Thirteen blown saves. That's the number now. In April we wrote about Romano and Pomeranz and a 7.11 ERA and called it a crisis, and the polite word for what's happened since is that the crisis won. The bullpen that was costing the Angels games two months ago has finished the job. It is the single biggest reason this season is over, and it is somehow still getting worse.
Start with the body count. Jordan Romano, the veteran who was supposed to be the answer, blew back-to-back saves against the Yankees and was designated for assignment in late April — gone, eating the contract, the bullpen's first casualty. The job fell to Kirby Yates by default, which was always the worst-case plan: a thirty-eight-year-old on a one-year deal closing games because there was nobody else. On Sunday against the Astros he walked Jeremy Peña to lead off the ninth and the inning came apart from there. "I can't walk the leadoff guy there," Yates said afterward, which is true, and which he has now said in some form more than once. He hasn't recorded a save since May 23.
Kurt Suzuki, to his credit, is no longer pretending. He has said openly that he needs to figure out who's closing, and that the names in the conversation are Sam Bachman and Chase Silseth — which is another way of saying the Angels are auditioning for the role of ninth-inning man in June, in a season that is already lost, because the plan they started with has fully disintegrated. There is no shame in a rookie manager admitting he doesn't have an answer. There is plenty of shame in the front office handing him a bullpen where the answer was never there to begin with.
The part that should have been the safety net is still in a sling. Ben Joyce — the triple-digit arm who was the entire back-end plan back in spring — is rehabbing a surgically repaired shoulder and just had a setback, four rehab outings in Single-A before the shoulder stopped cooperating. The MRI came back clean, the program slowed down, and there is no return date. The cavalry that was always two weeks away is now indefinitely away, which is the most Angels sentence it is possible to write.
Here is the maddening thing, and it's the same thing it was in April: the rotation has held up its end better than anyone had a right to expect. Soriano has been an ace, a 2.72 ERA carrying a staff that lost Kikuchi and opened without Rodriguez. The lineup, with Trout finally healthy, scores enough to win on most nights. The Angels are not 25-41 because they can't compete. They're 25-41 because they keep handing six-out leads to a bullpen that treats them like live grenades.
The fix, if you can call it that, is the same one the whole roster needs: sell. A reliever market exists every July, and even a team going nowhere should be adding a controllable arm rather than running Yates back out for a fourteenth blown save. But that requires a front office willing to spend prospects on a problem that doesn't help them in 2026, and this front office has spent two months proving it would rather watch the leads evaporate. Thirteen. Check back at twenty.