ANAHEIM, Calif. — Ron Washington made sure that the doors to the clubhouse’s front entrance would stay closed before entering the room to deliver a message.
The Angels season is younger than one month old, and the manager was set to start another team meeting after yet another ugly and dispiriting loss.
This club didn’t promise much this season. It didn’t promise the best roster. The higher-ups didn’t promise that this team would finally break a postseason drought that goes back to 2014.
But the identity of this team was always supposed to be rooted in fundamentals. If the Angels had nothing else, they would have that.
“All we have to do is stay in the process,” Washington said in spring training. “Do what the game asks us to do every single day.”
“I tell you what, we are not going to be the same Angels that were in previous years,” he said. “We are going to match the baseball that (the division) is playing.”
Instead, the Angels sit at 10-18 after losing four straight and nine of their past 10. It’s a team that’s been defined by booted balls and base-running blunders. In fourth place, behind the A’s, having allowed more runs than any other American League club.
Just take Sunday’s 11-5 loss to the shorthanded Twins. Luis Rengifo threw a ball into the dirt to put a runner on in the fourth. In the fifth, Jo Adell came up short on a fly ball that MLB StatCast said had a 70 percent catch probability. Then he overran it, allowing a run to score. In the eighth, Brandon Drury booted a grounder that led to an unearned run.
Two nights prior, the Angels dropped two easy flyouts because the fielders didn’t communicate who would make the catch. The past 10 days are populated with moments like this.
After a mostly dormant offseason, expectations for this team weren’t high. But the level of play thus far has been below even the most conservative of projections.
“We’ve got a lot of figuring out to do,” said catcher Logan O’Hoppe after getting swept on Sunday. “It’s tough going through it. But I have faith that it’s what we have to go through for good things in the future. … We’ve just got to take a step back and really assess where we’re at.”
Before the season, O’Hoppe said this to MLB Network about expectations within the Angels clubhouse: “Winning a World Series, and we’ve got the group to do it.”
Washington told the team — showcased in an Angels preseason hype video — that “talk is cheap, we’re gonna be about it.”
Preseason confidence and excitement are nothing new. And the calendar has yet to hit May. There’s still plenty of time for this struggling team to turn it around. But as O’Hoppe acknowledged Sunday, the play has to back up the boasts.
“Obviously we’ve been struggling,” said pitcher Reid Detmers. “But we’ve got a bunch of pros in this locker room. We’re gonna keep fighting and we’re going to come back (Monday) ready to play.”
The coaching staff’s philosophy has been to communicate and collaborate. Angels pitching coach Barry Enright preached the importance of throwing strikes in 0-0 and 1-1 counts. But success in that area proved to be elusive. The coaches held a meeting with the starting rotation to have them explain their woes.
Hitters’ meetings, typically a fairly quick exercise around the league, have run as long as 45 minutes for the Angels. But the offense has now been no-hit for at least 4 2/3 innings three different times over the past six games.
Washington has held two full team meetings — the first coming after the season’s second game.
Talk is cheap. Since all this talking hasn’t led to much of anything.
Zach Neto reacts after striking out in the fourth inning. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Getty Images)
“We didn’t pitch. We didn’t hit. We didn’t play defense,” Washington said, recounting a weekend in which the Angels were outscored 32-13. “All the things that we said we would do. All the things that we promised to each other that we would do.”
Young players populate this roster. Mistakes will surely happen, and no one would suggest otherwise. But this is not a strong fundamental brand of baseball. And this is still a major-league ballclub, one with players who do not seem to be improving — at least not thus far.
Brandon Drury (.464 OPS), Mickey Moniak (.414 OPS), Aaron Hicks (.415 OPS) and Zach Neto (.586 OPS) have all underperformed offensively. Even Mike Trout, hitting just .226 with an .885 OPS, is well below his career averages. On the pitching side, all you have to do is look at the scoreboard to see that it’s been ugly.
“We’re not the only team that has guys not performing in April,” GM Perry Minasian said Friday. “Baseball’s six months. We’ve seen plenty of players have bad Aprils, and you look up at the end of the year and they’ve performed pretty well.”
This has been part of the Angels’ modus operandi for a while now. Establish expectations. Preach calm through struggles. Then, eventually, reframe the conversation to the future when the present seems lost. It’s one thing to do it during an off-year. It becomes a lot more noticeable after nine consecutive Octobers spent at home.
To Washington’s credit, he seems determined to fix this now. He takes the losses personally and believes this team is still capable of better. The skipper said he’d have to reassess if he’s doing things the right way.
“I’m the first one to take the blame, because I’m the one prepping them,” Washington said. “So I’ve got to check me. Maybe I’m not prepping them correctly.”
What he said next, however, placed more emphasis on those not executing his instructions.
“But, I can look in that mirror, and feel good about myself,” he said. “I want them to look in the mirror and have that same feeling.”
(Top photo of Ron Washington: Kiyoshi Mio / USA Today)
