Longtime Angels Broadcaster Slams Owner's Decisions

Arte Moreno has been criticized by many.

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno continues to receive the bulk of criticism for the team's seemingly unending woes over the last decade. From criticisms about lack of spending, a carousel of general managers and managers, to changing the team's name from the Anaheim Angels, to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, then Los Angeles Angels, Moreno has become one of baseball's least popular owners.

Most recently, Moreno was criticized by former Angels broadcaster Victor Rojas. Rojas was the Angels' play-by-play broadcaster on television from 2010-20. He also applied for the GM position that went to Perry Minasian before leaving the organization to run the Frisco RoughRiders, the Texas Rangers' Double-A affiliate, as president and general manager.

“I’ve said this ad nauseum," Rojas said recently on the Angels Win podcast. "At some point you have to make a decision that’s different from what you’ve been making the last 13, 14 years, because the same stuff that continues to happen to the organization on and off the field are really generated from the same people. What does it hurt to wipe the whiteboard down and start with something new, something fresh?”

Rojas also criticized the hiring of Angels alumni Torii Hunter and Chuck Finley to front-office assistant positions.

“I love those guys don’t get me wrong, that to me is eyewash," Rojas said. "That’s false hustle stuff from the organization. Well ... why didn’t you do that the last 14, 15 years? Why don’t you have a Fan Fest? Why haven’t you had an old timers’ thing where Joe Schmos can pull a hamstring playing against Chuck Finley in Tempe Diablo Stadium. All those things have been there for you to do, and yet you’ve never done it. It’s like why? What the point? How’s that working out for you? Clearly it’s not working so f***ing wake up and do something about it. At some point somebody’s got to wake up and clear the cobwebs. We’re having the same friggin’ conversation we had a year ago, and last year you had Shohei (Ohtani)."

The GM chair has rotated several times during the last 15 years. The two constants: Owner Arte Moreno and team president John Carpino, who was hired to his current role in Nov. 2009.

It's clear that things need to change for the Angels to return to the prominence they had when Moreno originally bought the team shortly after they won their lone World Series title in 2002. Without this change, both Moreno and the Angels will remain unsuccessul and as the recipients of this kind of criticism.