The Los Angeles Angels and Anthony Rendon have agreed to restructure the remainder of his contract, essentially ending the All-Star third baseman’s problematic tenure with the team, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.
Rendon was scheduled to be paid $38 million in 2026, the final season of a seven-year, $245 million contract he signed after starring for a Washington Nationals team that won the World Series in 2019.
Rendon has instead agreed to spread those payments out over what a source described as “a few years,” though the details of that payout are not known publicly.
Rendon and his representatives at the Boras Corp. have been in talks with the Angels about restructuring his deal since the early part of the offseason, on the heels of a 2025 season lost entirely to hip surgery.
Rendon, 35, won’t officially declare retirement, but he is not expected to play in 2026 and will instead continue to rehab from his home in Houston, as he did throughout the 2025 season, according to a source.
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Rendon will continue to occupy a roster spot for the Angels next season, the source added, though the team can simply place him on the 60-day injured list to free up space.
Rendon became the game’s highest-paid third baseman in December 2019 and will end up playing in just a quarter of the Angels’ games over the life of his deal, compiling a mere 3.7 FanGraphs wins above replacement (fWAR).
A first-round pick out of Rice University in 2011, Rendon established himself as one of baseball’s best all-around players with an emerging crop 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 IL.
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 for Los Angeles.
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.
The Athletic first reported that Rendon and the Angels had reached agreement on a restructuring.
