they’ve done. I really love my teammates. Right now I’m an Angel so that’s all I can focus on at this point.”

He’s too graceful to come right out and say it directly, but the message is subtle yet clear: Improve this team or he’s gone after 2023, when he can become a free agent. The Washington Nationals turned around and put Juan Soto on the market after far less provocation, after Soto declined a 15-year contract offer at well below market value.

But the way the Angels’ organization is currently structured, do you trust it to suddenly build a winner around Ohtani and Mike Trout when it hasn’t been able to do so for nearly a decade?

I don’t.

The recent past is ugly, even with two of the top 10 players in baseball on the roster. Not counting 2020, only once since 2016 have the Angels been within four games of a wild-card berth on Aug. 1 (2017) and only once have they been over .500 (2019, 56-54). And lest we forget, their farm system has been consistently barren; Baseball America’s preseason rankings this year had the Angels’ system 29th out of 30.

They are, in short, a mess. And the mess starts at the top with owner Arte Moreno. He is the constant, and fair or not, the responsibility and the blame are his.

Don’t take my word for it, either. If my inbox is any indication, the fans have had enough.

• “As captain of this ship (Arte) is DEAD LAST in minor league development,” wrote Ken Fazekas of Banning, a former season-ticket holder who dates his Angel fandom to the 1961 inaugural season in Wrigley Field. “Under his management the Angel organization is only one of five teams that does not have a president of baseball operations, Instead, while under his watch, questionable quick fix free agent signings continue to plague the team.”

• Former journalist and sports information director Mike Murphy of San Bernardino, another fan from the start, noted that the club needs both a new owner and a new general manager to replace Perry Minasian — the Joe Maddon firing remains a sore spot — and he asks, “If Trout and Ohtani depart, will the hardcore Angel fans still buy tickets? They’ve supported the franchise through thick and thin, so maybe.”

• Joe Pickett, a former Long Beach/Orange County resident now relocated to Texas, noted: “With an owner who does not know what he is doing other than real estate deals, the scouting department has rendered a bunch of low draft players other than Trout and Ohtani who are not winners. Compare them to the Dodgers who find pearls in other team rosters and polish them up...”

Given the way the Angel Stadium lease and development deal unraveled amid investigations of corruption among Anaheim city officials, any credit for Arte’s real estate savvy may be on hold, too.

• Going back to early June when Maddon was fired, Jim Higgins of Huntington Beach called the decision “rash and bad, poorly thought out and misdirected. If anyone was going to get fired, it should be the GM. In fact, I get the sense that Minasian felt someone needed to be fired and he didn’t want it to be him, so (stuff) flows downhill, and bye-bye Joe Maddon.”

If the Angels choose not to dangle Ohtani at the deadline, as seems apparent, it’s purely understandable from a business standpoint. The amount of revenue alone from Japanese companies who want to advertise with the Angels is huge, and the empirical evidence — all of those fans who show up waving Ohtani signs and wearing his jersey — speak to his drawing power, home and road.

Meanwhile, the recent diagnosis of Trout’s rare back condition raises the question of just how well he’ll be able to maintain his accustomed level of performance. Trout turns 31 in a week, and with eight years and a little over $283 million left on his contract after this season, it’s a legitimate concern.

But the Angels are simply in the worst kind of in-between position possible — not good enough to contend, not bad enough to tank. Once you’re in the squishy middle, it’s hard to get out without bold moves.

So if they’re not willing to basically start over and trade their stars for a haul of prospects — and again, it’s perfectly understandable if they don’t — there aren’t many other options beyond hitting the free-agent market in the offseason. And, as noted, Moreno’s track record there hasn’t been encouraging.

But you can’t fire the owner. If you’re an Angels fan, that’s a problem.

jalexander@scng.com