Does Anthony Rendon even want to play baseball anymore?

When spring training rolls around every year, most baseball players seem eager to return to the diamond. This is perhaps especially evident with guys who are coming off a rough season or maybe one in which their team underachieved. 

For Anthony Rendon of the Los Angeles Angels, both of these things are true. So, of course, he’d be rearing to go, finally ready to live up to his contract, right?

“I'm here, aren't I?”

That’s what Rendon said to reporters on the first day of camp for Angels position players. This was after admitting that baseball has never been his top priority. 

“This is a job,” Rendon said. “I do this to make a living. My faith, my family come first before this job. So if those things come before it, I'm leaving.”

These are probably not the words Angels executives, coaches or fans want to hear from the player with the highest salary on the team. A player who, after a monster 2019 season, signed a monster (at the time) contract worth $245M over seven years. A player who has played in just 110 out of a possible 648 regular season games over the past four years.

Rendon’s eye-opening comments come just about a month after he said something else that rankled a lot of people. When asked on a radio show how he would change baseball, he said — without any intended irony — that he would shorten the season.

“There's too many dang games — 162 games and 185 days or whatever it is,” he said. “Man, no. We gotta shorten this bad boy up.”

Does Rendon even want to play at all? In response to those comments, former teammate Jonathan Papelbon went even further, proclaiming that Rendon “literally hates baseball.” 

Papelbon also wrote — with quite a few exclamation marks — that Rendon should tell the Angels he only wants to play half the season and return half his salary.

Rendon won’t be giving up any of his salary anytime soon, but the Angels have to wonder what kind of commitment they will get from him this year. 

If he phones it in or spends another huge chunk of time on the DL, it could be yet another long season for the Halos.