When you ask Los Angeles Angels employees about Arte Moreno, their posture -- physical, and emotional -- seems to change immediately. They stiffen, as if conversation about their boss is like playing a golf course overrun by sand traps and ponds and streams, all kinds of hazards. If they say the wrong thing, tell the wrong story, do the wrong thing, well, they run the risk of unleashing his temper.
Unfortunately for them, everybody in the industry is asking about Moreno these days. The baseball world is waiting to see if the Angels owner will trade Shohei Ohtani, the game's best and most unique player, who is in the midst of the greatest single-season performance in history. As a hitter, Ohtani leads the majors in home runs (35), triples (7), slugging percentage (.676), total bases (246), and OPS+ (188). As a pitcher, he has held opponents to a .195 batting average, the lowest among all pitchers, and he has a 3.71 ERA, with 148 strikeouts in 111⅔ innings.
Despite Ohtani's unprecedented performance, though, the Angels' playoff chances are slim. They haven't made the playoffs in more than a decade and, according to Fangraphs, they have a 15.2% chance of reaching the 2023 postseason, and just a 3% chance to win the American League West. They are currently playing without All-Star center fielder Mike Trout, who is still recovering from a broken hamate bone in his wrist, and former All-Star Anthony Rendon, who has played just 43 games this season. The Angels' pitching has been a problem, again: Excluding Ohtani, the rest of the staff has an ERA of 4.60.
Between now and the Aug. 1 trade deadline, the Angels' front office will field proposals from other teams, evaluate them and present their recommendations to Moreno. It's the same thing the Angels' staff did last July when, by all accounts, the interest in Ohtani was robust -- plenty of teams are willing to put up generous offers for a player single-handedly capable of fixing both lineup and rotation problems.
"That's the time [Moreno] should've traded him, because his value was at its peak and the Angels weren't going anywhere," said one rival exec who tried to land Ohtani last year. "He would've been with his next team for two postseasons" -- instead of just one -- "and somebody would've paid very well for that. They could've addressed a lot of roster issues."
Instead, according to industry sources, Moreno reacted angrily when the idea of trading Ohtani was presented to him by his front office last July. He had no interest in dealing his team's best hitter and best pitcher -- not to mention the most marketable player in baseball -- and scoffed at the suggestion.
More so than many other owners, Moreno has had a habit of paving over decisions made by a long parade of general managers who have come and gone, from Tony Reagins to Jerry Dipoto to Billy Eppler to current GM Perry Minasian.
Minasian will be at the forefront of any conversation with other teams, taking offers and presenting counteroffers. But in Ohtani's case -- a player of unprecedented stature, for the Angels or any other team -- the choice of whether to trade him belongs to Moreno.
One player agent who has negotiated with Moreno views him as "a self-made guy who has his vision about how things should be, and he's not going to deviate that much from that vision. He's not a bad guy to deal with -- but he has really strong views, and that stubbornness can make him really difficult to deal with."
Former Angels staffers referred to other times that Moreno has claimed final say over roster decisions: He strongly believes in the box office juice of sluggers, a perspective which goes a long way to explaining some of the signings he has affected -- some of them which came to be viewed as debilitating mistakes for the Angels executives charged to manage a top-heavy payroll. Moreno was personally involved in the big-money pursuits of Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton and Anthony Rendon, as well as the record-setting signing of Mike Trout, for $426.5 million.
"He's a smart guy who's been really successful in building [his fortune]," said one ownership source. "But I think like a lot of [owners], he probably thinks he knows the business of baseball more than he does."
With Ohtani poised to test free agency in the fall and the Angels barely hanging in the playoff race, front office analysts in other organizations said the decision is a no-brainer: Of course you deal him, they said, and get what many assume would be a strong package of major league-ready players or prospects who could give the Angels a better chance to contend in 2024 and beyond. The alternative -- keeping Ohtani through the rest of what is almost certainly a lost regular season -- means the Angels would receive only draft-pick compensation if Ohtani signs with another team.
"You just can't let that happen," said a rival evaluator. "You can't let him get away for so little."
Neither the Angels nor Ohtani has said whether the team floated a contract offer to the player in the last year, but the assumption in the industry is that the Angels probably presented some kind of proposal to at least get a sense of whether Ohtani is open to the idea of staying in Anaheim. An ownership source who has worked alongside Moreno believes that whether the Angels can make the playoffs is not the pivotal question in whether they trade him. "I think it comes down to whether Arte believes he has a chance to keep Ohtani" into the future, the official said. "If he thinks he has any shot at it, I think he won't trade him, to keep the door open."
There are very few cases in baseball history in which a star player has been traded in the season before reaching free agency and then re-signed with the team that dealt him. The Yankees traded Aroldis Chapman to the Chicago Cubs in the midst of the 2016 season and then brought him back at the behest of owner Hal Steinbrenner in the following offseason.
If Moreno does decide to trade Ohtani, those who know him predict that he'll steer the star to a preferred destination. "There's no way he trades [Ohtani] to the Dodgers," said one former Angels employee. "No chance." Similarly, some former employees believe Moreno would be much less likely to deal Ohtani to an AL West rival, like the Texas Rangers, than to other teams.
Moreno might be more willing to deal with a team like Tampa Bay, the officials said -- not only because the Rays typically have a nice range of assets to offer, but also because the Angels' franchise doesn't really compete with Tampa Bay, who inhabit a different division and a different financial universe.
Neither of the paths before Moreno is entirely palatable. If he swaps Ohtani, he could be remembered as the man responsible for delivering an all-time talent, in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime season, out of town. Ohtani is the overwhelming favorite to win the Most Valuable Player Award in the AL -- and no player has ever been traded in the same season he's won an MVP.
If Moreno stays the course, and the Angels get only draft-pick compensation this offseason, he could damage a roster that is in desperate need of upgrades.
Under these circumstances, he might have even more reason to be a little tense. Moreno's temper can rise unexpectedly, former staffers said, and the targets of his ire are pounded verbally -- as if he's hit them with a buzzsaw, in the words of one source. For the next two weeks, those in the Angels organization might be taking cover for as long as Moreno mulls his incredibly difficult decision.