The contraction of minor league baseball is almost here. 40 teams from rookie ball and short season Class A will either have to get into an independent league, become a summer team for amateur college players, or else disappear entirely.
Angels News
Andrew Heaney takes on Lance Lynn today at 5:05 P.M. Pacific Time. Joe Maddon would love to have Andrelton Simmons re-sign. He’s not the one who has to worry about the budget, though. Ryan Buchter cleared waivers, was outrighted, and has elected to be a free agent instead of going to the Angels’ alternate facility.
News From Around Baseball
Alyssa Nakken’s opening day jersey is now officially on display at the Hall of Fame. MLB is looking into the ejection of GM Mike Rizzo by Joe West and crew. I guess it isn’t over yet. Here are the four YouTube games. Marlins versus the Braves has already happened. The next freebie game is Wednesday at 1 P.M. Eastern Time. It features the Brewers and Tigers. Garret Richards is mowing them down with his slider this year. “Silly drama of the day” for today involves Joe Jimenez and Miguel Sano.
Weird Baseball News
It was a mighty close call for this butterfly. It looks like a cloudless sulphur. Maybe if Corbin had thrown a knuckle ball he could have gotten it. Today’s episode of “something you don’t see every day” is a 2-5 force play on a strikeout.
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
I think if there’s any real hope it’s in one of the extra wildcard spots, so we need either New York or Toronto to fall. Good news is they’re both about middle of the pack in terms of remaining schedule strength, while we have the 4th easiest remaining schedule. The Twins are another possibility and have the most difficult schedule left but I think they’re too good to collapse.
You don’t like the odds of the Astros to fall apart?
You know in a shortened season anything can happen. Something crazy probably will. Could be us.
I could see the Astros falling apart.
Not as much as as the Yankees or Blue Jays, no. The Rangers and Mariners are actually worse than us in terms of talent despite our lack of execution last month. I don’t expect them to beat the Astros down quite enough to help us. Plus, this is the year 2020; the villains always get off the hook.
NY and Toronto play each other 9 more times this year. So if one can beat the crap out of the other, it would help the Angels cause.
Yeah, this is what I’m hoping for. That Blue Jays 10-run inning the other day was pretty cool.
I remember many a summer day/evening at Sam Lynn Ballpark watching the Bakersfield Dodgers with my grandma and cousins. I can tell you with 100% certainty that having the Dodgers as the parent affiliate had a huge impact on the crowd and attendance. Bakersfield is Dodgers territory, they had/have a deal on a local radio station and even in the antenna TV days some games were broadcast on a local station.
MLB is cutting off towns that greatly care about baseball, cutting out swaths of kids like me from the type of memories that make lifelong fans.
Minor League Contraction in the long run hurts the game of Baseball. Whole communities will lose their identity with not only the Major League team affiliation but also the chance to bring in new fans as time rolls on. This is being done so teams can save a few million dollars. They lose in future executives that are in training, they even will lose in overall goodwill. In a 10 billion dollar industry in non Covid-19 seasons that is a huge amount of money and they want a few million dollars more, (the owners and Manfreddie ).This is just an example of how MLB development programs are not working for most teams as is very noticeable to the Angels fanbase.
Hey! Manfred is Growing the Game and don’t you forget it! He’s a marketing genius with 7-inning double headers and the runner on second!!!!
The people that run MLB, want to be in charge of all of professional baseball. They run out out teams/leagues that will be a nuisance to their power. Take their ball, and run with it to make their own leagues, their own way. Run the show from beginning to end. They want run baseball as a corporation, a keiretsu, a conglomerate, they are going to run, baseball as we have known it, into the ground.
G’Pa, they will control the whole aspect of the game, this will be more than a few million dollars. Billions for sure, in the long run trillions. It will be so big, and so bad, you won’t even need the game on the field any more, it takes too long to play anywho.
They have some crazier ideas, then they have already brought up, filling up the tank. Be prepared for some fun in the sun, because they are going to steal all that is left on the field.
Dayton Moore (GM of the Royals), who is very much against this contraction, mentioned something else about this regarding communities. A lot of the players who make these teams are scrubs, yes. They’ll never make the major leagues. But they do get the opportunity, at least for a year or two, to be a part of a professional franchise and to receive professional instruction.
When they flame out, a lot of these guys come back to their hometown communities and bring that experience and training with them. If you’re a high school kid or a Little Leaguer, how cool is it to say that you got coached by a guy who was drafted and played in a major league team’s organization? Those guys are vital to bringing passion about baseball to the youngsters in the community. And now a lot of them will never make it. It’s really sad. There’s plenty of money in the game to subsidize the operation of these teams for the long-term good of the sport.
Speaking of the Royals, is there anything preventing an owner, with his considerable wealth, from financially backing a “Dream League” team? Say if my scouting department had three pitchers and five position players we like but won’t be drafting. Can I approach my chosen D League team and tell them to sign those players and give them a shot and I will pay the D League team’s owners or the town that owns the team or what ever? The Royals had their Academy back in the 70s and 80s. Why not build myself a “club team” if I am an owner the way EPL soccer teams do? I could probably stash 5 or 6 players I am interested in on a team for 1M a year. Sure, some may sign somewhere else if they play well, but I could cultivate a few gems this way.
Amazing how fast we jumped off the “Let’s Tank” bandwagon.
Went from “tank for Kumar” to “you’re saying there’s a chance” in matter of days…
what would be sad is if we catch Houston but Seattle grabs the spot
That’s not going to happen either. The Astros have 7 more games against Texas, who will definitely be trying to lose. An easy 5-2 record in those games will shut the door on both Seattle and the Angels.
I still think they should tank rather than pushing for a playoff spot, but I don’t think there is really a distinction to be made.
You have to let Trout, Rendon, Simmons, and Fletcher (when he returns) play because they’ve earned the right to build their career stats. The team should play Adell and Barretto as much as possible to see how they develop. Ohtani is kind of a combination of those two categories and should be playing as much as possible. After that, you can play Upton and Pujols if you want to tank, and if you want to win, well, you still pretty much have Upton and Pujols.
In other words, there isn’t really any difference in the lineup between tanking and trying. For this team, it’s all about whether the hitters are slumping and how bad the pitching is, not who gets to play.
This is well said.
True. I’d like draft position instead of getting thumped early or barely missing the play offs. But we also face a common Angel’s curse. Kumar is probably ending up a Pirate. In the top ten that leaves Al Leiter’s kid (who may go #2) and maybe a couple high school pitchers. We will likely not pick top 2 even if we tank. So say we pick #4, who would you draft? Go over slot on a pitcher like Gunnar Hogland or a high school arm like Andrew Painter? or roll the dice on Jaden Hill out of LSU?
You know what the top 10 prospect lists are stacked with? Toolsy OF and SS. Not a lot of pitching. The best hitting catcher, the kid from Miami, may not stick at catcher.
So here we’d be again, an Angels draft where what we really want, college pitching, is not likely to be available at our slot and if we draft a guy ten or fifteen slots too early to get a college arm how many of us will lose our shit over this “terrible draft”? I’m comfortable with it. I think rocker’s a crap #1 prospect and feel fine gambling an early pick on a lower rated college pitcher with talent. But I’ve seen enough draft days on this board to guess most of us will not enjoy a #4-10 pick.
4.5 games back of 2 spots with 18 left to play.
Odds aren’t great, but..
Just win one game at a time and let the chips fall where they may.
Yeah we’ll see how it looks by the end of this week.