ANAHEIM — After spending 30 years with the St. Louis Cardinals, and the last 18 at the top of the baseball operations department, John Mozeliak was ready for a break.
Once he became a civilian, so to speak, he was elated to be able to “go to bed when I was tired and I didn’t have to wait until the last minor-league team played. It was very much a different lifestyle.”
So when Mozeliak, 57, accepted the role as the Angels’ baseball operations consultant and interim general manager, he made it clear that his goal is to help the Angels find their next GM, not to keep the job himself.
“I really don’t want to have to be in the seat of a general manager in five years,” Mozeliak said during an introductory press conference Saturday. “I’m not necessarily when my contract ends just going to completely walk away. Depending on who ends up getting hired, what the team looks like, there could be a position or a role that makes sense for me.”
The top job, however, does not seem to be of interest to Mozeliak.
“I’m just not ready to give my life away again for 80 hours a week, 100 hours a week just to do baseball,” said Mozeliak, who last ran the Cardinals in 2024. “I did like my time away a little bit and I feel refreshed.”
Mozeliak said there had been a few weeks of discussions with Angels president Molly Jolly, and it intensified in the last week, leading up to Friday afternoon’s announcement that the club had fired GM Perry Minasian.
Despite the team’s poor record, it was a surprise that the Angels fired Minasian now, instead of at the end of the season when his contract expires.
“Change always starts with that first decision,” Jolly said. “After spending some time reflecting where we were and what I wanted to accomplish, I felt like starting that process right away was in the best interest of the organization right now as well as in the future.”
Mozeliak said he’s already got a “short list” of names to become the next Angels GM. He said the baseball calendar doesn’t really allow space for talking to anyone working for another team until after the draft (July 11-12) and the trade deadline (Aug. 3).
“Once you get past the trade deadline, I think it’s fair game,” Mozeliak said. “My intentions would be to start beginning that process post-trade deadline.”
There is a looming lockout Dec. 1, which is the end of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. Considering that many expect it will last months and eat into the 2027 season, there was some speculation the Angels would wait until there’s a new agreement to hire a new GM.
Mozeliak shot that down.
“I absolutely hope we have someone in place by then,” Mozeliak said, referring to the expected start of the lockout in December.
In the meantime, Mozeliak’s first two jobs are to deal with the draft and the trade deadline.
He said he plans to entrust most of the draft decisions to the current staff, led by scouting director Tim McIlvaine.
“My philosophy on the draft is let the scouting director and his team do their jobs,” he said.
As for the trade deadline, it’s likely the ultimate decision on what direction the Angels go will be shaped by owner Arte Moreno, as usual. Mozeliak said he had not yet spoken to Moreno since getting this job.
While it’s unlikely the Angels would be buyers, the question is to what degree they are sellers. They could trade away impending free agents like Kirby Yates and Jorge Soler to get modest returns. Or, if they feel they are taking a more long-term view, they could get a bigger haul of prospects by trading pitchers like Reid Detmers or José Soriano. They are each under control for at least two more seasons.
“My answer right now is I don’t know the answer to that,” Mozeliak said. “In time, I think we will come up with a trade deadline strategy that we are all comfortable with, from ownership to Molly, and my job will be to help execute.”
Mozeliak also said that he met with manager Kurt Suzuki and his staff Saturday morning and assured them all that their jobs are safe through the end of the season.
Mozeliak will be spending that time evaluating everything in the organization, from the bottom up.
The Angels haven’t had a winning season since 2015 and they haven’t made the playoffs since 2014. They entered play Saturday with a 34-49 record, tied for the worst in the American League.
“This isn’t going to be something where Molly and I hit a light switch and everything just starts working perfectly,” Mozeliak said. “It’s not going to work that way. It’s going to be where I would ask for some patience. We need a little time to sort of work through this. But in the end, when we come out on the other end of this tunnel, we hope to be in a very successful place.”