With Anthony Rendon expected to retire after the Angels complete a buyout of the last season in his seven-year deal, the monstrous contract stands out as perhaps the worst in league history.
MLB offseasons always bring heaps of surprising news and storylines that fans, players and executives alike could not have predicted mere months ago.
Yet one of the early storylines this offseason revolves around one of the more predictable developments in recent memory – former star third baseman Anthony Rendon is expected to retire after the Los Angeles Angels complete a buyout of the final year in his seven-year, $245 million contract signed ahead of the 2020 season.
The buyout would officially end what was an agonizing contract for the Angels that once looked like it was the big move necessary to push a Mike Trout/Shohei Ohtani-led team into the postseason – and you can’t blame them for thinking so at all.
While Rendon’s image and reputation in MLB is now based on his chronic lack of availability, expansive injury history and apparent apathy, that was all quite the contrary prior to Rendon landing in Orange County.
Having debuted in April 2013, Rendon went on to play seven incredibly productive seasons with the Washington Nationals, capping the tenure off with one of the best walk years in recent memory – 44 doubles, 34 home runs, 126 RBI and a .319/.412/.598/1.010 slash line alongside an All-Star appearance, Silver Slugger and third-place finish in NL MVP voting.
Rendon further made his case in a sensational postseason run, which saw the third baseman slug for seven doubles and three home runs with a .328 batting average and 1.003 OPS en route to the Nationals’ first and only World Series championship.
The stellar 2019 season at age-29 wasn’t at all out of nowhere either – Rendon had been objectively one of the most potent hitters in baseball over the preceding few seasons.
In the three seasons leading up to his mega-deal with the Angels (2017-19), Rendon was worth a sensational 18.6 WAR, smacking 129 doubles and 83 home runs while slashing .310/.397/.556/.953, good for an astronomical 144 OPS+.
Even going back prior to 2017, Rendon really didn’t have too many blemishes on his career resume. While an MCL injury limited him to just 80 games and a less productive campaign in 2015, that stood out as the only season greatly impacted by health for Rendon up until that point. As a 24-year-old second-year player the season prior, Rendon won a Silver Slugger and finished fifth in NL MVP voting, posting a 126 OPS+ while leading the NL with 111 runs scored.
Therefore, there wasn’t any reason to believe that Rendon would sustain the precipitous drop-off he did upon arriving in Anaheim – and the signing was viewed as a necessary big move from the Los Angeles front office around baseball.
Despite having three-time AL MVP Mike Trout and newly-acquired two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani, the Angels had been without a winning season since 2015 and without a playoff appearance since 2014, two droughts that remain intact in 2025.
While pitching was still clearly a weakness, the signing of Rendon was widely lauded across baseball, with fans and executives alike viewing the move as a massive step forward for an Angels lineup that was filled out with gaping holes for several years.
Rendon’s addition meant a bona fide 1-2 punch alongside the reigning league MVP in Trout, with extra slug out of Ohtani’s bat being looked at as pure gravy at this point. And while the Angels failed to make the expanded playoff field in 2020, one would be hard-pressed to blame the team’s newcomer.
Playing in 52 of the team’s 60 games in the pandemic-shortened season, Rendon slashed .286/.418/.497/.915 with nine home runs and 11 doubles, leading the team with 2.2 WAR while finishing 10th in AL MVP voting.
Though fans wouldn’t have imagined it in their worst nightmares, that was the peak of Rendon’s time with the Angels.
In the five seasons since, Rendon has played just 205 games for the Angels, which includes missing all of the 2025 season while recovering from hip surgery. In the four seasons that Rendon did get into game action in, he has hit just 39 doubles and 13 home runs with a .231/.329/.336/.666 slash line, amounting to a paltry 86 OPS+.
After amassing 2.2 WAR in an abbreviated 2020 season, the former star has compiled just 1.7 WAR in the seasons since as his production cratered more than just about any other star player in recent memory.
While injuries didn’t hamper Rendon too much during his time with the Nationals, they’ve been the major storyline in his Angels tenure. Rendon has had a whopping 17 listed injuries since signing with the Angels ahead of the 2020 season, ranging from multiple wrist and groin injuries to elbow and back ailments, all before his season-ending hip surgery in 2025.
Rendon is far from the first player to have injuries derail a career, or even a bad contract – hell, many fans are looking in the direction of the Colorado Rockies, who shelled out $182 million for an oft-injured and somewhat immobile Kris Bryant. Yet Rendon’s contract and ensuing performance stand out for a multitude of reasons.
While Bryant’s contract was always puzzling, it’s fair to think that even if Bryant had returned to his MVP-level production from 2016, the Rockies would still be several pieces away from a team that was truly in contention. Yet if the Angels had actually gotten the Anthony Rendon they paid for, baseball fans would have been given what we all wanted for several years – a chance to see Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, two of the greatest talents this sport will ever see, play as teammates in the postseason. Not only did it never happen, it never even got close to happening.
Though one can’t really dispute an argument that Bryant’s contract is worse than Rendon’s, it makes a difference for both players and fans when there is clearly an effort and drive there. Despite a back injury that very well could be the end of Bryant’s career and impact his future quality of life, he remains a player desperate to get back on the field, heavily involved in a team that just posted one of the worst records in modern MLB history.
It would feel incredibly generous to say the same of Rendon, who gave the optics of taking the money and running more than perhaps any other athlete in North American professional sports since Albert Haynesworth’s futile deal in Washington in the NFL.
This is not to blame Rendon for his own injuries and the time missed because of them, but the perceived lack of effort and commitment goes beyond fan banter.
A former teammate of Rendon’s with the Angels, Kevin Pillar points to Rendon’s absences from the team throughout spring training and into the regular season, giving especially poor optics for a player who is paid to bring the franchise back into postseason contention.
The buyout also brings comments made in 2024 back to the limelight, with Rendon telling reporters before that season’s spring training that “faith and family” come before baseball for him, the latter of which was “never a priority.”
Former MLB veteran and Talkin’ Baseball co-host Trevor Plouffe made the potent observation that Rendon’s comments would have been lauded by fans and media alike had he continued to produce at the level he did during his time in Washington. Yet when those comments come out of the mouth of a chronically injured player who seldom bothers to involve himself with the team, the words come off as crass and incredibly apathetic.
These events are what make Rendon’s contract stand out as perhaps the worst ever, despite there being plenty of other high-value contracts that were derailed by injuries. You can’t blame the Angels for shelling out big cash for Rendon, who was inarguably the big fish in the pond that offseason – and hey, if they had prioritized pitching instead, they would have ended up with another one of the worst contracts of all-time, with the Nationals signing the now retired Stephen Strasburg to an identical seven-year, $245 million deal that offseason.
Perhaps more than any other big-money deal in recent North American pro sports history, Rendon’s contract was a failure on the player’s part more than anything else – effort, involvement and simply being a teammate can often help alleviate what injuries take away, while many other bad contracts are purely horrible miscalculations from executives, much like what was seen with Bryant’s contract.
With Rendon’s deal, the Angels succeeded in landing the most coveted offensive free agent of the offseason, and proceeded to get just about absolutely nothing out of him after what turned out to be a fruitless detour of a 2020 season.
As a likely buyout nears to send this disaster of a contract to a conclusion, the Angels are left back in square one more than half-a-decade later. They still have not made the postseason since 2014 and have remained without a winning record since 2015. Though Mike Trout just finished off his healthiest season in years, the star is entering his age-34 season with little-to-no meaningful help in a lineup that is once again being retooled.
More than just about any other deal, Rendon’s contract will go down as a what-if – if the Angels even had one or two seasons of the Rendon fans got to see in Washington, we all could have been gifted with some all-time incredible postseason baseball. Instead, Mike Trout still just has 12 career postseason plate appearances while Shohei Ohtani is a two-time World Series champion after making the move just over 30 miles north to Los Angeles.
That’s the version of events the Angels will have to contend with moving forward.
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