Angels' big free-agent signing will miss entire 2024 season

Angels reliever Robert Stephenson is out for the season with an elbow injury, the team informed reporters, via MLB.com’s Rhett Bollinger. The club will provide further details Thursday. They have not yet announced whether Stephenson will undergo surgery or whether he is expected to be ready for the start of the 2025 campaign.

It’s a brutal blow for the Halos, who made Stephenson their biggest addition of the offseason. The Angels inked him to a three-year, $33M contract — their only multiyear investment of the winter. That deal contained a conditional $2.5M team option for 2027 that triggered if Stephenson suffered damage to an elbow ligament that required an injured list stint of at least 130 consecutive days. Sam Blum of the Athletic notes that the option will go into effect as a result of the injury.

That still offers little solace in the short term. The Halos envisioned Stephenson taking high-leverage setup work in front of closer Carlos Estévez. The righty was one of the top upside plays in last year’s relief class after an utterly dominant finish to the ’23 season.

Despite a first-round and top prospect pedigree, Stephenson has had inconsistent results for the bulk of his career. He’s long had excellent stuff, though, and he translated that into four months of elite results after being traded to the Rays last June. Stephenson leaned increasingly on a power slider/cutter in Tampa Bay that bordered on unhittable. In 42 games as a Ray, he worked to a 2.35 ERA while punching out nearly 43% of opposing batters. He induced swinging strikes on a laughable 28.9% of his pitches, an MLB-best mark that was well more than double the league average.

The Angels won’t get the chance to see how replicable that production is in 2024. Stephenson battled some shoulder soreness in spring training, keeping him out of action during exhibition play. The Halos sent him on a rehab stint last week, but that proved disastrous. Stephenson felt elbow discomfort against the first hitter he faced and was pulled from the game. Unfortunately, that evidently presaged a significant injury.

Los Angeles will move Stephenson to the 60-day IL whenever they need a spot on the 40-man roster. They’ll need to move forward without a player they envisioned as the key piece in a revamped bullpen. Each of Matt Moore, Luis García, José Cisnero, Adam Cimber and Hunter Strickland were offseason additions. (Moore played with the Halos before being waived last summer as part of their CBT-avoiding payroll cuts.) The bullpen entered play Wednesday ranked 22nd with a 4.83 cumulative ERA, but they’d been successful holding leads until playing a pair of back-and-forth games against the Rays in the last two days.