Arte Moreno’s Angels: From Promise to Plateau
The Angels' future looked bright when MLB approved the sale to Arte Moreno in the Spring of 2003. With the sale, Moreno became the first-ever Mexican-American owner of a major sports team, purchasing the club from none other than the Walt Disney Company. The team just earned its first World Series title, and now a new owner has offered lower food and beer prices, making a trip to the Big A affordable and memorable. Moreno had earned the good graces of fans right off the bat; however, over two decades later, it seems the fans and even players are over it.
The early years under Moreno’s watch backed up the hype. With Mike Scioscia managing the club and stars like Vladimir Guerrero, Garrett Anderson, and John Lackey, the Angels were one of MLB’s most consistent clubs in the mid-2000s. The Halos found success in the regular season, leading to five AL West division titles in 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, and 2009. In that span, the Angels appeared in five of Moreno’s first seven years of ownership, the highlight being taking the eventual 2009 World Series Champion, New York Yankees, to six games of the 2009 ALCS.
The Angels' return to the postseason wouldn’t come until 2014, when they clinched another divisional title after a 98-win season. However, the 2014 Kansas City Royals stopped the Angels from advancing further, eliminating them in a three-game sweep. Obviously, the Angels have not made it back since, and it’s been a decade plus of frustrating Angels baseball. What started as a promising new era has slowly become one defined by that frustration, along with plenty of missed opportunities.
The thing is, it’s not like Moreno hasn’t tried to make moves to get the club’s chances of winning higher. There was a time when Arte would go out and chase the biggest free agents, none bigger than when he signed Albert Pujols to a 10-year, $240 million contract, bringing in a future Hall of Famer to pair with the team’s emerging star, Mike Trout. Surely adding Pujols to the roster can make a difference for the Angels, right? Wrong. What came from the signing was the Los Angeles’ inability to retool and explore other options, due to spending big on one or two players.
The same story followed with Josh Hamilton’s five-year, $125 million contract in December 2012, and what is shaping up to be the worst modern contract Moreno has paid for in Anthony Rendon’s seven-year, $245 million deal in 2019. Each move showed Moreno’s willingness to spend, but also his failure to invest wisely. Injuries, underperformance, and a lack of pitching depth erased any chance those signings would pay off. Winning the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes in 2017 was supposed to change that. The two-way phenom from Japan instantly turned Anaheim into a global attraction and gave fans hope. For six years, the Angels had two of the game’s biggest stars take the field together. Yet, even with Ohtani, the Angels never took advantage of his skill set to compete in October. Then came 2023, when, in Ohtani’s final year with the Halos before becoming a free agent, the Angels had an opportunity to trade the star for a significant return of prospects that could have set up the Angels with an even brighter future. Alas, it was ultimately Moreno’s decision to hold onto Ohtani, stating that the Angels had a chance to make the postseason that year. Well, they did not.
Financially, though, Moreno has had an enormous success. When he purchased the Angels from Disney, the cost was around $183.5 million. As of 2025, Forbes values the Angels at $2.75 billion. To his credit, Moreno has not stopped spending, keeping the Angels' payroll in the top half of all 30 MLB teams. He has made the team's brand one of the strongest in baseball, but in recent years the club has been at risk of falling back into mediocrity —if not already. Just look at the Angels' record under Morenos' reign: 1,850-1,774. It’s still a positive record, but if the Angels' woes continue, it’s hard to believe it will stay above .500 for much longer.
