The Strikeout Epidemic: The Achilles Heel of the 2025 Halos Campaign
October 15, 2025 - Written by Jack Argent
Photo Credit: @MikeTrout - X
With the conclusion of the 2025 MLB regular season, the Angels once again failed to give these overwhelmingly passionate fans anything to cheer about as they finished 72-90, 5th place in the American League West. This marks the 10th consecutive season that the Angels have finished with a losing season, and as fellow Angel fans know, it seems that as long as Arte Moreno contains full control of ownership the question of whether or not the Angels return to the playoffs will continue to be unknown. Looking back on this past decade, Angel fans can point to a variety of reasons for this prolonged struggle to return to October baseball, some would look at bad long-term free agency signings such as Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton, Justin Upton, and the dreaded Anthony Rendon contract; Other fans like myself, often point to the frequent occurrence of handing out one year “prove it” deals that are given to players that the Angels bank on having career resurging years just for them to fall flat and fail to contribute at a serviceable level. These are guys like Aaron Hicks, Julio Teheran, Matt Harvey, Cody Allen, and Jose Quintana. Although fans could spend hours talking about how the Angels failed to play winning baseball in recent history, this year’s Angels team was unable to get over the outcome that haunted them all year: The strikeout.
To put the Angels inability to put the ball in play at face value, the Angels struck out an alarming 1,627 times in 162 games which is the second highest single season total in major league history. That is an average of over 10 strikeouts a game! Furthermore, the Angels strikeout rate of 27.1%, ranked as the worst in all of baseball, even behind the abysmal 43-119 Colorado Rockies. Even though in today’s day of baseball where hitting home runs and creating launch angle are a popular trend through the league, it is also important to value situational hitting and making contact with runners in scoring position rather than always trying to showcase a power approach. And even though the Angels 3rd ranked home run rate of 3.8% may look sexy on the stat sheet and advanced metrics, it was evident that the power approach didn’t lead to winning baseball. From an individual there were 4 Angels players who ranked in the top 25 in strikeout rate among qualified hitters, with Mike Trout ranking 3rd with a rate of 32%, Zach Neto ranking 17th with a rate of 26.9%, Taylor Ward ranking 20th with a rate of 26.5%, Jo Adell ranking 21st with a rate of 26.4%. And even though all of these players were able to hit at an OPS of above .750, being amongst the top in strikeout rate individually can dramatically hurt your ballclub’s chances of establishing a culture of winning baseball.
Outside of just bringing up the Angels strikeout problems at a surface level, we must look at how and when the Angels are striking out so that this alarming rate of strikeouts can be brought down in 2026 for the sanity of all fans that tune in. One of the most important situations to execute in baseball is to make contact is with runners in scoring position, reason being is that if there are less than two outs, teams can make productive outs such as hitting a ball on the right side of the infield to move a runner from second to third, or hitting sacrifice flys. And in 2025, the Angels were already behind the 8 ball as they finished with the lowest number of at bats with runners in scoring position. And in those 1134 at-bats, the Angels struck out a whopping 30.5% in these opportunities. And according to this data table I made in Google Sheets using Baseball Reference, the Angels ranked dead last in strikeout rate with runners in scoring position.
As mentioned previously, the Angels average approximately 10 strikeouts per games. However, some of us Angels fans tune into games where the Angels decide to play the brand of baseball we would hope to expect on a consistent basis. This brand of baseball includes making contact with 2 strikes, making contact with pitches in the zone, taking advantage of mistake pitches, and not helping the pitcher out by chasing pitches outside the zone. We watch these games and ask ourselves, “Why can’t this version of the Angels show up to the ballpark every night?”
After evaluating the game logs of every Angels regular season game, I found that the Angels record when they struck out less than 10 times in a game was 46-26. Meanwhile, in games where the Angels struck out 10 times or more in a game, their record was 26-64. Based on these records alone, the Angels lost 71.1% of their games in which they struck out 10 or more times. This is a very eye opening concern and many offseason changes are needed to bring this alarming rate of strikeouts back down to earth.
Some of the essential steps the Angels need to take in bringing a focus on dropping strikeouts is by overhauling the coaching staff. Although there have been many reports stating that Albert Pujols will likely become the Angels new manager for the 2026 season, in my personal belief, Pujols would be a better fit as a hitting coach. The reason being is that he could put all of his time and energy into using his world class hitting knowledge to address this strikeout problem that hurt this Angels team as badly as it did. This would mean that the Angels should be in favor of hiring fan favorite Torii Hunter as his strong leadership characteristics would be much needed for an Angels team that seems lifeless at times. Even though the coaching staff is a large foundation it can’t fix a team overnight, sometimes a player has to step up to empower a team to make an adjustment. And that one player is- Nolan Schuanel, his 12.6% strikeout rate and his 10.5% walk rate sits at the top of all qualified Angels hitters. These numbers are a testimony to the amount of pride he takes in his approach at the plate, this can serve as a model to the rest of the team.
Although the Angels strikeout issues seems like a mountain to overcome, with the right voices within the coaching staff and valuable information being spread throughout the clubhouse, the Angels can start putting more balls in play rather than put more fans into a state of distress.
Disclaimer : (1) All photos are not owned by InsideHalos and have been given proper credit beneath each photo. (2) Links of players are property of MLB, MiLB, and Baseball Reference. (3) InsideHalos is a fan-made site not affiliated with Angels Baseball.
