American League Rookie Roundup: Inside the Angels’ Accelerated Rebuild

First baseman, and 2023 first-round pick, Nolan Schanuel is the latest Angels prospect to reach MLB after a short stint in the minor leagues. Expect that trend to continue.

Despite some early setbacks, Schanuel (right) is finding his footing in the majors. / Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

Welcome to the Rookie Roundup, a weekly look-in on baseball’s best and most interesting first-year players. Last week, we broke down which rookies could decide the wide-open National League wild-card race. Next up is a look at Angels first baseman Nolan Schanuel and how the organization is making a habit of fast-tracking prospects to the big leagues.

It was just before the start of spring training when Los Angeles Angels outfielder Jo Adell received a text from first baseman Nolan Schanuel, one that he didn’t expect to get from a player who had already spent one and a half months in the major leagues.

“He was like, Hey, where do we go?” Adell says. “And it kind of woke me up a little bit. I was like, Wow, he hasn’t had a spring training yet.”

Schanuel missed out on a lot of experiences most other players get before making their big-league debut (including going through a proper spring training). But such is the tradeoff when the Angels decided to promote Schanuel to the majors less than six weeks after the organization drafted him with its 2023 first-round pick.

Sunday’s 3–1 loss to the Atlanta Braves marked the one-year anniversary of Schanuel’s major league debut. He was promoted to the big leagues after only 22 minor league games. He held his own during his 29-game stint to end last season—though it admittedly took some time to figure out when and where he was supposed to be during the day-to-day routines in between games and during road trips.

“Almost everywhere we went last year, everything from bus times to—there’s a lot of unwritten rules,” Schanuel says. “When I first got called up here, I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know where to walk. So I ended up walking on the field [before a game] and they’re like, No, you gotta go that way, and I was just like, ‘Sorry, I’m lost.’”

If he was lost walking through Angel Stadium, he seemed to find his footing at the plate. Despite having only 97 minor league plate appearances, the team immediately inserted him into the leadoff spot, tasking the then-21-year-old with setting the table for Shohei Ohtani. It was asking a lot of a talented, yet remarkably inexperienced player, and added to what’s become a growing trend for the organization.

Schanuel’s promotion made it three consecutive draft classes in which the first player to reach the majors did so for the Angels. Shortstop Zach Neto, the team’s 2022 first-rounder, debuted on April 15, 2023. And Los Angeles called up its 2021 11th-round pick, pitcher Chase Silseth, on May 13, 2022.

It’s a strategy that’s, at least in part, born from a lack of depth throughout the minor leagues, as most prospect evaluators grade the Angels’ system among the league’s weakest. But in an era where teams frequently delay promoting big league-ready prospects for the purpose of service-time manipulation, it’s also a player-friendly approach that gives young players opportunities to start building their careers (and, crucially, reach free agency) more quickly. And for a team looking to start anew coming off a wayward decade that saw no postseason appearances, it has added some promising pieces to a brewing youth movement.

Compared to Schanuel, Neto’s 48-game minor league career looks Crash Davis-esque. Both players came from smaller college programs (Schanuel at FAU, Neto from Campbell), and each was playing everyday roles in the major leagues by the end of last season. Both have taken big strides in 2024, with Schanuel coming on strong of late to climb up the rookie leaderboards.

Though he did a lot of learning on the fly during his initial stint in the majors, Schanuel has always been able to get on base. The 6’ 4” first baseman hasn’t produced the power numbers typically associated with the position—he slugged just .330 in 2023 and is slugging .371 this year—but his control of the strike zone was elite from the get-go. Even during the early part of his career when he admits he was just “trying to survive,” Schanuel reached base in each of his first 30 games—the third-longest streak to begin a career in league history.

While he’s not yet a pure power hitter, Schanuel is beginning to do more damage in the batter’s box. Since the All-Star break, he’s hitting .284/.404/.442, anchoring the top of a lineup that’s populated primarily by players age 26 or younger.

Beyond the mechanical adjustments, Schanuel credits his ability to get acclimated to the routines required of professional athletes, which was a steep learning curve coming so quickly after his college days.

“I kind of liked the fact that, at school, you had that time to kind of disassociate yourself with baseball and focus on something else. Now, being here, it’s your job, and it’s kind of all you focus on,” Schanuel says. “There’s 184 days in the season, and I don’t think there’s been a day that’s gone by—off days included—that I didn’t think about either the game tonight or the game tomorrow. So, it’s just a lot more stressful.”

Neto, meanwhile, has blossomed into one of the best young shortstops in baseball. He’s one of 15 players to have at least 15 homers and 15 stolen bases this season, and the second-youngest of the group. His 117 wRC+ is the fourth-highest among American League shortstops, trailing only Bobby Witt Jr., Gunnar Henderson and Corey Seager.

“I think they’ve done an unbelievable job coming in and being a factor… it’s really, really cool to see, and it’s tough to do,” Adell says. “The ups and the downs, the adversity that they both have had, it’s part of [baseball]. But it’s part of it if you’ve been here for 10 years. So it’s pretty cool to see them be able to come out and do that, and I’m really happy and excited to see what happens in the future for them.”

Schanuel and Neto, along with Adell, catcher Logan O’Hoppe and outfielder Mickey Moniak, comprise a young core of position players getting everyday reps for the last-place Angels. And while the results have been mixed and all five have gone through rough patches, their development represents the possibility of better days ahead for a team on its way to a ninth straight losing season.

Schanuel, for his part, is aware that his path to the majors was rare and unlikely to become commonplace anytime soon. But he also believes more players could thrive at the big-league level with an expedited trip through the minors, citing recent success stories among his peers.

“Paul Skenes did it, Wyatt Langford and Jacob Wilson, all within a year of draft day,” Schanuel says. “It’s kind of come to that, where, if you perform well in your first couple months, they’re not gonna wait. They’re gonna pull you up and tell you, Hey, if you can do it there, you can do it here. It’s 100% a different game, but you learn to adapt to the pitching and you just gotta survive and play your game.”

He could soon be joined in Anaheim by another fast riser. The Angels’ first-round pick this year, second baseman Christian Moore, earned a promotion from Single A to Double A after just two games, and is currently hitting .415 with six homers in 13 games.

If Moore finds his way to the majors this year, he’ll have plenty of new teammates who have been in his shoes and can help him navigate life in the big leagues—or, at the very least, tell him what time the bus leaves.