Good morning Angels fans! Hope you are staying safe. Only 9 more days til Christmas, so be good you hear! Until then, have some links!
Angels News
It is Brian Downing week here at CtPG. If you have any fanshots to share, make them now. I am curious to see what people write.
Starter Jake Odorizzi is the latest rumor that the Angels are involved in. I mean, yeah, he is a starter, but I hope this isn’t the only starter that the Angels are interested in.
Scott Boras is being bullish on the Angels spending this offseason. Look, I may disagree with you Boras, but I hope you are right.
Speaking of Boras, he still believes in Jo Adell. Which makes sense as he is Jo Adell’s agent.
If you have the Athletic, Fabian Ardaya answers some questions about what the Angels could do. Basically, a sort of if he was Perry the Platypus.
Around Baseball
Are you ready for some labor fights? Well here we go again, as MLB is looking to push the season to May. The players do not want that of course and still plan on a 162 game season.
Mariners and Rangers made an in division trade. Mariners get right handed pitcher Rafael Montero and Rangers get prospects. Texas is really selling and Seattle is trying to make the playoffs for the first time in 19 years.
Scott Boras had a ton to say. First, that teams are not losing money. Second, that there needs to be an MLB CEO. Third, he praised the Mets. 4th, he made some odd comparisons with players. 5th, that he has plans for Kris Bryant, and did not elaborate. Oh and the stuff about the Angels as well.
So, Trevor Bauer is the biggest pitching name on the FA market… and he kinda cheats. It is the pine tar on the ball stuff, in case you forgot that he called everyone out on it and then used it to prove his point.
Super 2 status for Arbitration is being leaked, and some players have qualified. It seems like the cutoff from what we know is 2.129. David Fletcher, for example has 2.111 years of service time, so he doesn’t get arbitration until next offseason.
Anything I missed? Post below for upvotes!
MLB needs to climb outta the Stone Age
Get rid of regular season ridiculously long extra inning games and institute the tie.
These games just exacerbate injuries, especially to pitchers!  💪  🤔 
What was the point in our long extra inning game vs a very bad Orioles team……we were bad too BTW.
Turk’s Teeth pointed out that Odorizzi is very much a Teheran move. Guy eats innings and out performs his peripherals until he doesn’t.
Metrics like FIP do punish pitch to contact guys and Jake did better in Tampa where he had a better defense behind him.
Signing him would mean we’d need to trade for a top of the rotation guy. But I’d be fine with signing him for 2-3 years to be a 160-180 inning, league average guy.
Nice pick-up San Francisco…DeScalfani. Was an Angel hopeful for me.
The Boras comment about an MLB CEO is actually a good idea. If it weren’t for the pandemic making experimentation necessary and granting a lot of patience in people’s minds, Manfred would probably have been run out of town by now. The extra inning rule is awful as are many of his other ideas. On the flipside, the game has some room to grow and this MiLB plan has me somewhat onboard after being totally opposed to it. It seems to be making the best of a bad global situation and I wonder if there are ways you could expand “affiliate leagues” or whatever they’re calling them. Seems like it could also be a way to trial expansion sites like Nasvhille, and maybe even move to some kind of relegation system like European soccer way down the line. Once it’s safe, someone who isn’t Manfred needs to get back on the WBC train too. The 2017 tourney was great and that’s going to continue the game’s international growth, especially in talent-rich and relatively affluent areas like Asia and maybe even Brazil.
As for the upcoming season, I’m pretty much on the players’ side as usual. Though I do think the league has a point about the reality of starting on time. Seems to me they need to compromise around a potentially late start with the divisional bubble setup like they had this year for the first month or two. That would reduce travel and allow you to stack a lot of nearby games on top of each other. Then by maybe July when hopefully the vaccine is more widespread, you can resume standard interdivisional play. Then maybe go back into a bubble around the last month for both safety and to ensure matchups are as relevant as possible to the playoff races. It also seems like some version of expanded playoffs would be wise again for at least next season.
Either way, I’m setting the unrealistic expectation for myself that we’ll have both Darvish and Ohtani in our rotation next season. Feel free to join me in Christmas morning disappointment if you will.
I really like the idea of division games at the beginning and end of the year. Generally that is what happens anyway (and is somewhat happening this year).
Not only does it reduce travel it sets up opportunity for double headers inside the division at the end of the year. If a game or two get cancelled, we’ll be seeing them anyway.
I think Claudio is a very nice signing.
He really only “adds” ~500k to the payroll/luxury tax, since you can consider he is effectively displacing a minimum-wage type player.
Something Minasian has mentioned in his pressers is the desire to have different types of relievers who offer different looks. In other words, you don’t want guys who throw similar stuff – variety, different options, etc.
A lot of neat stuff on Twitter from BMags about what Claudio offers. I think we’ve nicely upgraded our pen this offseason by purging various relievers and adding who we’ve added so far. None are long-term solutions, but given how volatile bullpens are, this is a great start.
For now, we have Iglesias, Pena, Mayers, Buttrey, Claudio, possibly Rivera if he sticks. That leaves 2 spots left for some other under-the-radar signings.
Noe was projected to make $1 million as an arb eligible guy. This is basically a lateral move.
Claudio offers a bit of a different pitch repertoire and does it from the left-hand side, so I would consider this an upgrade in comparison
Meanwhile Middleton signs with Seattle
2021 Cy Young candidate
Similar feelings to Kenebel going to the Dodgers: he’s far enough from injury to be back to full health. If so, the signing teams are getting a solid value.
Saw an mlb pipeline tweet through bleacher report and of course their writer had us taking an outfielder/3b instead of the many pitchers on the cusp of the top 10. I get it’s best available but I’m tired of the fielding prospects, let’s keep the pitching trend going instead.
I disagree. Baseball more than any other sport you have to pick BPA. Now if you have two guys rated similarly and one is a pitcher, sure. But reaching in a draft is a setback that doesn’t help
I don’t know if someone rated 10 or 11 would be a reach, I think both of those guys (for now) are pitchers while the number 9 guy is a hitter.
Alex Claudio, cone on down. I like this signing. Pitch to contact guys can be under rated.
When you build an infield defense of Rendon, Iglesias, Fletcher, get pitcher who feed them ground balls.
Perry is buying before stock is thrown into the dumpster, I like it.
Good signing for only 1.125 m Saving money for a starter.
I don’t hate it. We will see a large number of these guys settle in the $1.2M range. Being a LH fills a need. As far as I am concerned, Claudio is more intriguing than the arms we non-tendered so appears to be an improvement. Plus, you can roll this guy out there many times w/o needing a day off.
Yeah, he’s basically Noe’s replacement. Fastball in the upper 80s, similar price tag, nearly identical WHIP and k/bb numbers.
But Claudio has a HR/9 rate that is exactly half of Noe’s.
Good LH depth. Was slated for $2M + with Milwaukee, we get him at 50% discount. He doesn’t miss many bats, so he’s probably best as a lefty on lefty specialist.
Looking for cheap one year deals for an outfielder I notice that both Nick Markakis and Duvall are out there. And our old friend Mr. Goodwin is still available. This holiday lull is killing me. My business is shut down, no Baseball, it would seem as I am relegated to doing Christmas decorations and baby sitting and there is no snow shoveling at all. We are not going to have a “White Christmas” this year, and speaking of White Christmas it does make for a good Christmas movie. I was talking with my oldest grandson (31 yrs old) and his favorite Christmas movies are Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. Do not know they were Christmas Movies lots of laughs
“Trading Places” for the Win!
MERRY NEW YEAR!
My go to is Christmas Vacation. Holiday tradition in my house.
Clark, the little lights are not blinking.
I know Art. And thanks for noticing.
My dad was a high rise construction surveyor- he worked on the building in Die Hard. They stopped construction with the entire inside of the building empty, filmed all the crazy explosion scenes, and then replaced the glass and finished the inside.
It just ain’t Christmas until Hans Gruber falls off of Nakatomi Tower.
I fear XMas and Robot Santa
“HO-HO-HOOOOOOOOOOO …”
Boras being Bore-ass.
They got lucky with David. It’s not like the knew he was going to be this great, and they held him back to save some service time.
It would seem that Angels fans are still liking the dream of signing Bauer along with Odorizzi is still being discussed as well. Paying for any player that is coming off a career year in a 60 game season is suicide payroll wise. Jake might be a deal still, but a trade with Pirates or Tampa might work out better.
Re: trade, assuming you can convince them to take what you’re offering, or willing to give them what they want, and another team doesn’t offer more.
Minasian is preserving payroll space so far, got the shortstop, closer, building the “new but not the same look” pen. Good stuff.
My big fear with Bauer is we get Buteercupped, because he stops using pine tar.
Arte, personally, takes it away
The team already shit-canned the clubhouse attendant who was allegedly very effective with providing pitchers with illegal substances for use on the ball.
https://www.latimes.com/sports/angels/story/2020-03-05/angels-fire-clubhouse-attendant-brian-harkin-furnishing-illegal-substances-baseballs
Sadly he was the visiting clubhouse attendant.
Says who? Why not both?
His official job was visiting clubhouse manager. He might’ve sold to both sides.