{"id":900461,"date":"2026-10-31T00:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T00:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/900461\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T00:00:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T00:00:17","slug":"angels-decline-robert-stephensons-option-as-expected-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/900461\/","title":{"rendered":"Angels decline Robert Stephenson\u2019s option, as expected \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Angels declined Robert Stephenson\u2019s $2.5 million option on Friday, making the relief pitcher a free agent after three injury-marred seasons.<\/p>\n<p>The Angels signed Stephenson to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/2024\/01\/19\/angels-reportedly-agree-to-deal-with-reliever-robert-stephenson\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">three-year, $33\u00a0million deal<\/a> before the 2024 season, but he pitched only 10 innings in that span, having two elbow surgeries. A clause in his original contract triggered the option year when he had his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/2024\/04\/17\/angels-reliever-robert-stephenson-to-miss-season\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">first Tommy John surgery<\/a>, in 2024. When he had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/2026\/04\/08\/angels-robert-stephenson-has-major-elbow-surgery-again\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tommy John surgery in April<\/a>, it knocked him out until sometime in the middle of 2027, at the earliest, making it a relatively obvious decision for the Angels to decline the option.<\/p>\n<p>The Angels also took right-hander Jack Kochanowicz off the 60-day injured list and added him back to the 40-man roster, which is standard procedure in the winter. Kochanowicz, who is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/2026\/06\/09\/angels-jack-kochanowicz-to-undergo-tommy-john-surgery\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">rehabbing from Tommy John surgery<\/a>, can go back onto the 60-day injured list next season.<\/p>\n<p>They also added left-hander Nicol\u00f2 Pinazzi to the 40-man roster. Pinazzi, 27, was signed out of an independent league before posting an 0.84 ERA at four levels of the Angels\u2019 system in 2026. He struck out 103 in 64 innings.<\/p>\n<p>The Angels\u2019 40-man roster is currently at 37.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Angels declined Robert Stephenson\u2019s $2.5 million option on Friday, making the relief pitcher a free agent after&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[2322,363,99],"class_list":["post-900461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-los-angeles-angels","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}