Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
Angels Related Links
Shohei Ohtani is focused on returning as a two-way player in 2021. Mike Trout won team MVP and Dylan Bundy took home the Adenhart Award. This article calls Mike Trout a loser on the grounds that the Angels sucked. I guess this is an extension of that foolish trend of not giving him an MVP award because he is on a crappy team. The elusive postseason continues to give writers plenty of fodder to write articles about Mike Trout’s prime years getting wasted.
Non-Angels Related Links
The post season bracket is set. Can Minnesota eliminate Houston? Can Milwaukee eliminate the Dodgers? Who will win the hunk of metal? Only time will tell. Here is a list of when and how to watch the first couple of days of the wild card series. The matchups are discussed here. Devan Fink of Beyond the Box Score makes the case against continuing the expanded playoff format into future years. The GM meetings will be handled remotely this year, some time in November. The Appalachian League, formerly short season A ball, is on its way to converting to a summer wood bat league for collegiate players.
Won’t be rooting for Houston but will be for the A’s although I think the W/S will move on.
Since the GM meetings are emote this year, maybe Tony Reagins wouls be a good choice to fill the spot. I don’t think he could be late, or could he?
Will there be a Del Taco on the premises?
He’ll probably have his Zoom on mute, and take him until the next day to figure how to unmute.
Sounds just like me.
A very “remote” possibility.
Unless you would like me to further “emote”.
American League upsets could be White Sox over Oakland. Cleveland pitching giving fits to the Bronx Bombers (3 games in a row with 6 HRs!). Cleveland never missed a beat without Corey Kluber. Pitching and defense will win over hitting.Can anyone guess all the right combos and come out on top of the guessing game? Who knows, right, but my money is on Twins, Sox, Indians.
It cannot be denied that if three players have a monster season that the W-L record of the team comes into play as well it should too. Listen, in that we all know how good Mike Trout is and maybe he has lost two MVP awards that should be in his trophy case, but the fact remains that this is a Most Valuable Player Award, and the most valuable to what? His team of course, so it is only right that that should translate into how well the team played. Position comes into play as does how good a fielder the player is. Now Mike is a very good fielder no doubt, but he is not great. So voters take that into consideration too. Mike plays an important position in CF, but a case can be made that a great fielding RF’er is just as or more important to runners not advancing bases. Catchers have the hardest job and finding one that can hit is mighty tough. Catchers who can be great in the field and also hit a ton is a feat. Think about it, Bench, Munson, Fisk, Mauer and Posey in the last sixty years have excelled. (Yes I am aware of Rodriguez and Piazza, but for this I choose to leave them out.). So when a catcher of this ability comes along they have an inside track to the MVP. Shortstops are given a preference also because of how demanding it is to play there. Mike Trout while being the best player I have ever seen is just not the most valuable every season because the bad teams weigh him down. But with a good GM, No Albert, and some tough top notch pitching we will see the Angels maybe someday make Mike look like the Best Player Ever.
The question is about the ‘Player’ right? Not the team. Trout is arguably the best player ever, and seems certainly to be right now. Whether his team highlights this is another issue.
There’s an LAT article about possible candidates. One of them that’s listed is Josh Byrnes. If for some reason it’s. not Dombrowski that Arte hires, I would LOVE for it to Byres. He’s one of Friedman’s top lieutenants and has worked under him since 2014, overseeing the scouting and player development departments.
He’s been a GM before, so he’s experienced in that regard. If we hired him as President, I imagine he’d bring over some of his Dodgers colleagues and give them promotions, while probably poaching from other similar type FOs, too.
I hope they interview him as I am on the fence with others that have been mentioned around here. Someone new though would be run roughshod by Arte potentially as he thinks he knows more about running a team than anyone, just ask him.
How about Dombrowski as Head of Baseball Operations and Byres as GM?
That’s a lot of talent for Arte to jump over
Hard pass.
Point being more that we need a Head of Baseball Operations and a GM and not just a GM. Baseball Operations needs to be taken away from the billboard gang.
If your not a subscriber to LAT you can also read it on Yahoo
When I see that name, I think of Eric, even when watching the Simpsons
Oh god no, stay away Byrnes, he bombed in San Diego and has been riding coat tails his whole career but never could grade an A in his interviews. Padres were crappy enough to take a chance but he took on bad contracts.
I get why some people love Friedman but I don’t. Too metric driven, platoon freak, positionless baseball, lousy FA signings, but I’ll give him some props for his drafting. The great Andrew Friedman has yet to win a title.
I don’t like that LAT article at all. Hoping the chosen one is not on that list.
Andrew Friedman isn’t good at his job despite winning the division and being WS favorites for the nth year in a row? Tough crowd.
Well one team cheated, and one team got caught.
Yeah, the Dodgers not winning a title is definitely Andrew Friedman’s fault.
You know what, I’ll take my chances with a guy who can get my organization to two straight World Series. All of those things you mentioned (aside from lousy free agent signings, which I think is begging the question – see Muncy, Max) seem like features, not bugs. He builds fantastic rosters through great drafting and player development and savvy signings. What’s not to like?
I don’t know enough about Byrnes specifically to comment on him. But I’d pay Friedman all the money to come to Anaheim. Unfortunately, I think the Dodgers have all the money.
Yeah – following Fungo’s logic, there is only one good Head of Baseball Operations and one good GM in the League – those people being the ones involved with the WS Champions. I disagree. The consistency shown by a guy like Friedman is what we are looking for. You want to give the team the chance to be Champions – at that point you have done your job.
Can understand your thoughts on Byrnes but not on Friedman. The guy is the dream. Look what he did in Tampa before LA.
Here’s another Platoon freak… wait for it…
I don’t think a Dodger executive who’s presently working with them now is going to come over here.
Wouldn’t happen in New York for the Mets to be poach someone away from the Yankees either. I’m on board with of all people ( Gitcho!!!!! for crying out loud ) 😮  of going after Neal Huntington ( former Pirate’s GM ) because it’s doable ( he’s unemployed right now, so we don’t have to worry about stepping on another team’s toes. He worked for a bad cheap owner in Bob Nutting, he got the Pirates into the postseason twice in the 2010’s and almost did so again in 2017, He’s enough of a old school baseball scouting and talent evaluation guy which this team badly needs, He’s the right age at 52 yrs old so he can work long hrs and take in new ideas and mix them in with old school tried and true, and old enough to where Arte will respect his authority and butt out, He’ll be cheaper than either DD or Jeff Luhnow, although if Jeff Luhnow is available and Arte wants him he would be my first choice. ). 🤔  🤔 
I don’t get the Jeff Luhnow thing, either. He’s an awful person who filled the organization with other awful people. No amount of winning is worth that.
Huntington & Maddon IMO would make a excellent same page duo just as Stoneman & Sosh did.
Huntington is a experienced GM which would break up the Arte MO ( never hired a previously experienced GM after Stoneman retired, Reagins, DiPoto, and Eppler all have that in common when Arte hired them. ). He established a Latin American talent pipeline ( We never have! ) in Pittsburgh and I’m sure Maddon respects Huntington’s work when he was in Chicago vs Pirates in the same division.
He did convince Clint Hurdle to go sabr.
He dumpster dives…. but comes up with actual good pitching. He also drafts pitchers, which I know we all like. He then trades those pitchers and Austin Meadows for Chris Archer…. was that Nutting pushing for that? Not so sure, it looks like a desperation move by Hunt himself….
Still, he made the play offs three times with teams that had pay rolls under 90M
What do other folks think of Huntington? I kind of like him, but he has his draw backs, and I’m not sure I can really judge how much of his suckage is due to Nutting and how much was all his idea….. I just like the idea of a farm that produces the players his has on a team that has the money to keep some players.
That Chris Archer trade….. my God what an atrocity. But he drafted pretty well and made some other pretty solid moves. I think I like him, but I am not sure if I should.
He’s probably a new version of Bill Stoneman, who also worked in former low budget Montreal in the 1990’s before coming to the Angels. He definitely beats Eppler and I just think Arte should stop hiring inexperienced GM candidates because it obviously hasn’t worked out for him thus far.
The prime years for Mike Trout’s individual successes to contribute to the franchise winning a championship…or even making the playoffs have been wasted thus far. I’m not sure why that is even a point of contention.
Yeah, I mean it’s 100% true in the sense they mean it. He’s kind of the Steven Jackson of the MLB. It sucks.
Or Ernie Banks………..
In my case it’s largely fatigue. I get it! The Angels have long been Mike Trout surrounded by an ever expanding web of dysfunction. Rendon held his own, as did Bundy and Walsh. I think this winter is the long awaited chance to go over the luxury tax for one year and dip back below when Pujols comes off the books. It’s complicated though, because of the CBA negotiations. We don’t know where that is going.
Although the penalty is higher I think two years over the threshold of the cap and then you may go under. If we did sign Bauer and with Arbitration players and Albert and JUp it would more than likely put us over. But they stadium will hold 3.5 million with ease. One more though, would you or anyone for that matter not want Fletch back at 2b and Lindor or Story at short or even have Simba back at SS?
I hadn’t see this meme before. We are featured! Kinda.
Nothing worse and I mean nothing worse than cheaters. Does not matter that there were no rules violated or they weren’t caught (The Asstros were ) with there hand in the cookie jar and all the BS I here about the Roid users, cheating is cheating. Nothing happened to the ‘Roid users and nothing happened to the Astros players and nothing happened to the BoSox players or the Yankees. While everyone says that we have to protect the image of the game the truth is the image would be better served if MLB had come down hard on the cheaters in the last 25 years. And it’s about time to toss the Manfred Ball out of the game too. 1-0 games are fun too.
Hoping the 2020-1 FA market for Springer, Gurriel, and Reddick reflect this 2020 trash can free version. No one should be paying a 37 (Gurriel) or 34 (Reddick) year old negative WAR player 8 or 13M, or even Springer 21M.
The Astros, especially with Verlander out for next season with TJ, should just go full on rebuild (and rebuild their reputation).
Gurriel extended one year this AM. Nobody was going to give him more than Houston. Next year’s off season Correa is a FA and he won’t get as much as say Story . Maybe a little less than Seager.
I don’t know why they paid that much for a 1B with his number. Moreland was twice the player in 2020 for less than half the price. Both FA. Please let’s not sign a GM from the Astros. Wow.
Did they sign the trash can guy on with this?
Houston – it should be a scandal as large as the Black Sox was. The fact that these players received no punishment from MLB is pretty disgusting. I guess we will just have to take pleasure in their failure.
Better this way — history will just look back and wonder what Manfred was thinking. For historical purposes, better too soft than too harsh; people nowadays generally think about the Black Sox and wonder why they were banned for life rather than thinking about the consequences of their actions.
I guess when you put this together with Pete Rose, the rule is “cheating is not that big of a deal unless gambling is involved.”
Sad, but it looks to be true.
Not gambling, money.
The Black Sox made secret money on the side that the owners didn’t get a cut of, Pete Rose made secret money on the side that the owners didn’t get a cut of.
To the extent ‘roid users and trashtros made extra money, it was only because they were expected to make extra money for the owner.
Yeah, it’s interesting, because down the line I’m sure there will be those who argue for Springer/Altuve/whoever to be in the HOF, like there are with Bonds/Clemens.
Not if Altuve keeps hitting .215.