The Los Angeles Angels have called up right-hander Caden Dana.
Per the Orange Country Register’s Jeff Fletcher, he will be taking Shaun Anderson’s spot and will take on a role in the bullpen.
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Dana finished the 2024 campaign with a dominant 2.52 ERA across 23 starts in Double-A. He threw 147 strikeouts to 39 walks over 135.2 innings.
This season saw his ERA rise in Triple-A as he currently has a 5.21 mark, but at just 21 years old and a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 2.65 in Salt Lake, there is no telling what his ceiling can be with the Halos.
Fletcher reported that Dana will be coming out of the bullpen, something that he has only done once in his professional baseball career and occurred on April 4, 2025, his sole appearances in The Show this season.
That outing saw him go three innings, allow four hits, two earned runs, a walk, and throw a pair of strikeouts.
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As the Halos currently sit at 25-25, things are a little different than what the morale was like to start the month of May as the Angels are in the midst of an eight-game winning streak and have clawed their way back to relevancy.
With that being said, it may be the reason that the approach to bring him up is happening now, versus waiting later in the season. The Athletic’s Angels insider Sam Blum noted that as one of the top starting pitching candidates in the organization, Dana coming out of the bullpen appears to contradict the work he has been doing in MiLB.
Regardless of his usage, facing major league hitters at any capacity will almost always prove to create more quality experience than staying in the minors. Perhaps Dana can add to a list of pitching aces who started their respective careers out of the ‘pen.
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