{"id":767446,"date":"2026-06-29T08:57:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/767446\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T08:57:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:57:19","slug":"angels-interim-gm-john-mozeliak-discusses-hiring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/767446\/","title":{"rendered":"Angels Interim GM John Mozeliak Discusses Hiring"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 Mozeliak met with the media (including The Athletic\u2019s Sam Blum<\/a> and MLB.com\u2019s Rhett Bollinger<\/a>) on Saturday in his introductory press conference, and one of the chief topics was how the surprising front office change took place.<\/p>\n

Rather unusually, Mozeliak hadn\u2019t yet met with Angels owner Arte Moreno as of Saturday, nor was Moreno involved in the hiring process.\u00a0 Mozeliak\u2019s hiring has been in the works for some time, however.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Mozeliak didn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 A new full-time GM is expected to be hired both before Mozeliak\u2019s 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\u2019 baseball operations pyramid.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

However things may play out, Mozeliak noted that he doesn\u2019t \u201cwant to have to be in the seat of a general manager for like five years.\u00a0 But there could be a position or a role that makes sense for me to stay around.\u00a0 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

With his duties limited to just 2026 for now, Mozeliak says his job entails \u201ca short view and a long view.\u00a0 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exactly how the Halos will approach the deadline is an intriguing question, and one that Mozeliak doesn\u2019t yet know the answer to until he speaks with Moreno.\u00a0 Due to Moreno\u2019s 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.\u00a0 The Halos have rarely dealt players who aren\u2019t impending free agents, and sometimes have even held onto those players \u2014 most infamously, L.A. didn\u2019t trade Shohei Ohtani<\/a> at the 2023 deadline, instead letting him leave in free agency for nothing more than a compensatory draft pick as the return.<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t a lot of time for Mozeliak to convince Moreno to change his approach, if such a change in direction is even on the table.\u00a0 Perhaps Mozeliak\u2019s hiring is a hint that the Angels are again not planning to overhaul things, as Mozeliak doesn\u2019t have much experience at rebuilds.\u00a0 The Cardinals were usually contenders during Mozeliak\u2019s stewardship of their front office from October 2007 until the end of last season, and it wasn\u2019t until the 2024-25 offseason that the Cards indicated that a rebuild was necessary.\u00a0 Even then, St. Louis still hung onto most of its veterans that winter, and the real selling didn\u2019t begin until Chaim Bloom officially replaced Mozeliak as the Cardinals\u2019 PBO.<\/p>\n

In terms of a relationship with Moreno, Mozeliak said \u201cI think the short-term focus for me is, what does that communication line look like?\u00a0 Making sure he understands what our direction is.\u00a0 I\u2019m looking forward to that.\u00a0 I have not met him.\u00a0 But I can tell you this.\u00a0 He does care, he does want to win.\u00a0 He probably is a little too much of a fan than not.\u00a0 That\u2019s a hard thing.\u00a0 Because sometimes on the business side of this game, we have to make decisions that aren\u2019t fun to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minasian looks to be the only major departure for now, as Mozeliak said he is retaining the remainder of the Angels\u2019 front office staff, coaching staff, and manager Kurt Suzuki<\/a> for the remainder of the 2026 season.\u00a0 Mozeliak also has a short list of GM candidates already in mind, but that hiring won\u2019t 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.\u00a0 Jeff Fletcher of the Southern California News Group<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Angels parted ways with general manager Perry Minasian after five-plus seasons on Friday, and hired John Mozeliak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,103307,591,365302,85],"class_list":["post-767446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-john-mozeliak","tag-mlb","tag-randy-flores","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}