So by now you’ve probably heard… Josh Hamilton is likely headed back to the Texas Rangers in exchange for somewhere around $15 million in salary relief and nothing else. With no players coming back to Anaheim, the deal is more pawn than trade, which tells you everything you need to know about how badly ownership wanted to wash their hands of Hamilton.
A common refrain in wake of the news has been that Hamilton’s contract should immediately go down as one of the worst in franchise history. I can’t say that I disagree with the sentiment, but I would argue that his place on that list has much, much more to do with the Angels than it does Hamilton.