LAS VEGAS — John Mozeliak has spent most of his career building baseball teams. His job with the Los Angeles Angels is different these days: keep the franchise running until Stan Kroenke completes his purchase of the club and installs new leadership.
"My role right now is to keep the lights on, keep the trains running on time, and that's what I do," Mozeliak said Tuesday at Major League Baseball's general managers meetings.
The Angels are juggling three things at once: an ownership change, a search for a new general manager and a possible work stoppage when baseball's collective bargaining agreement expires. While other general managers in Las Vegas are working on trades and free-agent signings, Mozeliak is mostly gathering information to hand to his successor.
That search is already underway. Representatives of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment are interviewing candidates this week, and Mozeliak expects to get more involved once the list is narrowed.
"They are meeting right now this week with individuals," Mozeliak said of the KSE group. "And then once they get the smaller number, I'll probably get more (involved)."
No candidates have contacted him, and he doesn't know exactly who is being interviewed, "but I have a pretty good idea," he said.
The search is moving ahead even though MLB has not approved the sale to Kroenke, who also owns the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche. Mozeliak said he has no timeline for the deal to close. His understanding is that it isn't on the agenda for next week's owners meetings, but he said that once it is, approval should come quickly.
"Purchasing a club's complicated, so I imagine just doing all that due diligence maybe takes a little more time than people thought," he said.
That leaves the Angels in an awkward spot as the offseason begins. Mozeliak has had a few conversations with agents and is talking with other teams, but he doesn't want to make commitments that would tie the next general manager's hands. If a no-brainer trade or signing came along, he said, "I would imagine there'd be a couple phone calls" before he could act.
"I do think people want to move a little quicker," Mozeliak said. "And then from my standpoint, I need to move a little slower."
He acknowledged the uncertainty is hurting the Angels with free agents.
"It is hard to recruit at the moment, right now, just given our uncertainty," he said.
Instead, he is identifying trade partners, evaluating free agents and building a file the next general manager can act on right away, so that whoever takes over can be nimble in whatever direction they choose.
The labor fight could slow all of that down. A lockout would freeze major league transactions and further delay any overhaul of the roster. Mozeliak declined to predict whether one is coming. "That would simply be a guess on my point," he said.
"I don't think we need to spend a lot of energy worrying about labor right now," he said. "Right now, it's business as usual. So it's just going to be continue to do agent meetings, team meetings."
Once the new leadership is in place, he said, it will do the heavy lifting.
For Mozeliak, the former St. Louis Cardinals executive, this is an unexpected final chapter. He thought his time with the Angels would be brief and never expected to be in Las Vegas this week.
"When I signed up for this, I did not anticipate having to actually attend the GM meetings," he said. "I thought I'd be more in the 'I'm back on the beach' mode, but here we are."
"My career right now is going to be measured in days, maybe a week or two, but not years," Mozeliak said.
He doesn't plan to stay on as an adviser once the new regime arrives. "I've never really shown any interest in being an adviser," he said.
He believes the Angels are in better shape than when he arrived. One of his main goals was improving a farm system he thinks has long trailed those of the game's better organizations, and he pointed to this year's draft and the young players the Angels added through trades.
"I think this year's draft for the Angels was positive," Mozeliak said.
At the trade deadline, he said, "we didn't blow up the major league team completely, but we certainly explored a lot of different things. And I think just from a prospect value standpoint, Angels are in a better spot. But there's more to do there."
His advice for the next leadership group is to resist chasing quick results.
"From the Angels' standpoint, the mindset right now is to build from within," he said. "So that simply means draft well, develop well." The idea, he said, is to build support around that core of minor leaguers once it's ready for the big leagues.
"My recommendation is have some patience because it is a process," Mozeliak said, "and if you take some time and do it right, it can be successful."
Mozeliak said the front office he inherited, including its analytics staff, "was a little stronger than I thought it would" be. His focus was getting the staff to prioritize building prospect value, "and they get it," he said. He is also excited about what KSE could bring, especially the chance to work with executives from Kroenke's other teams.
"A lot of times when you're running a baseball team, you kind of get siloed in this little world of just baseball," he said. "To be able to tap into other resources and collaborate outside of your own domain, I think that's super exciting."
KSE has a history of betting on young leaders, most famously when the Rams hired Sean McVay, then 30, as a first-time head coach in 2017. Asked whether the Angels might hire a first-time general manager, Mozeliak said that would certainly fit the pattern.
"I think if you look at their history of hiring, that is typically the model," he said.
As for what the next general manager needs, Mozeliak said, "It's IQ, EQ, and are you current, right? Because this game is moving so quickly."
Whoever it is will decide how aggressive the Angels are this winter. Mozeliak's job is to make sure no time is lost before then.
"I understand what we need to do," he said. "Just prepare the next leader to be able to hit the ground running."