ANAHEIM — When a team goes into the kind of prolonged slump that the Angels have endured, the search for a scapegoat usually finds its way to the coaches.
To Perry Minasian, the question of coach accountability starts by looking at which Angels hitters are struggling the most.
Players like Mike Trout, Taylor Ward and Luis Rengifo probably aren’t influenced much by a hitting coach, the Angels’ general manager said.
“When it’s your veteran players who have been in the league for a long time … they have basically established themselves in a certain way,” Minasian said Friday. “A lot of veteran players are their own hitting coaches. Now, if we had a group of young guys that were all struggling, totally different. The young guys have actually played better than our veteran players to a certain extent, statistically.”
Manager Ron Washington also declined to assign much blame for the slump to the coaches when asked about it on Sunday.
“I think our players are doing the best they can and our coaches are working as hard as they can every single day,” Washington said. “At some point, the (players) have got to get it done between those lines.”
That was a week after catcher Logan O’Hoppe said any criticism of hitting coaches Johnny Washington, Tim Laker and Jayson Nix was misplaced.
“It’s no one else but (the players),” O’Hoppe said. “I think that’s part of the frustration of it, too. The blame is getting put on the wrong people.”
Despite the widespread opinion that the players are ultimately responsible for themselves, that is not always how the industry works. Fair or not, team-wide performances like this routinely cost coaches their jobs.
The Texas Rangers, who are last in the majors in runs per game, fired offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker on Sunday. Ecker was part of the staff that helped the Rangers win the World Series in 2023.
Considering the different expectations of the two teams, the failure of the Rangers’ hitters has been much more egregious than what’s happened to the Angels.
Still, the last three weeks for the Angels (13-19) have been nothing short of miserable offensively.
Over the past 21 games, the Angels have totaled 52 runs, scoring one run or getting shut out seven times. The last time the Angels scored 52 runs or fewer in a 21-game stretch was 1992.
The Angels have hit .197 over that stretch, with a strikeout rate of 30.7% and a walk rate of 4.7%. The major league averages are 21.9% and 8.9%, respectively.
Even including the first 12 games, when the Angels were 8-4 and hitting the ball better, their overall numbers are still among the worst in the majors. They rank 26th in runs per game (3.5), 29th in average (.214), 26th in OPS (.650), 29th in strikeout rate (26.9%) and 30th in walk rate (6.6%).
To Minasian’s point, though, some of the biggest underachievers are veterans who have been in the big leagues long enough that they likely aren’t being influenced much by the hitting coaches.
Trout, 33, has a .726 OPS, which is down from his career .991 mark coming into this season, and even the .860 figure of the past two injury-marred years. Trout is on the injured list with a bone bruise in his left knee.
Ward, 31, has a .578 OPS, down from his career .758 figure.
Rengifo, 28, is currently at .544, compared with his career .698 mark, and significantly down from his .754 OPS in the previous three years.
“They’re better hitters than they’ve shown,” Minasian said. “We’re expecting them to be a lot more productive going forward.”
The veterans who have been part-time players — Travis d’Arnaud (.622 OPS), Tim Anderson (.455) and Kevin Newman (.322) — have also underperformed. All three are over 30 with at least six seasons of big league service time, so they probably fit Minasian’s description as players who are “their own hitting coaches.”
Among the young players, shortstop Zach Neto (.887) and O’Hoppe (.878) have delivered. Kyren Paris has been in a miserable slump for most of the past three weeks, but he started the season so hot that he still has a .742 OPS, which is above the major league average of .708.
The only players who don’t fit the narrative are Jorge Soler and Jo Adell. Soler, 33, is the only veteran who has produced approximately what the Angels expected, with a .731 OPS. Adell has been the worst of the young players, with a .505 OPS.
Adell’s slump has been particularly frustrating to the Angels because he’s stuck to the toe-tap he adopted just before finishing last season with a .771 OPS over his last 34 games.
Looking over all of it, Minasian remains hopeful that better days are ahead.
“The work has been good, the coaching has been good,” Minasian said. “It’s just execution, right? It’s going up there with a plan and executing. And baseball is hard, you know. It’s a hard sport, and you’re going to go through times when you don’t play well. This is one of those times. So this is where, for me, you really look for guys to step up.”
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Blue Jays (TBD) at Angels (LHP Tyler Anderson, 2-0, 2.67), Tuesday, 6:38 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network West, 830 AM
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