There is this illogical train of thought in some quarters that essentially equates being rich and having a successful company with being good at business. These are not mutually inclusive. Arte Moreno is an awful baseball owner and his time at the helm of the Angels highlights the fact he probably is fairly incompetent in the corporate world.
“But he’s a billionaire” is likely what some of you are saying. Let’s get one thing straight: plenty of unqualified douchebags have made boatloads of cash in America with no discernible skills. If you’re really annoying and try to impose yourself onto others, eventually people will give you what you want to just go away.
That is Arte Moreno in a microcosm. Dude is a loser who happened to be in the right place, at the right time with a billboard business that required him to schlep around bugging people to get contracts and buying other billboard companies. That’s right, he made his money from renting space from others and then selling it on.
However, the success could have fallen to literally anyone who was there at the time. Sure, Moreno being a scumbag probably helped the company cut more corners and do dodgy things to get ahead (allegedly), but there is nothing special about anything he did in the business arena. This brings us to the Los Angeles Angels, formerly of Anaheim.
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Arte Moreno is an awful baseball owner
Buster Onley wrote an article on the complicated legacy Moreno is leaving behind over on ESPN. The thing is there are no complications. The respected MLB journalist’s feature piece was nothing but tales of poor management and incompetence that all came from the very top. The only positives were some playoff appearances during his first years in charge that only happened because the billboard magnate wasn’t meddling in club affairs.
That meddling is one reason why Arte Moreno is an awful baseball owner. Seriously, the Angels have arguably the two best players in the sport and haven’t been able to finish better than .500. Their farm system has been horrible and their free agent signings even worse.
The interesting comparison here is the Baltimore Orioles. The O’s made the playoffs in 2016 (FYI the Angels last .500 season was 2015), bottomed out entirely over the next five seasons and are looking like postseason contenders once more. This isn’t to say the club needed to tank. But they have lacked a coherent plan for more than a decade.
Let’s not pretend Los Angeles is some storied franchise with a history of winning. They were sort of lovable losers under Gene Autry. Walt Disney was panned as owners despite overseeing a World Series victory and giving the us Angels in the Outfield. The bar wasn’t set particularly high at Angels Stadium.
Moreno took over with a solid team in place and rode to success on the back of what someone else had built. Then when it came to get involved, he proved to have zero acumen as an owner and exposed himself as a poor business in the process.
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