There is a legacy of bare competence behind the Angels’ 54-year run of never losing 100 games that shouldn’t be taken for granted. If this year’s iteration finally uncorks that bottle of swill, it will be a fitting monument to outgoing owner Arte Moreno who, finally, mercifully, agreed to bow out this week. What Stan Kroenke’s ownership will be like beyond the inevitable shiny new sports palace and adjoining pre-fab “neighborhood” remains to be seen, but the bar is as low as it was after Bob Quinn’s stewardship of the Red Sox or Frank McCourt’s misuse of the Dodgers.

The Angels were born in 1961. They were an immediate success by the standards of later expansion teams, putting up three winning seasons in their first seven campaigns. They were less successful in building their post-expansion rosters, with the result that they were stuck towards the bottom of the AL West from 1971 through 1977. It took free agency to get the club launched in earnest. Building from within flummoxed owner Gene Autry and his ever-changing rotation of front office staffs and managers. Kids were just chips to be traded. Veterans on big contracts, though, that they understood.

This method of team-building was ugly and inefficient, but it worked better for the Angels than it did for other teams. Certainly the Angels possessed beautiful players, albeit of a certain creaky vintage. For example, in 1982 they presented a lowkey entry in the derby for “best-hitting outfield of the postwar era” with gardeners Brian Downing (left), Fred Lynn (center), and Reggie Jackson (right). The trio combined to hit .277/.358/.481 in a league that averaged .264/.328/.402, helping to push the team to its second division title. Downing, a former catcher and early weight-training enthusiast, walked, hit for power, and almost literally never made an error. Lynn hit .299, the closest he would come to .300 after being deprived of Fenway Park’s average-inflating magic. Jackson, in his first season after being discarded by George Steinbrenner’s Yankees, led the American League with 39 home runs.

Almost every iteration of the team from 1982 through their next division title in 1986 (their last until 2004; they won the 2002 World Series as a Wild Card entry) carried one of the oldest rosters of position players in history. The team that lost a seven-game ALCS to the Red Sox had nine players older than 30 total at least 250 plate appearances: Downing, Jackson, Bob Boone, Rick Burleson, Doug DeCinces, Bobby Grich, George Hendrick, Ruppert Jones, and Rob Wilfong. It would have been 10, or even 11, but longtime Angels Rod Carew and Juan Beniquez had departed after the previous season.