Year after year, for six seasons straight, the Angels have sputtered across the finish line, always trailing the pack in their unsuccessful attempts to return to the playoffs.
Like a flawed sports car, their problems have varied. In some cases, it was as though they had a faulty ignition, doomed by slow starts from which they couldn’t recover. In others, they would spring a leak in the bullpen, or stall out at the plate.
This year, new general manager Perry Minasian didn’t reengineer the entire team. In many ways, the Angels enter 2021 built in a familiar way: a strong top half of the batting order, a pitching staff lacking a true ace and a team badly needing reliable depth from the bottom of the roster.