Why The Angels' Small Moves Might (Finally) Add Up To Big Success
As team-building tactics go, having the two best players in a particular sport on the same roster would seem to be a pretty good one. Surely you'd expect that lucky team to, at the very least, have some winning seasons under its belt -- or perhaps even win a championship or two. But such a team has existed in the form of the Los Angeles Angels, and despite rostering two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani and perennial MVP candidate Mike Trout, they have yet to put together anything close to a winning season since 2018, when they finished with an 80-82 record in Ohtani's rookie season. Clearly, L.A.'s star-focused approach has its limitations. So this offseason, the team is trying a new tack -- one that, paradoxically, might finally help Trout and Ohtani win some games. While the Angels have been one of the more active teams on the hot stove, they haven't brought in one of the many marquee free agents who were available. Instead, they've done well to surround their two franchise players with dependable and established, if unspectacular, major league contributors. And maybe that influx of average talent is what this team needed all along. There are, of course, some caveats around the Angels' previous struggles with Trout and Ohtani. Ohtani did not pitch at all in 2019 and made only two starts in 2020, as...
