singles title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championships by beating Bill Talbert. Sarah Palfrey Cooke beats Pauline Betz for the women’s title.
1965 — Cubs slugger Ernie Banks hits his MLB 400th career HR (off Curt Simmons) in Chicago’s 5-3 win v St. Louis at Wrigley Field; Simmons also gave up Willie Mays’ 400th HR in 1963.
1970 — The tie-break debuts in Grand Slam tennis at the U.S. Open. A total of 26 tie-breaks (the nine-point sudden death tie-break) are played on the first day of the tournament. Bob McKinley and Ray Ruffels both win matches in fifth-set tie-breaks.
1971 — Sixteen-year-old Chris Evert wins the first of her record 101 U.S. Open matches, defeating Edda Buding, 6-1, 6-0, in 42 minutes. Jimmy Connors, playing on 19th birthday, comes back from a two-set deficit to beat Alex Olmedo for his first U.S. Open victory.
1984 — In his first NFL start, Atlanta’s Gerald Riggs rushes for 202 yards and scores two touchdowns as the Falcons beat New Orleans 36-28.
1991 — Jimmy Connors turns 39 years old and rallies from a 2-5 fifth-set deficit to defeat 24-year-old Aaron Krickstein, 3-6, 7-6, 1-6, 6-3, 7-6. The fourth-round Labor Day match lasts 4 hours and 41 minutes.
1995 — Frank Bruno wins a heavyweight championship in his fourth attempt registering a unanimous decision over Oliver McCall to take his WBC title in Wembley, England.
2001 — Michael Schumacher becomes the winningest driver in Formula One history, winning the Belgian Grand Prix for his 52nd career victory. Schumacher breaks the mark shared with Alain Prost and clinches his fourth world championship.
2004 — In a second-round match, Sargis Sargsian defeats Nicolas Massu, 6-7 (8), 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (6), 6-4, in five hours and nine minutes. It’s the second-longest match on record at the U.S. Open and falls 18 minutes shy of breaking the record for longest match, set in 1992 when Stefan Edberg defeated Michael Chang in 5:26 in the semifinals.
2007 — Clay Buchholz throws a no-hitter in his second career start against the Baltimore Orioles.
2008 — Adrian Beltre goes 5 for 6 and hits for the cycle in a 12-6 Seattle Mariners win over the Texas Rangers.
Compiled by the Associated Press
This day in baseball history
1929 — Joe Cronin of the Washington Senators hit for the cycle in a 10-7 win against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.
1937 — For the second time this season, two batters opened a game with home runs. Boze Berger and Mike Kreevich of the Chicago White Sox connected off Boston’s Johnny Marcum, en route to a 4-2 win over the Red Sox.
1944 — Dixie Walker of the Brooklyn Dodgers hit for the cycle and drove in four runs in an 8-4 win over the New York Giants at Ebbets Field.
1952 — Mike Fornieles of the Washington Senators, in his major league debut, pitched a one-hitter for a 5-0 victory over the Philadelphia Athletics in the second game of a doubleheader.
1957 — The Milwaukee Braves swept the Chicago Cubs, 23-10 and 4-0. Bob Hazle of the Braves got four hits in the first game and teammate Frank Torre scored six runs to tie the major league record.
1963 — Cincinnati’s Pete Rose hit a leadoff homer of Jay Hook to give the Reds a 1-0 win over the New York Mets in the second game of a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds.
1965 — Ernie Banks hit his 400th home run as the Chicago Cubs beat the St. Louis Cardinals 5-3 at Wrigley Field. The blow came off Curt Simmons in the third inning.
1971 — Cesar Cedeno’s 200-foot fly ball in the fifth inning fell for an inside-the-park grand slam home run as second baseman Jim Lefebvre and right fielder Bill Buckner of the Dodgers collided. The hit helped the Houston Astros beat Los Angeles 9-3.
1972 — Milt Pappas of the Chicago Cubs retired 26 consecutive San Diego Padres before walking pinch-hitter Larry Stahl on a 3-2 pitch. Pappas then retired Gary Jestadt to finish his 8-0 no-hitter.
1987 — Houston’s Kevin Bass went 4-for-4, including home runs from both sides of plate, and drove in three runs as the Astros posted a 10-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs.
1990 — Dave Stieb, who had lost three no-hit bids with one out to go in the previous two seasons, finally pitched one as the Toronto Blue Jays beat Cleveland 3-0. It was the record ninth no-hitter of the season.
1996 — Mike Greenwell set a major league record by driving in all nine Boston runs, the final one on a 10th-inning single to give the Red Sox a 9-8 victory over Seattle.
2001 — New York’s Mike Mussina came within one strike of pitching the first perfect game in the 89-year history of Fenway Park in a 1-0 win over Boston. Mussina’s bid was broken up by pinch-hitter Carl Everett’s clean single.
2002 — Miguel Tejada had his second straight game-ending hit as he singled home Terrence Long with the bases loaded in the ninth inning as Oakland tied the longest winning streak in AL history with a 7-6 victory over Kansas City. Oakland, which overcame a 5-0 deficit, equaled the 19 straight wins by the 1906 Chicago White Sox and the 1947 New York Yankees.
2003 — Eric Gagne set a major league record with his 55th consecutive save in Los Angeles’s 4-1 victory over Houston.
2009 — Alex Rodriguez picks up the 2,500th hit of his career as his Yankees defeat Baltimore, 10 – 2, to complete a sweep at Camden Yards. Eric Hinske‘s home run is the Bronx Bombers’ 20th at the park this season, the most by a visiting team since the ballpark opened in 1992. CC Sabathia earns his American League-leading 16th win.
2012 — Jurickson Profar made quite a debut at age 19, homering in his first major league at-bat and doubling his next time up in the Texas Rangers’ 8-3 win over Cleveland.
2015 — Clayton Kershaw strikes out 15 batters tying a career best and setting a new personal record of 251 for the season.
2022 — Yu Darvish reaches a rare milestone with a strikeout of Cody Bellinger in the 5th inning of the Padres’ 7 – 1 win over the Dodgers: this gives him 1,750 Ks in ten major league seasons, and this gives him 3,000 when the 1,250 he amassed in seven seasons in Japan are added. Among all pitchers who have struck out 1,000 or more batters on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, only Hideo Nomo has preceded Darvish in reaching the mark.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email Houston Mitchell at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Spencer Jones homered and drove in three runs, Jazz Chisholm Jr. also went deep and finished with three hits, and the New York Yankees pulled away Tuesday night for a 7-3 victory over the Angels.
Jones and Chisholm launched back-to-back homers to give Gerrit Cole a 3-0 lead before even throwing a pitch in his latest return home. New York moved four games ahead of rival Boston for the top American League wild card and remained 4 1/2 games behind first-place Tampa Bay in the AL East.
A day that began with Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, led by Rams owner Stan Kroenke, reaching an agreement to acquire a controlling interest in the Angels from owner Arte Moreno ended with the struggling Angels losing for the ninth time in 11 games.
Cole (8-7) gave up three runs and eight hits in 5 1/3 innings, striking out five and walking one. Brent Headrick, Paul Blackburn and John Schreiber held the Angels to one hit the rest of the way.
Angels starter Grayson Rodriguez (4-6) gave up four runs and seven hits in six innings, striking out seven and walking two.
The Angels trailed 4-1 when Wade Meckler, who had three hits, opened the sixth with a single. Moisés Ballesteros singled and Christian Moore sliced a two-run triple to right field that eluded a diving Jones and trimmed the deficit to 4-3.
Cole was pulled in favor of Headrick, who stranded Moore by striking out pinch-hitter Jose Siri and getting Oswald Peraza to fly out.
New York pushed the lead to 6-3 in the eighth when Jones walked, Chisholm singled and Trent Grisham, mired in a two-for-42 slump, fouled off two bunt attempts before hitting an RBI single. Ryan McMahon loaded the bases with a bunt single and Paul Goldschmidt hit a sacrifice fly.
Consecutive singles by Cody Bellinger, who had three of New York’s 14 hits, Luis García Jr. and Jones made it 7-3 in the ninth.
The Yankees took a 3-0 lead in the first. Bellinger singled before Jones hit a two-run homer — his second longball in two nights — and Chisholm followed with an opposite-field shot into the left-field corner.
Ben Rice singled in the third, went to third on Bellinger’s single and scored on García’s double-play grounder for a 4-0 advantage.
The Angels pulled to 4-1 in the bottom half when Zach Neto singled, stole second and scored on Meckler’s two-out single.
Up next
Yankees RHP Cam Schlittler (12-6, 2.09 ERA) faces LHP Reid Detmers (4-8, 3.54) in Wednesday night’s series finale.
Mike Trout was practically beaming. He dropped the phrase “fresh start” four times in an interview that barely lasted five minutes.
The burden of the Angels’ failures has been disproportionately his to bear. He has insisted that his path to Cooperstown would run through Anaheim and only Anaheim. He has played 16 seasons for an owner that blessed him with half a billion dollars, treated his family like royalty and stranded him in position to conclude a star-spangled career without ever winning a postseason game.
“What a track record,” Trout said. “Wherever he buys, he wins.”
Rams owner Stan Kroenke has agreed to purchase a majority stake of the Angels on Tuesday. The deal is pending regulatory review and MLB approval.
(Kyusung Gong / Associated Press)
The Rams. The Colorado Avalanche. The Denver Nuggets. Arsenal.
So what if the Angels have baseball’s longest playoff drought? They now have baseball’s richest owner, with a net worth valued by Forbes at $24 billion.
Kroenke bought a controlling share of the Angels at a valuation of $4 billion, a record for a major league team, with current owner Arte Moreno retaining a small stake, a source with knowledge of the deal not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times. The sale includes the team-owned television and radio outlets, ABTV and AM 830. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions and MLB approval.
In 2009, ESPN put Moreno on the cover of its magazine, proclaiming the Angels delivered the best value of the then-122 teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball. In this decade, the experience had been so devalued by 12 consecutive losing seasons that resale tickets for Tuesday’s game against the mighty New York Yankees were available for $5, amid a season of fans regularly chanting “Sell the Team!”
“He’s aware of the chants,” Angels president Molly Jolly said. “He knows about them. At the end of the day, this is about having the right next owner more than it is about anything else.”
Jolly wouldn’t say whether Kroenke or Moreno initiated the negotiations. She did say the sale was not conducted through a formal bidding process, but proceeded through face-to-face discussions between Kroenke and Moreno.
“He has a traditional sense about him,” Jolly said. “To be able to sit down with another gentleman and have a conversation and talk about baseball and the franchise, that resonates for how he thinks and looks at things, rather than it being a complex conversation.
“I think that’s what was the ‘Why now?’ It was the right person having the right conversation with him.”
As far as she knew, Jolly said, the conversations had not started when she assumed the team presidency in April, but the possibility of a sale had “always stayed out there” after Moreno invited bids in 2022 and then decided not to sell.
In July, after joining the Angels as interim general manager, John Mozeliak said he had spoken with Moreno for hours and the topic of whether the owner might sell the team “never came up.” On Tuesday, Mozeliak acknowledged that, when he started his position, Moreno “had mentioned that this was a possibility.”
Fans at Angel Stadium hold up signs during a game against the Yankees Tuesday marking Stan Kroenke’s agreement to purchase the Angels from Arte Moreno.
(Mark J. Terrill / Ap Photo/mark J. Terrill)
The sale is not expected to be finalized until early next year. Kroenke has not done the usual due diligence that would precede a sale — meeting with team management and touring the stadium — and has not introduced himself to officials from the city of Anaheim. The city owns the stadium and surrounding parking lots, a 150-acre site that city officials would love to see Kroenke develop.
In the meantime, it’s business as usual for the Angels. Mozeliak, who ran the St. Louis Cardinals when the Rams played in St. Louis, said he never has met Kroenke. He did recall speaking with Kevin Demoff, who oversees all of Kroenke’s teams.
Mozeliak has no idea whether Kroenke might invite him to stay, but for now the plan of rebuilding the team and reorganizing the front office remains on course, in the interest of serving fans weary and frustrated after 12 consecutive losing seasons.
“We’ve been preaching change all along,” Mozeliak said. “Now they’re going to see even more.”
And, he noted, the Padres and Angels had sold at successive record prices for MLB teams, despite the prospect of a lockout and owners’ hopes for a new collective bargaining agreement with a salary cap intended in part to raise franchise values.
“A lot of people thought teams wouldn’t sell until there was a new CBA,” Mozeliak said. “Clearly, that prediction was wrong.”
In the clubhouse, no one was talking about that. Neto was talking about the call Trout made to “some of the Rams guys” for a scouting report on Kroenke.
“I reached out to one Rams player,” Trout said, smiling. “He exaggerates a little bit.”
Still, given the national attention given last winter to the air conditioning not working properly in an Angel Stadium weight room, Neto said the evaluation from the Rams’ locker room was glowing.
“The most important thing they said is, he just wants what’s important for us,” Neto said. “That’s to make the clubhouse better, in the sense of whatever we need, we get, whether that’s amenity-wise, speakers, whatever it is, he’ll make sure we get those.”
Trout was so enthusiastic that, when a reporter asked if he was excited about what the new vision might be, he answered before the reporter could finish asking the question.
“No doubt,” Trout said. “Obviously, when you’re frustrated the last — I don’t know how many years it’s been, but to hear the news like this, I’m super excited to have this change.”
For his part, Neto sounded ready to pitch Tarik Skubal on pitching for the Angels — or, at least, pitching Kroenke on the possibility of recruiting him in free agency.
“Who doesn’t want to be in Southern California?” Neto said. “The weather is beautiful here. We have the best fans, in my opinion. We have a beautiful stadium.
“Who wouldn’t want to be here and play in this organization, in this market? It would be a no-brainer.”
Trout said the ownership change “was needed” and said there was “a good vibe around the clubhouse,” but both he and Neto expressed appreciation for Moreno.
“Arte was very supportive of us, whatever the outside noise was,” Neto said.
“I’ve seen a lot of hate, a lot of love, a lot more hate. But, as a player who has played under him, it was a lot of love. He treated us well, and that’s all you can ask for as a player.”
Texts lit up my phone this morning from friends who had wasted most of their lives rooting for the Angels: Arte Moreno finally was selling the team.
“First order of business: it’s the Anacrime Angels,” Nelson Rodriguez cracked before sending a meme of Stringer Bell in “The Wire” wearing an old-school California Angels cap and saying, “I want you to put the word out there that we back up.”
“This news honestly made my year,” texted Anaheim City Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava, who graduated a year ahead of me from Anaheim High and whose daughter works at my wife’s restaurant. “Excited to leave the controversy and negativity behind and look forward to a new era of Anaheim baseball.”
“Shame this didn’t happen when [Shohei] Ohtani was an Angel,” the Mountain shared on a group text thread of childhood friends who call each other by long-standing nicknames — I’m the Consigliere.
“I get invited to the games but hell no,” replied the Butcher, who’s been a fan since the days of Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan in the 1970s.
“I’ll finally go back” to a game in person, my cousin Plas added. “A Trumper [Latino] what could’ve gone wrong …” he wrote, referencing Moreno, before asking if Kurt Suzuki was still manager because “that’s how little I’ve kept up with the team.”
Those are the texts I can print in a family newspaper.
Moreno is selling to Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke, whose company also owns perennial contenders in the NBA (Denver Nuggets), NHL (Colorado Avalanche) and England’s Premier League (Arsenal). Sources told my colleagues that the price was $4 billion, which would be a baseball record and speaks to the Halos’ untapped potential.
Major League Baseball still needs to approve the deal, but I guarantee that Commissioner Rob Manfred and the 29 other team owners are reacting with the silly swaying dance that Dodgers players do every time they get on base.
“The Moreno Family has been honored to steward the Angels for 23 years,” the soon-to-be-ex-Angels owner said in a statement.
You stewarded nada, Arte: You destroyed.
You started with so much hope and ended up with fans like my friends shooting venom at you like pissed-off cobras. There’s a reason why you’ll leave as one of the most loathed owners in baseball history. Your underperforming reign makes the McCourts of Dodgers infamy seem as amazing and beloved as the O’Malleys.
Not even Shohei Ohtani, at spring training when he played for the Angels in 2023, could change the team’s fortunes under Moreno.
(Morry Gash/Associated Press)
The Tucson native, who made his billions in the billboard industry, bought the Angels from Disney in 2003, the year after they won their sole World Series championship. At a festive press conference, Moreno handed a sombrero to then-skipper Mike Scioscia to wear, then announced that the first order of business was to cut beer prices.
The new owner quickly signed the best players in baseball — slugger Vladimir Guerrero and pitcher Bartolo Colón. Moreno walked Angel Stadium during games to ask fans what they wanted, what they needed, what they dreamed of. That first decade, he made the Angels what they never had been for a prolonged period: winners.
Fans packed the stands — more than 3 million each year from 2003 to 2019, the third-longest streak in baseball. Anaheimers donned Halos jerseys and hats like never before. More incredibly, Moreno was at the cusp of the impossible: convincing a generation of Latino baseball fans in Orange County to side with the Halos instead of the Dodgers.
But there were always signs that something was off.
Moreno renamed the team the Los Angeles Angels two years after he bought them, a ridiculous moniker that made them a national punchline. The renaming also cost Anaheim millions of dollars in legal fees after the city unsuccessfully sued to force Moreno to keep my hometown in the team’s name.
Moreno openly talked about moving the Angels to a city that would build him a new stadium. He also fell into the terrible habit of signing conservative-leaning, past-their-prime ballplayers like Josh Hamilton, Albert Pujols and Anthony Rendon to massive contracts that weighed down the team for years, like one of Angel Stadium’s legendary cinnamon rolls.
Die-hards like my pals trudged on, buoyed by generational talent Mike Trout and the occasional flash-in-the-pan prospect. But even they were turned off by the last three years.
That same year, the Halos let Ohtani — who was on his way to a second most valuable player award and already had established himself as one of the most talented baseball players ever — walk away as a free agent while gaining nothing in return.
This season kicked off with Moreno telling the Orange County Register about a survey supposedly revealing that winning wasn’t “a top priority” for Angels fans. The Angels hadn’t made the playoffs in 11 years, hadn’t finished with a winning record since 2015, had landed in last place in their division for the last two years — and that’s what he offered as a speck of hope? No wonder the team is on pace to lose 100 games for the first time in franchise history. No wonder disgusted fans have protested both inside and outside Angel Stadium all summer.
At the only game I went to this year — a sparsely attended afternoon snoozer against the Chicago White Sox — I found the stadium more beat-up than ever: peeling paint, beat-up seats, tinny PA system. For about $25 each, my friends and I bought tickets behind the first-base dugout that would have cost hundreds of dollars at Dodger Stadium.
Billboards along Southern California freeways have broadcast the Angels’ desperate attempts to draw in fans via pathetic promotions. Fireworks every Saturday. A bobblehead giveaway of light-hitting shortstop Zach Neto, who never has made an All-Star team. A “yard sale” that sounds like a giant casting off of crappy memorabilia a week away from the trash can.
Angels fans wave signs and urge owner Arte Moreno to sell the team to an ownership group willing to invest more in winning during a pregame protest at Angel Stadium.
(Joaquin Ruiz / For The Times)
I never cared for the Angels, but I always wanted them to do well. Any success they achieved rubbed off on my hometown, as it did during that magical 2002 run.
I also wanted Moreno, the first Latino to own a major professional sports team, to succeed, so his fellow Trump supporters might know that our kind can excel at the highest echelons of American society, if only we get the chance.
But for the last few years, I cheered each time the Angels lost. I wanted them to tank, to forever seal Moreno’s legacy as a loser. To serve as a warning to all professional sports owners that they can abuse a host city and its fan base for only so long before people revolt by just not caring.
Good luck to Kroenke as he tries to resuscitate a franchise deader than a stump in the Petrified Forest.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke holds up the Lombardi Trophy after his team beat the Bengals to win the Super Bowl at SoFi Stadium in 2022.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
This is huge. This is landscape altering. This is like Southern California just added an expansion team led by one of the best owners in sports.
For the Angels, currently the second-worst team in baseball and on track to finish a league-worst 12th consecutive season out of the playoffs, this is downright life changing.
Kroenke builds. Kroenke spends. Kroenke wins.
The sale is not expected to close until early 2027, so change will come slowly, but buckle up, because a bumps-be-damned renovation is coming.
First, the Angels are getting a new stadium. Kroenke hasn’t confirmed it, but it’s surely happening. He’s a real estate guy at heart who loves turning empty lots into palaces and that’s what he’ll do in Anaheim.
You think SoFi is nice? Here’s guessing the new Angels stadium will be nicer, and surrounded by the sort of commercial baseball village sprouting up all over the major leagues. The stadium and its environs will offer everything the Dodgers can’t, and may just steal a few fans in the process.
Second, the Angels are getting new swashbuckling leadership. Don’t know who, but expect the new general manager to be the kind of leader who will boldly sacrifice the future to win now, because that’s what Kroenke does, he wins now. Think baseball’s version of Les Snead.
Third, the Angels are getting one of the game’s bright young managers. Don’t know who, but he will be a guy who’s big on analytics and even bigger on the human touch, and he’ll probably be very young and very anonymous and eventually very successful. Think baseball’s version of Sean McVay.
The overall theme of Kroenke’s leadership will be championship or bust. He hates finishing second, and has left no stone unturned in giving the Rams every opportunity to succeed.
When he brought the Rams back to Los Angeles in 2016, he gave the team all of 13 games before firing then-coach Jeff Fisher after going 4-9. Soon thereafter he made 30-year-old McVay the youngest coach in NFL history and they’ve since become arguably the most admired franchise in the NFL.
Kroenke wins both on the field and in the community. His entire operation, which also owns the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, the Colorado Avalanche of the NHL, the Colorado Rapids of MLS and Arsenal of the Premier League, is led by Kevin Demoff, a lifelong Angeleno who understands and works the local market as well as any sports executive ever. The community has become saturated with Rams, and the same will be happening with the Angels as they increase their reach into Los Angeles County, something Moreno tried but could never pull off.
The name will remain the Los Angeles Angels, not because Kroenke doesn’t like Anaheim, but because he knows his investment must expand out of Orange County to eventually reap rewards.
“The Angels are a storied franchise anchored in a great market,” Kroenke said in a statement. “We look forward to an exciting future with the Angels organization.”
Storied. Anchored. Exciting. Those are words you rarely heard about the Angels under Moreno, whose 23-year stewardship began with a cheer and ended with a whimper.
Angels owner Arte Moreno has agreed to sell the team to Rams owner Stan Kroenke.
(Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
Remember how, in his first news conference after buying the team from Disney, he lowered beer prices? He was fun, he was innovative and he was the first Latino majority owner in major American team sports. It was all so cool, and the team responded with five American League West titles and two appearances in the American League Championship Series.
When the Angels won their lone World Series, this was the headline in the Los Angeles Times: “Fantasyland!”
Can we run that headline again?
For your new owner, Angels fans, you get a proven winner and real estate developer — more on that in a second — whose very name drips with baseball history.
You know him as Stan Kroenke, the owner of the Rams. His full name is Enos Stanley Kroenke, so named in honor of two St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Famers: Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial.
As he assembled his sports empire, baseball was the one sport that eluded him. He has the Rams, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche and Arsenal. He badly wanted the Dodgers, a runner-up in the bidding when Mark Walter bought them in 2012.
Now he is acquiring the Angels — at a $4-billion valuation, a record for a baseball team — and getting the closest thing to a blank slate that any owner can get without buying an expansion team.
The general manager? He’s an interim, and his contract expires this year.
The roster? The only players currently under contract for next year are outfielder Mike Trout — the Angels’ answer to Musial — and pitcher Yusei Kikuchi.
The Angels’ playoff drought? The longest in the majors, going on 12 seasons. Go, Super Bowl champ, go!
For Kroenke, the first order of business might well be a comprehensive search for what would be the Angels’ answer to Les Snead and Sean McVay, the GM and head coach duo that led Kroenke’s Rams to a Super Bowl championship. The players might not be the next order of business. The deal is not expected to be approved until early 2027, according to a sale announcement, and who knows whether owners still will be locking out players by then?
But Kroenke appears to be the perfect guy to resolve the longest-running and most critical order of business in Anaheim: resolving the Angels’ future there.
For 60 years, the Angels have played in a stadium surrounded by 130 acres of parking lots. For 60 years, fans have driven into the parking lots, watched the game, and driven home. For 60 years, the city has lost untold millions in tax revenue by failing to build anything atop those parking lots.
Kroenke just does it. He is doing it around SoFi Stadium, which he built. He is doing it around the Rams’ training facility in Woodland Hills, which he built. He plans to do it around the sports arena he is building in San Diego.
Now Kroenke could lobby for a new ballpark in Inglewood, in place of the Forum, and call it synergy. James Butts, the mayor of Inglewood, has said he would frown upon a ballpark there.
But here’s betting Kroenke won’t ask. The sale announcement highlighted Kroenke’s “presence in one of the largest sports and entertainment markets in the United States” and said the purchase of the Angels “extends this footprint south into a market of more than three million residents with its own distinct civic identity, corporate base and tourism economy.”
Kroenke wants what all sports owners want these days: money coming out of a stadium site 365 days a year, not just on game days. That means shops, restaurants, homes, hotels, offices, parks, music venues, and food halls. And good luck to Kroenke or any other developer trying to find a vacant 130 acres in any urban area in Southern California, much less one adjacent to a train station and within three freeways.
This is already happening across the 57 Freeway from Angel Stadium, where Ducks owners Henry and Susan Samueli are putting up what they call the OC Vibe. Kroenke’s history indicates he would do something just as fun, and likely grander given that he’ll have more land, and suddenly Anaheim could be the coolest place to be in Orange County (*unless Olivia Rodrigo is putting on another Daisy Chain Fields festival in Irvine).
And, if Kroenke is willing to rename the team the Anaheim Angels, the city and its local assemblyman just pushed through a new law that could provide him with a significant financial incentive for development, which in turn could reduce his cost to build the new ballpark the Angels so desperately need.
The city owns the stadium and parking lots, so they were not part of the team sale. City officials have not met with Kroenke.
“Fans and residents welcome the start of a new chapter for baseball in Anaheim,” Mayor Ashleigh Aitken said. “I am encouraged by Stan Kroenke’s track record with the Rams and his commitment to investing in and uplifting neighborhoods.
“I look forward to working with the team’s incoming ownership to advance our city’s priorities around housing, open space and youth sports at the right time.”
For decades, Anaheim has loftily labeled the land around the neighborhood around the “Platinum Triangle.” Now the city might well have struck gold.
The local assemblyman that introduced that law, Avelino Valencia, could hardly have been any happier Tuesday.
“This is a big day for Anaheim,” Valencia texted me. “For 60 years, our community has filled Angel Stadium, raised a World Series banner as the Anaheim Angels, and shown up through every season.
“Few cities can offer a new owner a foundation like that. New ownership means new possibilities, and Anaheim is ready for them.
“I congratulate Stan Kroenke and Kroenke Sports and Entertainment on their agreement to purchase the Angels, and I welcome them home. Let’s build a partnership rooted in pride of place, a team that reflects the city it calls home, and the return of the Anaheim Angels.
“Anaheim is ready to work together, and Anaheim is ready to win.”
In a statement, Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) called it “a great day for Angels fans and Anaheim.”
As the stalemate between the city and Angels owner Arte Moreno grew more entrenched, the condition of Angel Stadium deteriorated. So did Moreno’s investment in the team.
Three years ago, the city commissioned an assessment of what it would take to keep Angel Stadium up and running for decades to come. We’re still waiting.
Those words, in a nutshell, exemplified the relationship between the team and the city in recent years. When the news broke Tuesday, a city official reached out to me to ask if it were true. And, after years of city officials sniping that the Angels had for a decade clipped the “of Anaheim” from their “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” name, the Angels emailed a statement confirming the sale with this headline: “Kroenke Sports & Entertainment to Acquire the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.”
After a season of “Sell The Team” chants, Moreno did. And, after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Valencia’s bill into law last week, the title of the law actually sounded more appropriate Tuesday: “The Home Run for Anaheim Act.”
Vaughn Grissom drove in four runs, rookie Walbert Ureña pitched seven strong innings and the Angels ended a seven-game losing streak with a 10-1 victory over the sloppy New York Yankees on Monday night.
Mike Trout had a two-run single and Christian Moore drove in a pair of runs as the Angels won at home for the first time since Aug. 15. Ureña (9-9) gave up five hits with no walks and eight strikeouts.
Elmer Rodríguez (0-3) failed to make it out of the fourth for the Yankees (78-60), giving up four runs and four hits with three walks over 3⅔ innings. It was the shortest of his six career starts since making his major league debut in April.
Spencer Jones homered for the Yankees, who committed three errors after scoring a combined 25 runs in consecutive wins over the rival Boston Red Sox at home last weekend. New York is three games ahead of Boston for the top American League wild-card spot and 4½ games behind first-place Tampa Bay in the AL East.
The Angels (53-85) took a 1-0 lead in the third on Grissom’s run-scoring single. Zach Neto had an RBI single in the fourth after both Oswald Peraza and Tyler Heineman were hit by pitches from Rodríguez with two outs.
Trout added his two-run single in the fourth for his first multi-RBI hit since a two-run homer on July 8.
Jones connected in the fifth to make it 4-1.
Moore had a bloop RBI double in the bottom of the fifth and scored on an errant pickoff throw to second by Michael Fulmer. Neto scored in the sixth for a 7-1 lead when Yankees shortstop José Caballero made two errors on what could have been an inning-ending double-play grounder by Grissom.
In the eighth, Grissom made it 9-1 with a two-run double off the wall in left field and Moore added an RBI single. Grissom finished with three hits and scored twice.
Up next: Yankees RHP Gerrit Cole (7-3, 3.19 ERA) faces Angels RHP Grayson Rodriguez (4-5, 6.03) in the middle game of the series Tuesday.
