Good morning Angels fans, hope you are staying safe out there! Have some links!
Angels News
Angels GM and local Platypus, Perry, was on MLB Network on Tuesday and was asked what he was doing to improve the team. As nothing has happened, it was a bunch of vague statements.
In the same video, Perry also praised Ohtani and has his planned usage to be the same as before. Honestly, he is not much different from Billy is he?
Perry also talked with Jeff Fletcher and said the Angels are Trevor Bauer have mutual interest. Right, also that they are still after a catcher, because of course.
Oh wait something happened? Well, not really, just a minor league deal signing. Someone from 2012 draft that has yet to reach MLB. Not even a pitcher.
This week, instead of deciding who is number 1 or 2 for the Top 100 Angels, we have made a Mt. Rushmore. So, we have gotten some feedback on who would be on your Mt. Rushmore, which shows how no one can agree on anything. Yay! If you want to make your opinion stand out more, make a fanshot.
Around Baseball
White Sox make a splash and get Liam Hendricks. 3 years 54 million. That is a lot for a reliever.
Red Sox are still looking to move their outfielder, and apparently, someone offered a SP. So maybe it wasn’t the Angels who are in on him. Whew.
Brad Hand is still available, and the Mets look to be in the lead. He is the best reliver left on the Market yet went by waivers earlier this offseason for some reason.
MLB Trade Rumors compare Cole and Bauer to see if the latter can top the former in contract talks. Part of me really hopes he just does 1 year deals.
It is almost mid January and teams are still uncertain about details for the 2021 season. Rob Manfred has tried to calm people down by saying everyone should expect a 162 game season. Oh and there is still no plans for fans in the stands. Of course…
Anything I missed? Post below for upvotes!
I was reading this article…
https://www.mlb.com/news/top-veteran-free-agent-pitchers-available
and it once again occurred to me that getting pitching in FA is not a very good way to go. It’s too much of a gamble and ties up too much money. Most pitchers don’t have great 10 year runs. They’re lucky to have 4 or 5 good years. By the time they get to free agency most are about done.
If I were PTP I’d get some scouts and build a strong minor league system with solid pitching. I’d draft for pitching. If you have, through your system, 20 starters to choose from every year when you need maybe 2 for the big club you can have consistently solid starting staffs.
And 5 years later you probably will need to replace them all. That’s the nature of starters.
I’m convinced the last 3 years of Bauer’s contract (should he sign for 5) will be as disastrous as Albert’s. If we sign free agent starters I’d prefer to only have it be for 2 years.
Oh yeah, I’m still mad at the organization for not signing UDFAs after the 2020 draft. If we had decent scouting we would have been after up and coming pitching. Why didn’t we sign anyone? Money?
This makes total sense to me…. spend 5M on scouting and drafting pitching, max out our IFA pool money too. Do this until we have a nice pile of young pitching. If a few of them turn up good and you need a last extra push THEN I understand paying to bring in a veteran, even if it’s just at the back end of the rotation. Like the Braves just did with Morton. If you have a pile of pitching talent you can trade for a SS/C if you need one and corner IF/OF is easy to find on the market. We’d be the type of team that signs a George Springer every few years to bat big and brings in guys like Freddy Galvis and Carlos Santana in each season to shore up small holes. That’d be great.
Problem is this thinking is not very championish and it totally fails to worry about windows. If we started this right now with a load of college pitchers Trout would be 34 before most of them are ready. To some folks if we win a World Series when Trout is 35 it counts a whole lot less than if we do it when he’s 32 for some reason. I am fine with being a middling team while we build a strong pitching pipeline, but I don’t know if Arte or CTPG are up for that pain. How much of Trout/Rendon are we willing to waste? Signing FA pitchers may not work for shit, but it will FEEL like Arte is fired up and feelings are what really count.
Although we didn’t sign any pitchers, we did sign one guy.
Elijah Greene, OF, Cal Poly
Maybe we should do a tracker on him like we did with Jordan Serena
162 game season with no one in the stands, and there will be still be a 45 minute line for the bathrooms.
Cardboard cutouts of Trout at every stall…
“Who allowed those?” Mr.Moreno
Also brings the title of today’s news crash into sharp focus.
So… Friday is the arb deadline _and_ the date when international signing officially opens? Anyone we should be keeping an eye on? (Maybe this is a paging commander Nate, or someone who keeps an eye on these things) 🙂
Arte opening his house for 81 days, and no per caps? Never gonna happen, if he had a say.
I don’t hate the idea of Benntendi and maybe an Eddie Rodriguez but I really don’t think the Sox are looking to drop SPs right now.
Also, why the Perry Platypus but no Perry Mason?
Because I like Perry the Platypus.
What do you have against Perry Mason?
I’ll just say I don’t want anything of mine against Perry Mason. Not my type. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that).
You can’t call a guy Perry the Mason…. unless he’s a Mason or you don’t get nicknames.
You can call him Perry Mason….
Nicknames don’t have to include “the”
When he can find us a real SP, then he can get the title of Perry Mason.
Now we’re making sense
To quote David Byrne, stop making sense.
Union Rulez
No Perry Como?
Perry Farrell?
He hasn’t proved himself cool enough to be Perry Como
So we are almost half way through January, so how are we working out? We have glaring issues to expound upon such as a Bullpen. Our new GM Boss same as the old GM Boss. We added a pitcher for the Pen with some upside in a trade with the Reds along with some added movement that really amount to very little. We got ourselves a journeyman OF’er along with a Band Aide starting SS. So the team is in good shape to move forward right ? Is this the point that we I’m Kool with what we have and wait for Albert to leave after this 2021 season? Do we really need a back up OF’er as we have so many down grazing grass down on the farm? Is Max the best we can do at the Catcher’s Spot? How about LF and RF? Is 1st Base secure? Is this another season we rely on our starting pitching from within? Do you know what the definition of what stupid is? Yup I know you know but here it is anyway. Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Does that sound familiar? Well this lack of action is just not taking us to the playoffs is where my head is at while watching the Mets and White Sox making progress while we sit here dumbfounded. Maybe Perry hired in on the same deal as the last 2 GM’s.
The Go with what we got platform.
I’d agree if the major names were off the board but there’s still plenty of options available. We could sign Bauer or Tanaka or any of the many available SP, we could trade for Marquez or Castillo or Gray and also get a corner OF in the deal (Desmond/Winker), we could sign a guy like Puig on a cheap 1yr deal, we could sign JTR, we could trade for Contreras…
Way too many possibilities for us to get upset and call the off-season prematurely.
Yeah. The deadline for arbitration figure exchange is later this week. I’m not sure if all our remaining arb eligible players accepted the contracts that were tendered. Perry could be kind of busy right now, for all I know.
Exactly. It’s not that PTP has done nothing, he’s actually done a lot compared to most teams, it’s that NOTHING is happening for the most part. I’d imagine PTP has about 20 piles of of sticky notes and circle diagrams on a white board and god knows what all over his walls and computer just waiting for SOMETHING to happen.
“Do you know what the definition of what stupid is?” I think you mean crazy. So, what, in your mind’s eye you see Arte and a half dozen new FO guys just sitting in an office with red carpet, sporting red polo shirts, agreeing that the best course of action is to do nothing else this off season?
I don’t understand why it’s so hard for some of us to grasp that the off season and roster building is dynamic and there are other factors that are just as powerful as the Angels FO when it comes to what the Angels can pull off. Namely players and their agents and other team’s FOs. A player has to want to sign now, and then has to want to sign with the Angels for the Angels to add him to their roster right now. There are many things that can prevent that from happening right now, and may even prevent it from happening at all, from not wanting to play for the Angels, to not wanting to play in California, to hating the color red, or wanting 5 million a year more than we want to pay a player. My bet is that a lot of FAs are waiting out the market. The same holds true of trades. Why didn’t we make that trade for Darvish? Because the Cubs didn’t want what ever we have more than what the Padres had to offer. Other trades may not happen for plenty of other reasons. Just because we want a trade doesn’t mean other teams have to make that trade with us, and often times they won’t. It’s frustrating, but that’s life.
I doubt that PTP and friends are just shrugging and saying “6WG!” though.
What??
What are you talking about? Anaheim is the BESTEST PLACE EVAR! to play! Anyone who doesn’t sign with the Angles is because of a stoopid GM and Cheap Arte – and NO OTHER REASON!!! EVARY PLAYER IN MLB EVAR WANTS TO PLAY WITH TROUT!!1!!! Cheap Angels and dumb GM keep all those players from coming here, and so what if the payroll is $375 million????
/s
MMT.
I actually think both ways on this. A bunch of players probably don’t want to play in Cali for a whole pile of reasons from social climate to taxes to their mom not being able to stay up till 3am to watch em play. At the same time, it will probably work for us too sometimes. The OC is a nice place if you have money, lots of ball players are from California, so there will probably be FAs who want to come here…. for a contract that 10% higher than one from Florida.
You have 24 hours to sign
And someone has “The buck starts/stops here” on their nameplate. The only one in the room
There are no “glaring” bullpen issues. Iglesias is a Top Five closer in the game while Buttrey and Mayers are potentially good high-leverage options. Could we stand to add another BP arm or two? Sure. It depends who, but the right name could help. But as it stands we are potentially pretty good there.
The real issue is and remains starting pitching.
We are never going to take 162 games for granted again.
In the theme of our immortal friend TAME:
The Angels will make some moves, the Angels will win some games.
Honestly, I wonder how we actually return to regular baseball. I would imagine the players and staff will be pretty high on the vaccine list, because hey, money. But how do they start letting the crowds in? Only with a vaccine ID card?
And thanks for the TAME reference. We need that guy here — more Zen in a wonky second season, please.
I could speculate on those questions, but I just don’t know. Hopefully they don’t get to jump ahead in line over those that need it most. I would imagine there would be some kind of vaccine check to get into a stadium, but who knows. This has all been so disjointed, hopefully we get some solid answers over the next few weeks/months.
Thought we could use a HH throwback 😉
They said no special treatment to professional athletes. They get in line according to risk just like the rest of us.
A few greased palms and that vaccine may just slip into arms all across the league. Might even be so greased it doesn’t even make the news.
Boy, i’m jaded af
it could be up to the state (which screws us), but from what I read, MLB suggested that there won’t be any vaccine requirement
That’s the theme of my weekend links. I’m looking at the MLB protocols as well as what leagues have done in Japan and Korea.
I miss TAME. We all need more TAME in our lives.
That would be a hero’s quest…. someone search every dark corner of the interwebs, find TAME, and get him to join CTPG. That would be totally Panther.
Maybe the real TAME was the friends we made along the way.
I just barfed a little in my mouth. You did that on purpose.
Obviously.
I visualize him checking HH every once in a while and wondering where the heck everybody went.
He probably thinks Thanos snapped his fingers and we disappeared into dust.
Wouldn’t it be…
The Angels will make some moves, the Angels will not make some moves.