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Over the past week, the postmortems of Perry Minasian's five-and-a-half seasons in Anaheim offered reflections on what he could not do as the Angels' general manager, as much as what he did.
Minasian inherited the contracts of Mike Trout (12 years, $426.5 million) and Anthony Rendon (seven years, $245 million) from owner Arte Moreno and his predecessors as GM.
Those are two of the three largest contracts in franchise history.
Minasian could only add so much to the Angels' payroll as a result of Trout and Rendon, who combined to play 601 of a possible 1,620 games from 2021-25.
His ability to enhance the Angels' roster in trades and free agency was limited.
More than mere money, Minasian was hamstrung by who he was allowed to trade.
A rumored agreement that would have sent Shohei Ohtani to the Tampa Bay Rays in 2023 to say nothing of other Ohtani trade talks Minasian was working on, but never became public was shot down by the Angels' owner.
One former major league general manager believes that should have been the last straw for Minasian.
"If thats true, then Minasian should have resigned in protest," former Reds and Nationals executive Jim Bowden wrote Thursday in The Athletic, "because he should have known he had no chance to succeed." Bowden worked for four different organizations, starting with the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Yankees out of college before joining the Reds.
If he is galled by Minasian's lack of freedom in his job, it means a bit more than a fan who feels the same.
Fans certainly formed their own opinions of Minasian.
Up-to-the minute Wins Above Replacement totals tallied by the players acquired by Minasian were low-hanging targets on social media.
And certainly other teams' front offices have done more with less.
But these stats ignore a larger truth namely, these weren't necessarily the player personnel moves Minasian wanted to make.
They reflect the box he was forced into.
Whether or not Minasian knew he was signing up for those constraints in November 2020 is now moot; John Mozeliak will run the Angels' baseball operations department until at least Dec.
1.
Will Mozeliak have the same constraints between now and the Aug.
3 trade deadline? Time will tell.
Jose Soriano and Reid Detmers would be two of the better pitchers on the trade market if Mozeliak is allowed to trade them.
Neither pitcher is a star to the degree of Ohtani, but both could give the Angels a deeper depth chart at multiple positions than they have now if Moreno allows Mozeliak to trade them.
"I definitely think there is going to be opportunity to have some autonomy in how we do it," Mozeliak recently told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.
"Obviously, (Moreno) is the owner.
Theres going to have to be communication and trust built." J.P.
Hoornstra is an On SI Contributor.
A veteran of 20 years of sports coverage for daily newspapers in California, J.P.
covered MLB, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Los Angeles Angels (occasionally of Anaheim) from 2012-23 for the Southern California News Group.
His first book, The 50 Greatest Dodgers Games of All-Time, published in 2015.
In 2016, he won an Associated Press Sports Editors award for breaking news coverage.
He once recorded a keyboard solo on the same album as two of the original Doors.
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