Maddux, Chiti, and Scott are out. The pitching staff fired them first.

The Angels let go of pitching coach Mike Maddux, bullpen coach Dom Chiti, and assistant Darryl Scott on Monday — a few months after Maddux joined the staff, and deep into a season that has left little to salvage. The numbers behind the move are not subtle: a 4.53 staff ERA and an MLB-worst 508 walks. That walk total is the kind of organizational embarrassment that forces a hand even when the season is already gone.

It is worth noting what this is and isn't. Firing the pitching coaches on a 41-53 team in August is not a turning point. Walbert Ureña is now the nominal ace of a rotation that lost its two most reliable starters at the deadline, Ryan Johnson is still posting a 5.47 ERA, and Kikuchi and Kochanowicz remain on the 60-day IL with no return in sight. The walk problem did not live with Maddux alone, and it will not leave with him. What the move signals, more than anything, is that interim GM John Mozeliak is willing to keep pulling threads — coaches, veterans, scouts — until something resembling a foundation appears underneath.

The one genuine bright spot in that bullpen, a rookie reliever who has posted a 0.24 ERA over 19 games, had nothing to do with the coaches getting fired and will have nothing to do with whoever replaces them. He is just quietly doing his job while the organization reshuffles around him. That, right now, is about as good as it gets in Anaheim.