What Angels sale means for the team, Mike Trout -- and all of MLB

After 23 years, Arte Moreno is selling the Los Angeles Angels.

Stan Kroenke -- whose company, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, owns the NFL's Los Angeles Rams, the NBA's Denver Nuggets and the NHL's Colorado Avalanche -- agreed Tuesday to acquire a controlling interest in the team from Moreno.

Under Moreno, MLB's first Latino majority owner, the Angels made the postseason six times, but haven't played meaningful October baseball since 2014 -- despite the presence of Mike Trout, one of the greatest players of his generation. The team also let two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani walk after the 2023 season, when he signed with the rival Los Angeles Dodgers.

What does this deal mean for the Angels? For Major League Baseball? ESPN MLB experts Alden Gonzalez and Buster Olney break it down.

Who is Stan Kroenke?

Gonzalez: A man who clearly aspires to run sports in Southern California. Kroenke, 79, presides over the NFL's L.A. Rams and has now taken control of the Angels in neighboring Orange County. According to Forbes, he is worth approximately $24.3 billion. (Moreno, for reference, is worth $5 billion.) Kroenke is a real estate magnate who married a Walmart heiress and, all told, owns eight sports franchises. Four of them (the Nuggets, Avalanche, Rapids of MLS and Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League) are based in Colorado. The other two are in England: Arsenal F.C. of the Premier League and Arsenal W.F.C. of the Women's Super League.

What is Kroenke's track record as an owner of teams in other major sports?

Gonzalez: Kroenke's teams have won two Super Bowls, two Stanley Cups, an NBA title, an MLS Cup, two NLL championships and, most recently, a Premier League championship.

If you talk to L.A. Rams fans, he is a godsend. If you talk to fans of the NFL franchise when it was based in St. Louis, he is public enemy No. 1. If you ask Arsenal fans, he is an absentee owner. If he is heavily involved in the Angels, though, it would probably be a good thing. How involved he actually will be remains to be seen.

What could this mean for the future of the Angels?

Gonzalez: If the Rams offer up any evidence, Angels fans should be really excited. When Kroenke (as minority owner) helped move the Rams from St. Louis back to L.A., he recognized that he needed to not just win but do so with stars. He traded up to the first overall pick to land Jared Goff, hired the NFL's youngest coach in Sean McVay, and later encouraged his general manager, Les Snead, to bring in top-tier talent, no matter the cost.

In other words, Kroenke thought boldly, never more so than by engineering the construction of SoFi Stadium at the heart of a 300-acre sports-and-entertainment hub. The Angels need that type of boldness. For too long, they'd grown stale.

Olney: The Angels are going to be in a better place, undoubtedly, because Moreno had become one of the least effective owners in Major League Baseball, with his unusual management style. He would occasionally drop in and hijack negotiations to land expensive sluggers -- Josh Hamilton and Albert Pujols, for example -- who would greatly complicate the team's payroll situation, and he'd cut operating expenses in other parts of the organization, leaving the general managers to clean up the mess.

In another famous example of his meddling, he refused to allow former GM Perry Minasian to trade Shohei Ohtani when it was apparent that Ohtani was headed to free agency.

Does this make it more likely Mike Trout will be playing playoff baseball in the near future?

Gonzalez: First of all, does Mike Trout want to stay with the Angels? Without having heard from Trout himself, my gut reaction is yes. It has been obvious for a while that Trout does not want to leave the Angels or, just as relevant, his summer spot in Orange County. What would drive him out would be a lack of hope that the Angels as an organization could turn this around.

But he has hope now. John Mozeliak came in as a consultant and began to do things differently, and now Kroenke comes in with the reputation of building the Rams into a powerhouse just 35 miles north. It was already going to be exceedingly difficult to find a taker for Trout's contract, which will pay him $141.8 million from 2027 to 2030. Perhaps now, at least for another year, that won't be necessary.

Olney: One way or another, absolutely. Trout always has the option to try to force his way off the Angels, and a new owner is more likely to consider that path than Moreno, who was never going to trade a future inner-circle Hall of Famer and the face of his franchise -- and so that could now be a more viable option. If Trout stays -- and that seems more likely -- then the Angels are bound to be more effectively run going into the future. Let's put it more bluntly: It's impossible for Kroenke to run baseball operations worse than Morena has during Trout's career.

What is Arte Moreno's legacy as an owner?

Gonzalez: Moreno's legacy can essentially be split into two chapters. The first was rosy. He came in off the heels of a championship in 2003 and quickly won the adoration of the fans, signing Vladimir Guerrero and Bartolo Colon, lowering beer prices and presiding over the most successful run in franchise history, one that included five division titles in a six-year stretch from 2004 to 2009. By the end of 2011, Moreno had built the Angels into the type of franchise worthy of commanding a 20-year, $3 billion television deal.

Then things got stale. Their big free agents flopped, their player development pipeline stalled, and Moreno started to get panned for wielding too much control over baseball operations and being stingy in every aspect of the organization outside of the payroll. Throughout 2026, as the Angels floundered through another miserable season, "sell the team" chants were a constant at Angel Stadium. Moreno became arguably the most hated owner in MLB.

Olney: A missed opportunity. Trout and Ohtani are two all-time great baseball talents, playing in a market that could easily sustain a big-market payroll, and the Angels didn't win a single postseason game with one or both of them. There was a time early in Moreno's tenure when the Angels were regarded as a good, progressive organization, and Moreno let them fall far behind the times -- and now they have a long way to go to catch up to the standard the Dodgers have established in Southern California.

Does another MLB team being sold have any bearing on baseball's labor negotiations?

Gonzalez: It won't change MLB's push for a salary cap, but it will turn up the volume on the players' retort. To players, the Padres selling for a record $3.9 billion proved what many of them firmly believe -- that if you invest in the product, like late Padres owner Peter Seidler did, fans will come, revenues will follow, and worst case, you can sell the team for far more than you bought it for.

The Angels topped that valuation, a source with knowledge of the situation said, even though they have long fielded a miserable on-field product. To players, it only bolsters their case that baseball is a good business, and that a salary cap is not needed to boost franchise values.

Olney: I think the sale prices for the Padres and Angels will embolden the owners even more in their quest for a salary cap, in the belief that a massive overhaul of the sport's economic system -- in which cost certainty becomes the priority -- will enhance franchise values even more. It's possible that Moreno, who has been a front-line warrior in past labor negotiations, was less interested in wading through a fight, but other owners will see that effort as a way to even more wealth.