By Tyler Sonderholzer
A disaster. Those are the two words that can describe Los Angeles Angels’ 2022 Major League Baseball (MLB) season. With one of the best lineups in baseball, two of the best players in the MLB and leading the American League (AL) West after the first month of the season, the Angels were destined to end their long postseason drought, last time they made the postseason was in 2014. However, at the time of writing, the Angels are now 67-86 and will miss the postseason, achieving their seventh straight losing season.
For Angels fans this is just another familiar sight that has occurred the past several seasons, something always happens, injuries, big losing streaks or just bad luck that derails the whole season. What happened this season? A 15-game losing streak that sent the Angels from the top of the division to the near bottom of the division and major injuries to top players like right fielder Taylor Ward, first baseman Jared Walsh, third baseman Anthony Rendon and star center fielder Mike Trout.
This has been a very tough season for Angels fans as they have witnessed the early season success to the mid-season collapse to another destined postseason miss. This is the eighth straight season of missing the playoffs and with the rosters, the Angels have, including two of the best players in baseball, in Trout and star two-way player Shohei Ohtani, there is no way the Angels should be missing the postseason.
It seems that throughout any point of the season when one area of play, such as pitching, is going well, another area of play, such as hitting, is mediocre or just flat-out awful. It has happened year after year and it seems to be more prevalent this season.
As an Angels fan, it is infuriating and embarrassing that the team does not make the postseason. Ohtani and Trout are once-in-a-generation players but it feels that the team is wasting their careers. Trout has been on the team since 2011, his only postseason appearance with the team was in 2014 when the Angels got swept by the Kansas City Royals. Meanwhile, Ohtani joined the Angels in 2018 and he has yet to play a postseason game with the Angels. The team needs to change things up if they want to keep Ohtani, who is a free agent after the end of next season.
While this season has been bleak for the Angels, there have been some positives, such as Ward winning MLB Player of the Week early in the season, Ohtani putting up another Most Valuable Player caliber season, Trout hitting a home run in seven straight games and rookie pitcher Reid Detmers throwing a no-hitter. However, those positives are nowhere close to making this season a success.
Overall, this season has just been flat-out embarrassing. The team needs to make the postseason next year, they cannot afford to have another season like the 2022 season. Players need to find a way to stay healthy, the team needs all aspects of play to perform well and the team just needs to finally have good luck. The team needs to replicate the success of the early 2000s, only missing the postseason twice from 2002-2009. The Angels have to stop this constant losing and finally be the successful team that they are supposed to be, the reputation of the team depends on it.
