Good Morning Angels fans! One last month to the season. We can do this! Now have some links.
Angels News
The family of Tyler Skaggs speaks up about how they dealt with his passing a year later. This is sad, so warning before reading. And remember, Twitter comments are terrible and will make you angry.
The trade deadline has come and gone. So how do the Angels project to fare the rest of the way? 31% chance at a top 2 pick. Go Pirates, win more games!
With an off day yesterday, the Angels now face the brand new Padres, who have familiar face Jason Castro and a whole lot of other talent. Their two new catchers actually played each other and drove to San Diego together.
Angels Twitter is giving away free stuff this month! San Diego Zoo tickets sound really nice since then you can then watch a good team afterwards.
Around Baseball
How many mistakes do umpires make? Someone decided to find out by analyzing 4 million calls. GIVE ME ROBO UMPS!
And on that note, Joe Posnanski of The Athletic took a look at tennis’s Hawk-Eye system ($) to determine what baseball can learn from an advanced system to pinpoint the accuracy of ball-strike calls.
The movie 42 is being re-released. Chadwick Boseman’s death is the reason for that.
Padres WS odds went from 33/1 to 10/1. Only Dodgers and Yankees more favored.
Cohen has been rumored to be approved to buy the Mets. Now if only Arte will sell.
If you have the Athletic, they took a look at Manfred’s legacy. Spoilers, he sucks.
Yankees and Rays got into a fight. Would you like to see videos like that from CtPG?
Anything I missed? Post below for upvotes!
Apparently the Angels lied about paying minor leaguers through August. Arte really having a 2020 to remember.
https://twitter.com/MiLBAdvocates/status/1301259770314330113
“2020 Strange” this talk of us being the leagues worst team which is all about the handcuffed GM and the Owner who is just plain and simple not so smart. Mr. Moreno has cut every department prior to this season and now it shows. He thinks he was so darn smart with signing a over 30 third baseman to a long term contract showing once again that he is very reactionary in his rushed decisions. Mark Cuban would be a cool owner who would be a fan too.
I really enjoyed 42. Took my girlfriend, now wife, and her sister to see it on its opening weekend. They knew nothing of Jackie or how important he was to American society as a whole. I’m glad the film gave Branch Rickey his due, too.
I’m in no hurry to go to an enclosed theater and enjoy recycled air at the moment, but will almost certainly stream it at home this weekend.
I love the comment in the CBS power rankings that ranks the Angels 30.
“Free Mike Trout”
It’s not impossible to see a scenario where the team gets off to a similarly bad start in 2021 and talk of trading Trout and eating some of the contract becomes a reality.
Moreno is a disgrace of an owner and clearly a spectacularly bad leader/decision maker.
In the unlikely possibility that he gets moved, I hope we eat none of it.
If you want better prospects in return, paying down part of the biggest contract in sports history after a Pandemic is almost a guarantee. Marlins had to give the Yankees $30M to make the Stanton deal work and those 2 teams are on opposite ends of the revenue spectrum.
Miami / Jeter got off cheap.
Marlins are stupid though, so.
I want them to pay the contract AND elite prospects. Full stop. We’re still not going to get positive value for Trout anyway, might as well do all we can.
Trout has a full NTC, Mr Trout doesn’t get traded unless Mr Trout WANTS to be traded, and at that point The Angels won’t have to eat ANY money on the contract as Trout’s value, not only on the field, but in revenue of marketing would have any team taking the contract without requiring monetary compensation from The Angels, and The Angels would require a few MLB ready arms, as in 1,2 type starters. Trout’s rookie card, signed, just sold for 3.5 million.
Trout re-signed talking about the farm system bouncing back and the franchise being on the right path. The franchise responded with the worst season of his career.
The contract carries intense negative value even with him being good and marketable (is he marketable?). Just as Stanton and A-Rod required, moving it would mean eating a portion of it to get the kind of return you’re talking about.
And that would sum up Arte’s ownership. Overspending and failing anyway. Paying someone to take the best player in the sport off your hands because you’re incapable of building around him for 10 years.
I wouldn’t be so sure. I thought he’d have significantly less trade value, but he still has the second-highest WAR projection to 2024 and is ranked 3rd on FG’s trade value series, right around Tatís and Juan Soto. Trout’s contract limits the suitors, obviously, but it’s not like he won’t net a haul.
I wasn’t really intending for this thread to take this direction as I think there is next to no chance Trout would be traded, but I really wouldn’t even mind at this point, mostly for his benefit. I think it’s 3-5 years for us to get our pitching straightened out and, sadly, Trout is at the point in his career where things start to trend down, not up. Unless he just likes being here win or lose. Then, sure, he’s the face of the team. Glad to have him.
Damn. Mike Trout and the sad sack Halos are indeed a sad case.
A team needs much more than just Superman to win a championship. Given that Arte rode Albert’s contract into the ground until the bitter end, the only way Trout gets traded is if he requests it.
I would worry that if Arte ever sold the team, the new owner would be far worse, ala the seamless change from Selig to Manfred.
Yep It could be J-Lo and A-Rod
After admitting to steroid use, a-fraud should be banned from having anything to do with baseball…ever!
Better than J-Lo and Ben Affleck!
That’s fine if they let the GM do the job and not interfere.
Far worse is what regard? What exactly would we be losing with Arte? He inherited a really robust, healthy organization and has chipped away at it every single year. Guy has Mike Trout and is on pace for the worst record in baseball. Think about how BAD you are as a leader to piss away the most valuable asset in the sport.
I agree having A-Rod would be an embarrassment but Arte has shown himself to lead a pretty poorly run organization and the sample size is large. He consistently values the wrong things which leads to bad hires at every level of the organization.
I think steelgolf is just saying it’s more of a “devil you know” situation, which I agree with to some extent. Moreno has proven to be an egotistical, mercurial leader with an overinflated view of his own talent and acumen when it comes to baseball. The risk is any potential new owner is going to come from a small pool of people who are Arte’s social peers, among whom those traits are the norm, not the exception. We could just as easily wind up with someone in the vein of Jeff Loria, the Wilpons, the Ricketts, or Dan Snyder, to name a few examples. Similarly, we could just become another corporate property and get bought by Disney again or…I don’t know Apple, maybe.
At this point the only alternative scenario I sort of hope for is a fan-induced co-op ownership model like the Green Bay Packers. That’s not perfect either, but at the very least our posts here would take on more importance.
Yep, this is what I was referring to. I myself was very happy when Selig retired, thinking that Manfred would clean up some of the messes in baseball, instead Manfred came in with a several platoons of pre- schoolers loaded with finger paints, permanent markers, and glue. His start the extra innings with a man on second is just plain dumb, along with a lot of his other “strokes of genius” he bestows upon us mere fans.
Man is that ever true about Manfred.
I thought I didn’t like Selig and I looked forward to a new commissioner.
Boy was I wrong.
I feel like recent ownership changes though benefit from the embarrassments of McCourt/Loria etc.
A lot of people got in when franchises were available for $200-500M. Not as many clueless dumbasses when its in the billions.
I hear that for sure I guess Arte basically IS Dan Snyder minus the sleaze. Like everything that makes Snyder crap (overspends and over-depends on free agents, never hires the right coaches/leaders/GMs) are how you’d describe Arte.
The Dodgers sold recently and have incredible ownership. Jeter’s group will presumably be an upgrade over Loria even though they did some questionable stuff early to cut costs.
I just haven’t seen anything from Moreno to make me confident he can build the type of franchise he bought.
Really? How about Houston Asstros?
we are the worst team in the American League. How could we be “far worse”? You mean like the Cleveland Spiders?
Well, thanks to FSW and Frontier I’ve got no baseball for the long weekend. 😡 😡 😡
Thought Posnanski was spot-on. Loved how smooth the Hawkeye system was last week, and when some courts at the US Open went back to linespeople, it seemed awkward and stilted. I expect something similar to happen with baseball. People in the future will wonder why we had live people call balls and strikes.
Anyone know if Arte pays the umps? Anecedotally, this is one of the worst seasons I’ve seen from them too.