Where has Ron Washington’s “small-ball” philosophy gone?

I know it’s commonplace for people to rant about Ron Washington on here and I’ve done my best to avoid doing so (with the exception of a couple of bullpen decisions this season). Obviously, it’s not a manager’s fault that his entire lineup goes into a slump at the same time. That being said, there is one thing that really confuses me.

Last season, Wash doubled down on playing small-ball in games that were fairly meaningless. He called for several squeeze plays throughout the year, despite repeated failure. He had some of the better hitters in the lineup lay down sac-bunts to advance runners, including Neto (4 times) and O’Hoppe (1 time). One of the positive developments from last season was that the Angels were more aggressive on the base paths. They ranked 12th in MLB with 133 steals. That’s the highest they had ranked since 2018 and their most steals since 2017!

In tonight’s game, there appeared to be two opportunities to play small ball in the early innings. In the 2nd inning, Travis d’Arnaud leads off with a double. Wash had the opportunity to call for a sac-bunt from Rengifo to advance the runner to 3rd base. Rengifo has been struggling at the plate and was hitting from the right side, making it more likely that he’d roll over a pitch to the left side of the infield. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to give Adell a RBI opportunity coming off of a 2-hit night.

In the bottom of the 3rd inning, Neto singles with one out. It appeared to be a good spot to call for a hit-and-run with Schanuel batting next. Neto and Schanuel are not your prototypical 1-2 hitters. The only way it makes sense to use them, in that order, would be to take advantage of Neto’s speed and Schanuel’s ability to make contact. There was also an opportunity to call for a double steal during Moncada’s AB. LHP’s notoriously have a difficult time holding runners on 2nd and Austin Wells has an average pop-time >2 seconds this season (ranking in the 9th percentile of all MLB catchers). Again, this feels like a missed opportunity to put a runner on 3rd base with less than 2 outs.

The Angels offense is clearly struggling and they had an opportunity to score early against a very good pitcher. With the way Anderson was pitching, you’d think that a manager would use every tool at his disposal to get some early runs on the board. After the 3rd inning, Rodón settled in and allowed only one hit over the next 4 innings. The Angels comeback fell flat in the 9th, but I can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if they could have manufactured one run in the early stages of the game.

This season, the Angels rank 28th in MLB with just 24 stolen bases. The only teams that rank behind them are the Astros (24) and Tigers (20). They are currently on pace for just 73 steals over 162 games, which would be a 45% y2y decrease. They also rank in the bottom-half of the league in sacrifice hits, despite rostering several struggling players who are capable of getting down an occasional sac-bunt. For example, Kevin Newman had 6 sacrifice hits for the D-Backs in 2024, but has just 1 this season despite hitting sub-.200 through May.

So, my question is, where has Ron Washington’s “small ball” philosophy gone? And why have the Angels not tried to manufacture more runs during their stretches of abysmal offensive play?