Los Angeles Angels and Anthony Rendon: Contract Termination Negotiations
The Los Angeles Angels and third baseman Anthony Rendon are in talks to terminate the final year of his contract, according to sources close to the team.
This seven-year, $245 million deal hasn’t met expectations for the team.
Rendon, who spent the entire 2025 season recovering from hip surgery, is expected to retire.
The 35-year-old player has $38 million pending for 2026. Although the termination of that remaining money has not yet been finalized, it is expected that Rendon will defer at least a portion, which will give the team greater financial flexibility to address needs in this offseason.Anthony Rendon is expected to retire if he and the Angels reach an agreement to terminate the last year of his seven-year, $245 million contract. Rendon has participated in only 205 of 810 games in the last five seasons due to injuries.
The Angels made Rendon the highest-paid third baseman in the game in December 2019, after seeing him excel with the Washington Nationals, then World Series champions. If the Angels and Rendon’s agent, Scott Boras, manage to finalize the termination, Rendon will have played only a quarter of the Angels’ games during the term of that contract, accumulating 3.7 wins above replacement (fWAR) according to FanGraphs.
Rendon, selected in the first round of the 2011 draft from Rice University, established himself as one of the best all-around players in the game with a rising group in Washington. He was a hitting genius and a gifted defender, and from 2016 to 2019 only nine position players accumulated more fWAR.
In that four-year period, Rendon batted .299/.384/.528. In his last season with the Nationals, he finished third in the National League MVP voting after recording a 1.010 OPS, the highest of his career, along with 34 home runs and 126 RBIs, leading the major league, while becoming the star of a postseason run that ended with the franchise’s first title.
With the focus on him, Rendon’s publicly limited interest in baseball, often admitting that it is not his main priority, that it is simply a job and that he does not care about praise or attention, became an endearing part of his personality. Over the years, it became a referendum on his lack of productivity.
Rendon looked a lot like himself during a 2020 season that was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It turned out to be the last time the Angels experienced anything close to Rendon’s prime. In the following four years, he batted just .231/.329/.336 while participating in 205 of a possible 648 games. Injuries to his left groin, left knee, left hamstring, left shin, left oblique, lower back, both wrists, and both hips sent him to the injured list.
The final blow came on February 12, 2025, when the Angels announced at the start of spring training that Rendon would undergo hip surgery and miss the season. Rendon spent the entire season away from the team, mainly rehabilitating near his home in Houston. His last home run with the team occurred on July 1, 2023. He never played in more than 58 games in a season.
Rendon’s contract coincided with Mike Trout suffering a similar string of bad luck with injuries. The unavailability of those two players, the team’s highest paid, along with the general lack of depth throughout the roster, only accentuated the Angels’ downfall despite the emergence of Shohei Ohtani as a two-way phenomenon.
The Angels haven’t reached the playoffs since 2014 and haven’t won a playoff game since 2009. The 2025 season marked their tenth consecutive season with a sub-.500 record. Kurt Suzuki, Rendon’s teammate on the 2019 Nationals, has been named manager of the Angels, the team’s sixth in eight years.
Soon, at least, they will be able to move on to third base.
