Baseball is a business run largely by analytics, and the numbers are undoubtedly stacked against the Angels. According to Fangraphs.com, the odds of Arte Moreno's team making the playoffs this year are about 1 in 6, 16.8%. The Angels are 3½ games behind the Toronto Blue Jays in the running for the last wild-card spot, with the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees also in their way.
And yet, the Angels are going all-in, and if you're inside the team's bubble, sources indicate, the context for their choices this week feels very different. The Angels emerged from the All-Star break with a burst of success, seven wins in the first 10 games, including a sweep of the Yankees in Anaheim that seems to have had the effect of liquid courage. With the days ticking down to the trade deadline this week, Angels owner Arte Moreno told his general manager, Perry Minasian, that Shohei Ohtani would not be available for a trade -- and Minasian, apparently believing that it made no sense to maintain a roster status quo around Ohtani, decided to double down on the choice to keep him.
If the Angels don't make the playoffs, and if they don't re-sign Ohtani when he reaches free agency, Moreno will be convicted in industry circles of making Neanderthal mistakes that could set the team back years. Anybody working in the Angels organization almost certainly knows this. But Moreno decided that this year he wants to win -- and, moreover, that this is the path the Angels believe they must take if they're to have any shot of retaining the most unique, talented and marketable player in the league.