What's been known for sometime became official on Sunday following the Los Angeles Angels' 11-2 loss to the Seattle Mariners on the road — the Angels will be missing the playoffs in 2025 yet again. It seems like no matter what the Angels do, they just fall short and end up not having enough talent to compete for a playoff spot, as 2025 marks their 11th consecutive season in which they've missed the postseason. This is the current longest postseason drought in MLB.
Mike Trout's prime has come and gone, and, as good of a player as he remains, he is now a shell of his former self. And all the Angels have to show for having Trout's services over the past 16 years is one playoff appearance and exactly zero playoff win after they were swept in the 2014 ALDS by the Kansas City Royals.
It's just the heartbreaking reality for the Angels that they couldn't seem to figure out a way to build properly around a generational talent like Trout, whose injury problems has hastened his decline and even moved him out of centerfield at 34 years of age.
The Angels last put up a winning record in 2015, when they went 85-77 and narrowly missed out on the playoffs. Since then, they've hovered around mediocrity, which is quite confounding considering that there was once a six-year stretch where they had both Trout and Shohei Ohtani on the roster.
There's just been so much mismanagement from the Angels front office, especially from ownership and their questionable allocation of funds. And until something changes at the top, it doesn't seem likely for Los Angeles to break their postseason drought anytime soon — especially when the Houston Astros, Mariners, and Texas Rangers are so ahead of them on an organizational level and they no longer have Trout's elite production to compensate for their lack of talent around the roster.
Angels need to solve their pitching woes first and foremost
The Angels, as things stand, are allowing the most runs in the American League, at 770. They are allowing the third-most runs overall in MLB, being better than just the Washington Nationals and Colorado Rockies — some bad company that no team looking to compete would want to be rubbing elbows with.
They have a few solid pieces for their pitching staff; Jose Soriano and Yusei Kikuchi have done their best to try and lift Los Angeles to respectability. But the Angels need a major overhaul for their entire pitching staff if they were to begin the process of snapping their postseason drought.
