So why, exactly, did then-Angels general manager Tony Reagins make the deal? Scott Miller of CBS Sports wrote on the troubled nature of the Los Angeles front office in 2013.
“When the decision was made to pursue Vernon Wells from Toronto before the 2011 season, ... it was Moreno, one source says, who threatened then-GM Tony Reagins with a firing if Reagins didn’t consummate the deal within 24 hours. Moreno is described as being chapped at having lost free agent Adrian Beltre to the Rangers roughly two weeks earlier, and that helps explain why, in an agreement that utterly stunned almost everybody in the game, the Angels agreed to pay all but $5 million of the $86 million to a player that Toronto was so eager to offload that the Jays surely could have been persuaded to pay millions more.”