The Angels parted ways with general manager Perry Minasian after five-plus seasons on Friday, and hired John Mozeliak to fill the interim GM role for the remainder of the 2026 campaign. Mozeliak met with the media (including The Athletic’s Sam Blum and MLB.com’s Rhett Bollinger) on Saturday in his introductory press conference, and one of the chief topics was how the surprising front office change took place.
Rather unusually, Mozeliak hadn’t yet met with Angels owner Arte Moreno as of Saturday, nor was Moreno involved in the hiring process. Mozeliak’s hiring has been in the works for some time, however. Agent Steve Hilliard is a mutual friend of both Mozeliak and Angels president Molly Jolly, and it was Hilliard who linked the pair up weeks ago as the Angels were quietly exploring replacing Minasian.
Mozeliak didn’t close the door on potentially staying with the Angels in some role beyond the end of his current contract, which is up at the end of 2026. A new full-time GM is expected to be hired both before Mozeliak’s deal is up and before the league is expected to lock out the players (and freeze all baseball-related business) on December 1, but it remains to be seen if that GM will be atop the Angels’ baseball operations pyramid. This new GM might be the new chief voice with Mozeliak staying on an advisor, or the GM could be the second-in-command under Mozeliak as a president of baseball ops.
However things may play out, Mozeliak noted that he doesn’t “want to have to be in the seat of a general manager for like five years. But there could be a position or a role that makes sense for me to stay around. In the meantime, I think I can be very helpful on really bridging the gap for someone like Molly, who is coming from the business side, to oversee baseball operations.”
With his duties limited to just 2026 for now, Mozeliak says his job entails “a short view and a long view. And our short view is going to be coming through the draft, addressing the trade deadline, finding our new general manager, and then, ultimately, hopefully, we lead to that foundation and structure that provides perpetual winning for the Angels.”
Exactly how the Halos will approach the deadline is an intriguing question, and one that Mozeliak doesn’t yet know the answer to until he speaks with Moreno. Due to Moreno’s longstanding aversion to rebuilding and his apparent belief that the Angels are never far away from a turn-around, Los Angeles has taken a pretty minimal approach to the deadline over this stretch of 10 (and going on 11) straight losing seasons. The Halos have rarely dealt players who aren’t impending free agents, and sometimes have even held onto those players — most infamously, L.A. didn’t trade Shohei Ohtani at the 2023 deadline, instead letting him leave in free agency for nothing more than a compensatory draft pick as the return.
There isn’t a lot of time for Mozeliak to convince Moreno to change his approach, if such a change in direction is even on the table. Perhaps Mozeliak’s hiring is a hint that the Angels are again not planning to overhaul things, as Mozeliak doesn’t have much experience at rebuilds. The Cardinals were usually contenders during Mozeliak’s stewardship of their front office from October 2007 until the end of last season, and it wasn’t until the 2024-25 offseason that the Cards indicated that a rebuild was necessary. Even then, St. Louis still hung onto most of its veterans that winter, and the real selling didn’t begin until Chaim Bloom officially replaced Mozeliak as the Cardinals’ PBO.
In terms of a relationship with Moreno, Mozeliak said “I think the short-term focus for me is, what does that communication line look like? Making sure he understands what our direction is. I’m looking forward to that. I have not met him. But I can tell you this. He does care, he does want to win. He probably is a little too much of a fan than not. That’s a hard thing. Because sometimes on the business side of this game, we have to make decisions that aren’t fun to make.”
Minasian looks to be the only major departure for now, as Mozeliak said he is retaining the remainder of the Angels’ front office staff, coaching staff, and manager Kurt Suzuki for the remainder of the 2026 season. Mozeliak also has a short list of GM candidates already in mind, but that hiring won’t come until August at the absolute earliest, as there is too much immediate business to attend in the form of the draft and the trade deadline. Jeff Fletcher of the Southern California News Group suggests that Cardinals assistant GM Randy Flores could be a candidate for the Angels job, as Flores is a known quantity to Mozeliak and has local ties as a SoCal native.
