Beckham sleds with his father. Here is a little clip of Mike Trout playing in the snow with him. Joe Maddon had a wide ranging Zoom interview. It sounds like Shohei Ohtani is progressing in the right direction and the Angels are looking to add at least two starting pitchers this off season. While the Angels were seriously going after James McCann, they appear willing to go with Max Stassi and Anthony Bemboom if it comes to that.
Meanwhile, Jo Adell is going to AAA for sure. Joe Maddon said unequivocally, that he needs more time in the minors. We will probably see some sort of free agent stop gap outfielder get hired this winter. ESPN will open its season of Sunday Night Baseball with the Angels hosting the Chicago White Sox on April 4, 2021. This week is Jered Weaver week in our top 100 Angels series. Get your anecdotes ready. Last week, of course, was Brian Downing week.
Links From Around Baseball
Man! Keep an eye out for those Honus Wagner cards. The Reds are discussing trading Luis Castillo. I can see no word of which other teams are discussing him. 90 to nothing with nobody out in the first inning must have been soul crushing for the pitcher(s). Supposedly, MLB currently plans to play a full 162 game season in 2021. That could change, though.
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
HK47 has announced his retirement.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30576164/howie-kendrick-retires-15-mlb-seasons
Another feeling old moment for me in a long line of them. Very nice career and happy he got a ring!
Big fan of Howie Kendrick. Always an offensive threat. I too am happy he shined in the 2019 NCLS and WS and got a ring.
Mathis outlasted the entire 2009 roster.
Will miss Howie a great deal. Hope he enjoys his retirement.
Mathis is an enigma, wrapped in a.187 avg, mythical possessor of pitch framing, catcher who somehow gets pitchers to speak rave reviews about him. ( I think he bakes them cookies and cakes for every occasion)
Mathis is the example of why you want your kid to be a MLB catcher. The other good career choice is NFL long-snapper.
Got to watch him play both in Anaheim and Mordor (Washington DC). Helluva of a player.
The dude has two hits that should put him in the Hall.
Thanks Howie
Awesome to see Mike Trout as a dad.
I’m hoping to take my little guy to the snow this winter. Yesterday I gave him his first big boy bike. Put it by the tree and let him come down stairs to find it. One of the best days of my life.
The thing about Adell I don’t see mentioned much that he is with Boras now. I think that significantly decreases his value to the Angels or whoever has him right now. Angels are taking on the risk that he develops into something useful, which after last season is not a 0% proposition, however if he does turn it on in in say 2 or 3 years, he is NOT going to take a type of deal that Trout did, or Weaver did, or like Acuna, or like a ton of other players have. He’s going to bid his time, force the highest contract each year and then get to FA as quickly as possible. That’s Boras’ MO. With no possible team friendly contract coming if he does breakout then his value is far lower to me than a guy that might take a 8 year deal buying out a few years of FA.
There is a long way to go for Adell to be considered in any conversation about future salary considerations.
Not at all. Part of the value of developing homegrown prospects is the not so unlikely chance they forego some years of FA by taking a under value contract to take lifetime security over injury or performance risk. I could name SOOOOO many players that gave up years of FA to teams that they became established with. The Angels will NOT be getting that advantage with Boras being his agent.
Oh I agree completely with your analysis. I’m just saying that I think the chances of Adell becoming a superstar commanding a big salary are low. Boras scoops up as many of the top prospects as possible, but being a top prospect is not necessarily a predictor of success and big contracts. The jury is super-far out on Adell which is exactly why I would not hesitate to trade him for an established pitcher.
I agree I wouldn’t hesitate to trade him either partly because he could bust as you say, and also because even on the off chance he puts up 7 WAR one of these upcoming seasons, the Angels won’t be getting the added benefit of a team friendly deal for a player securing his lifetime safety contract.
Right….and any 7 WAR seasons are likely at least 4 or 5 years off when Trout will be in decline. Need to win now.
MLBTR suggests that Ray’s may package Snell and Kiermeier and raises Angels as a possible taker.
Curious possibility. I’d assume this would probably involve Adell plus a few more prospects of less renown heading back, depending on specifics. Kiermeier is an interesting short term RF/CF option, fantastic defense, limited offense, somewhat dubious durability given recent history at least. And a lot of money to take on that wipes out a lot of payroll flexibility, on top of Snell’s own sketchy durability. Not sure if I’m thrilled by this. What do you guys think?
I’m pretty meh about Adell – in fact, I’m souring on the Angels’ entire system due to the lack of foundational development and a souring on the Eppler drafts. We can try to put frosting on the shit sandwich that was Adell’s debut – but that kid seems a long way away to my baseball eyes. He looks like a completely different player than, for example, Tatis Jr who is his same approximate age.
I personally am not sold on anything from the Eppler era and I have seen little to convince me that the Halos are developing players in a manner that gives me hope that the raw talent will be molded into MLB stars.
All of this is a long way to say that I would trade Adell, Marsh and any of the Farm if I received solid starting pitching in return. Trade them while their value is still high.
I too have throttled back a bit on my expectations for Adell, but also think baseball fans have been spoiled lately by the likes of Trout, Tatis, and Acuna. Adell may not be a true major leaguer until 2022-23, but I think he’s going to be one. In light of that, I’m a little leery of trading him for someone with injury history like Snell and would rather use him for someone like Gray, Castillo, Darvish, etc.
This is where I land. He was really aggressively moved through AA and barely even played AAA at all.
I think that’s important when evaluating him. He may ultimately bust but his path has been very expedited relative to others. Maddon is right to want to get him a more traditional path back to the bigs and not jump right back into the pressure of the hype
Excellent take 1971, I am right there with you. Have to trade them now. What I did not like about Adell was his focus on the field, lacked fire and intensity. This is what I saw with my eye balls. Marsh appears to be better but probably just a guy. Not a star. Let’s deal em now.
I suppose I was thinking more about the value of Snell + Kiermeier than whoever we might give up. I’m content with trading Adell if we get a useful piece or two in return. I’m not too sure if Snell + Kiermeier are it. Superficially, they fill the right spots. But neither is durable and fairly expensive between them. I keep thinking that if they wind up wearing Halos, they’ll spend far too much time on IL (or just not pitch enough innings in case of Snell) while eating up most of payroll flexibility we have.
Yes – I agree. Rays are good at trading players at the peak of their value. It’s a good point that Snell may not be the right trade target.
Adell should go to Double A for a few months first. Get a good coach or two to teach him how to adjust, be selective, and learn situational hitting. He also needs a good fielding coach to work with him on angles, path, and how to set up before throws. Base running would be the cherry on the top, if he could get good at that, but that can wait until AAA where pitching is a little better, older, wiser.
He is a good athletic prospect, just doesn’t seem to have enough baseball field experience where he isn’t the most dominating player on the field. Must hurt to be mortal.
I really think the switch to RF last year hurt him. He was confident, taking great first steps when I saw him in CF back in 2019. That spin in the corner takes some getting used to and only reps will do that.
He needs to learn. Not going to start in Center for the Halos for awhile.
He seems to be placed to close or to far from the wall, making him have to run in straight lines to the ball. That is a tough play when you need to cover some ground at high speeds. Beating the ball is easier than chasing it down.
This is all true, but there was no AAA or Spring Training to get him reps in last year. While we all had expectations, I think the Angels were just putting him in last year to get him playing time – work out some kinks and save some money on the short season.
Yes. He was that extra player that they didn’t want doing things on his own, so put him on the roster to keep him away from bad influences.
He was rushed, just because, but did show he is a great athlete in need of more than just fine tuning.
Does anyone know how much baseball he has played, and if it was his main sport before getting drafted?
From his foundation website:
Just an overpowering beast. In the line of most big men in the NBA and not being able to shoot free throws.
In their younger days no one would defend them fearing for their lives, so the big guys never got fouled when they had the pill.
Jo seems to have always been much bigger than the competition. Just did what came naturally, dominate. Very few can get away with that in the pros.
Thanks Stevie
Well, I was just showing that baseball has always been his game, he played youth league and in high school (from which he was drafted). No indication he was drafted just because of his physical athleticism.
The dots would seem to connect that we asked about Castillo while working out the Iglesias trade and that is the root of the story that the Reds had discussed him this offseason.
I wonder if these Reds rumors could turn into some kind of multi-team mega deal. Seems like between us, the Yankees, and maybe the Padres there’s enough interest out there in Gray and Castillo to move both.
We know Arte. If the Reds are primarily looking to shed payroll, which bad contract will need to accompany Gray or Castillo becomes the issue.
It would have to be Castellanos (14M) or Votto (25M and Full NTC), and maybe Wade Miley (8M). Otherwise, their payroll isn’t that full of bad contracts. (I did see that they are still paying Griffey though).
If Arte is taking on bad contracts to get pitching, we could do worse than adding Castellanos to get Gray or Castillo (depending on what that would cost us in potential to add another starter).
I was thinking the “salary dumps” would just be Gray’s contract and Castillo’s arb raises themselves, but could see how Castellanos might be appealing too. I’ve been fiddling around on Trade Simulator since my initial comment. Might have to get off my ass and actually write a post for once. What a week…
Damn Reds. Made some great acquisitions, run smack into a Pandemic and disband the team. A staff of Bauer, Gray, Castillo, DeScalfani…pretty tough. Bullpen of Amir and Raisel plus Lorenzen…nice I .would have liked to see them come back and make a run at it again. Offense was productive.
You know, as I write this, sniping a guy like Jesse Winker might be nice acquisition. Release Upton and put Winker out there. LH contact hitter still getting his feet under him. Not fleet of foot though. .
The Reds want to move the Moose. he’s still owed 52 million over the next 3 years ( includes a 4 million buyout after 2023) Since Joey Votto wont waive his NTC I think this would be the only way to get Castillo without giving up the farm. Im not sure where Moose would play though..
The Moose, while having that big contract, was the player I didn’t see finding a spot on our roster (after we got Iglesias at SS).
Akiyama. Reds signed him for 3/21 just last year. He’s a left handed bat with no pop but a solid OBP. He showed a little pop in Japan, but nothing I’d bank on.
Reds send Gray ($10 million) and Akiyama ($7 million) to us for Canning ($575,000) and a meh prospect. Works in the simulator and isn’t far fetched as they get 5 years of Canning, who closed the year nicely, and the Angels get a significant upgrade without losing Adell or Marsh.
I followed this rabbit hole by sending Adams to Cleveland for Carrasco, an overpay per the simulator but probably realistic, and ended up with a rotation of Gray, Carrasco, Bundy, Heaney, Barria while retaining Adell, Marsh, and Detmers.
Sounds good. Like Canning, don’t think he is durable for more than three seasons.
He broke down more than once, but comes back with the same delivery. He needs to change something, and work on some extra stamina.
I’ve spent WAY too much time on the simulator lately, ha ha.
Another iteration I did had us sending Marsh to Cincy for the same package then also pulling off Carrasco. If the Angels are serious about doing a flex or six man rotation, that left me with
Gray, Carrasco, Bundy, Canning, Heaney, Barria until Ohtani comes back. Best case is he bumps Barria but in reality one of Canning or Heaney is likely hurt by then. It does allow for this thing called “depth” and I like it.
There’s no room for anything else of note, maybe a Wolters or other cast off on a split contract, some minor league signings for the bullpen. But that’s a solid rotation.
Man it sucks to be a Reds fan now….. one quick gasp of play off air then back to trying to trade anyone good off the team. I was on their SBN site and it verges from “not another tear down” to stupid expressions of hope like “sure, trade Castillo for MacKinzie Gore and Jake Cronenworth….”.
We have no idea how good we have it in Angels land.
The Central divisions are hurting right now. Those two non tendered as many players as the other 4 combined, for nearly as much estimated salary, and teams declined every meaningful option.
No revenue sharing last year, no fan attendance then or guaranteed for 2021, and smaller TV markets added up to massive losses.
It sucks, the Centrals are the least annoying Divisions. I actually like the Pirates and Reds, and I pull for the Brewers when I see em. I am all good with the Tigers (actually follow them a little), Royals, Twins, White Sox (actually follow them a little) as well as the Cleveland Lexapros. I don’t often root for other teams, but when I do, I root for central teams.
Same. I like a lot of the Central teams. Always root for them against their counterparts from the East and our competitors our West.
No revenue sharing really killed them last year. That fact kind of got overlooked in the “baseball is back” frenzy but those TV markets aren’t big enough to cover large payrolls, outside of Chicago. Those teams need live gate and revenue sharing money.
You follow all the bad teams bruh. It’s like you don’t even know this teams, and baseballs, history.
Except for STL, the Cubs, and KC (remember 2014 and 205)
Geez Pal I’m old but can just bearly recall 205
The ascension of Marcus Aurelius? And you can’t tell me you forgot the epic Battle of Nanpi – it was all the rage.
Those are some good thoughts, and keeps us a lot closer to the budget than what I was thinking.
If we could do either your Canning or Marsh (below) scenario and nab two strong starters, we would be remiss not to take those seriously. Love the thinking. I hope someone reads this (fingers crossed).
So the Yankees get Castillo and the Padres get Gray. Who do we get?
Granderson, but we’d be out on Wilson.