CJ Abrams Is Everything the Angels Needed — and Never Had

Through 35 games this season, CJ Abrams is hitting .287/.395/.516 with 8 home runs, a 153 wRC+, and a .960 OPS. His barrel rate has jumped north of 11% — a significant climb from where he’s been in previous seasons. He’s 24 years old and he looks like a finished product. The Nationals don’t know what to do with themselves.

Meanwhile, Zach Neto is hitting .218 through 37 games in Anaheim. He dug himself out of a 0-for-22 ditch just two days ago. The Angels are 13-22 and dead last in the AL West.

CJ Abrams’ grand slam highlights a lopsided win for the @Nationals! pic.twitter.com/czLI8HC6Nj

— MLB (@MLB) May 7, 2026

To be clear about Neto: the guy had a legitimate 2025. Twenty-six home runs, 26 stolen bases, 5.1 WAR — that’s a top-ten shortstop in the sport. His slow start this year doesn’t erase any of that, and one bad April doesn’t make him a cautionary tale. He’s still 24. He might be fine.

But “might be fine” is the operative phrase, and that’s the organizational problem in a nutshell. The Angels have been building toward “might be fine” for the better part of a decade. Abrams is what “definitely good” looks like, and it wasn’t an accident.

Abrams went 6th overall in 2019 to San Diego. The Angels, picking 15th that same draft, took Will Wilson — a shortstop out of NC State who was traded to San Francisco two years later, stalled in the minors (.222/.297/.346, wRC+ 76), and is now doing roster-depth things for someone’s Triple-A affiliate. That’s not a scouting failure so much as a systemic one. Wilson was a reasonable pick. The issue is that even when the Angels find guys worth developing, the development part rarely happens. MLB Pipeline ranked the Angels’ farm system 30th entering 2026, and this isn’t new — they’ve been bottom-five in farm rankings in nine of the last 17 seasons despite drafting in the top 15 most of that stretch.

Abrams, by contrast, came up through the Padres’ system, got moved to Washington in the Juan Soto trade in August 2022, and kept getting better in an organization that knew how to work with him. His walk rate is now 11.6%. He’s not running on contact luck — he’s changed who he is as a hitter. That’s development. That’s infrastructure.

Three of the Angels’ best current players developed mostly outside this organization. The ones who did come up here have had their ceilings bumped down by a coaching staff and front office that keeps cycling through answers without ever fixing the question. Neto might still be the answer. He has the tools. But if he breaks out the way Abrams has, it’ll be despite the Angels’ system, not because of it.

The 2026 record is 13-22. The farm is last. This isn’t a weather pattern.