Nearly two months into the season, the Angels sat at 27–17 and had the look of one of the best teams in the American League. A dozen consecutive losses later, their manager was fired, and they never got above .500 again.
With another losing season winding down, Joe Maddon has offered his version of how his Angels tenure came to an unceremonious end. In an excerpt from his upcoming book, The Book of Joe: Trying Not to Suck at Baseball and Life—co-written with Sports Illustrated‘s Tom Verducci—Maddon detailed his relationship with Angels general manager Perry Minasian, which he says reached a breaking point on May 9 when Minasian broke a cardinal rule by calling down to the dugout mid-game and instructing Maddon to remove Mike Trout amid an Angels blowout win over the Rays.