Angels’ uphill climb just got even tougher

5:34 PM ET

The Los Angeles Angels are a big-market ballclub, with all that entails. A big payroll? Mission accomplished — they’re spending almost $146 million on players this season, seventh-most in MLB. They’ve made big commitments to more than a few big stars. And with all that comes big expectations, which you’d expect — no, demand — from the team that employs Mike Trout, the best player in baseball.

Ask Billy Eppler about the pressure of those responsibilities, of trying to win now and to do it while the Angels have Trout wearing a Halo over the next five seasons, and the general manager was frank: “Everybody here feels that urgency to win.”

Which is fine, but the Angels have made it to the postseason just once in the past five seasons. It isn’t going to get any easier with the news that they may lose perhaps their two best young arms in the rotation, with elbow trouble afflicting Garrett Richards and Andrew Heaney. If both end up needing Tommy John surgeries, that would take them out of the picture for more than just this season.

It’s especially tough news for an organization that, on paper, thought it had good rotation depth. The equally promising Tyler Skaggs is rehabbing from his own Tommy John surgery from August 2014 and was expected back in big-league action this season, but last weekend he was shut down in the minors with biceps tendinitis. Veteran lefty C.J. Wilson was recently transferred to the 60-day DL as he rehabs a shoulder injury; he might be back in June, if then.

“I kind of walked in knowing we’re going to be using eight [starters], and more often than not you’re going to end up using 11,” Eppler told ESPN.com. “I like the eight names we have to talk about in the rotation, but we have another one right now in Triple-A in Nate Smith.”

Angels GM Billy Eppler would like win a title within the remaining five-season Mike Trout window, but that goal just got a lot tougher. Matt Brown/Angels Baseball LP/Getty Images

Smith, 24, was an eighth-rounder out of Furman in 2013; he has a 3.79 ERA in six starts at Triple-A Salt Lake, with a 31-9 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 35 2/3 innings pitched. A lefty with a broad assortment, he projects more as a No. 4 starter — which sounds pretty good right now with the starting staff in shreds. But he hardly sounds like a solution to a franchise whose problems are bigger than just fixing this one season.

If you thought Eppler’s job as the Angels’ new general manager wasn’t already tough enough, it just got a lot tougher. Remember, Eppler took over an organization with $160 million committed to Albert Pujols through 2021 and almost $53 million to Josh Hamilton — who was traded to the Texas Rangers last season — through 2017. That’s on top of the $138 million committed to Trout through 2020. So at least initially, Eppler inherited a roster with the biggest big-ticket items already locked in.

In joining the Angels from the high-expectation, big-market New York Yankees, Eppler also came into a situation where his predecessor, Jerry Dipoto, lost out on a mid-season power struggle with manager Mike Scioscia. A big source of that clash involved process, namely how the organization would use data to inform front-office decisions as well as on-field …

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