Angels sign ex-Dodgers All-Star, continuing a trend

The Los Angeles Angels are riding the longest active postseason drought in Major League Baseball, 10 years and counting. Only Mike Trout remains on their roster from their last playoff entry, a team that was swept in a three-game Wild Card series by the eventual 2014 pennant winners, the Kansas City Royals.

Since then, the Angels have made a habit of collecting slightly (or not so slightly) past-their-peak position players to fill the gaps of their perennially poor farm system. Their collection of former Los Angeles Dodgers grew by one on Monday, when they signed veteran utility player Chris Taylor.

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Taylor's arrival came at the expense of Kyren Paris, a former second-round draft pick who is hitting .190 this season. It's an all-too-familiar chain of events for Angels fans.

Taylor, 34, will be the eighth former Dodger to take an at-bat for the Angels this decade, joining Travis d'Arnaud, Kevin Pillar, Jake Lamb, Scott Schebler, Drew Butera and Albert Pujols.

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Within that group of eight players, only Pujols was a Dodger after his time with the Angels ended (as opposed to vice versa). Only one other former Angel has taken an at-bat for the Dodgers since 2020 after leaving Anaheim: Shohei Ohtani. It's entirely possible that the only two Angel-turned-Dodger hitters this decade will someday have a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

That's a nifty factoid, but it's more than that. It's further evidence that the Dodgers — one of baseball's most progressive teams, winners of two of the last five World Series — are ahead of the curve in a very literal way, while their neighbors down the 5 Freeway are not.

Statcast swing speed aging curve / Tom Tango on Bluesky

Tom Tango recently shared the above chart on Bluesky, demonstrating how swing speed changes as hitters age. The effect is clear and dramatic: after a hitter's age-31 season, the bat starts slowing down almost irreversibly.

There are exceptions to any rule, especially when the rule consists of amalgamation of hundreds of data points. But if you're collecting hitters in hopes they will hit the ball hard, there's a side of this curve you want to be on — and a side you don't.

Two teams epitomize the vast gulf between life on one side of the curve and the other, and they happen to share the same media market.

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