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Alden Gonzalez
The Los Angeles Angels and third baseman Anthony Rendon are in talks about buying out the final year of his contract, potentially bringing a resolution to the seven-year, $245 million deal that did not come close to paying dividends for the team, a source told ESPN on Wednesday.
Rendon, who spent the entire 2025 season recovering from hip surgery, is expected to retire, a source said.
The 35-year-old is owed $38 million in 2026. A potential buyout of that remaining money has not been finalized, and situations like this can often get complicated, but the expectation is that Rendon will defer at least part of that money, giving the team more financial flexibility to address needs this offseason.
The Angels made Rendon the game’s highest-paid third baseman in December 2019, after watching him star for the then-World Series champion Washington Nationals. If the Angels and Rendon’s agent, Scott Boras, are able to finalize a buyout, he will end up playing in just a quarter of the Angels’ games over the life of that deal, compiling 3.7 FanGraphs wins above replacement (fWAR).
A first-round pick out of Rice University in 2011, Rendon established himself as one of the game’s best all-around players with an emerging corps in Washington. He was a hitting savant and a gifted defender, and from 2016 to 2019 only nine position players put up more fWAR.
Rendon slashed .299/.384/.528 in that four-year stretch. His last season with the Nationals saw him finish third in National League MVP voting after putting up a career-high 1.010 OPS along with 34 home runs and a major-league-leading 126 RBIs while making his star turn in a postseason run that ended with the franchise’s first title.
With the spotlight cast onto him, Rendon’s publicly stated limited interest in baseball — he admitted often that it’s not his foremost priority, that it’s merely a job, and that he doesn’t care about the accolades or attention — became an endearing part of his personality. As the years went on, it became a referendum on his lack of productivity.
Rendon looked very much like his usual self during a 2020 season that was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It proved to be the last time the Angels experienced anything close to Rendon’s prime. Over the next four years, he slashed just .231/.329/.336 while appearing in 205 of a potential 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 Feb. 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, mostly rehabbing near his home in Houston. His last home run with the team occurred July 1, 2023. He never played in more than 58 games in a season.
Rendon’s albatross contract coincided with Mike Trout suffering a similar spate of bad injury luck. The unavailability of those two players — by far the team’s highest paid — coupled with an overall lack of depth throughout the roster, only furthered the Angels’ slide despite the emergence of Shohei Ohtani as a two-way phenomenon.
The Angels have not made the playoffs since 2014 and have not won a playoff game since 2009. The 2025 season marked their 10th in a row with a below-.500 record. Kurt Suzuki, Rendon’s teammate on the 2019 Nationals, has since been named the Angels’ manager — the team’s sixth in eight years.
Soon, at least, they can move on at third base.
