I write this to you with a thankful and hopeful heart. There are so many people in my life whom I love dearly who probably aren’t there without the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. There are no words I strive to live by more than “content of character.” I’m eternally grateful for his work.
We aren’t perfect, but the solid, steady rise of inter racial marriages points to changing attitudes in our society and good lessons learned. I have to imagine most of the folks walking down those aisles were raised by parents like mine. So I have hope for my biracial son and his peers, who will be the most biracial generation the world has ever seen….until they start having kids.
That said, let’s get back to baseball…
The biggest news out of the Halo-sphere is the signing of Kurt Suzuki, who had bigger money on the table from at least one other club. And as an aside, when the staff was picking a new name for this site, Halosphere was my entrant. I think we chose well.
There’s a ton of other interest news, though. We all know about Shohei Ohtani’s arbitration filing. The Angels have rarely gone all the way to an arbitration hearing in the past but new GM Perry Minasian says the club will now be a “file and go” organization. If so, this is a marked change in how the club operates.
Looking for further signs of how the club might operate under Minasian, we have his first batch of international signings. 4 of the 7 are from Venezuela. 3 are pitchers, 2 are shortstops, 2 are catchers. None are outfielders.
Denzer Guzman is the highlight of the class. A kid who has a solid line drive approach and is a solid defender. Same scouting report but with a few pictures of the kid. If he makes it, the advertising world will love that smile.
Brent did a great recap of the end of week action.
From around baseball….
JT Realmuto apparently has a 9 figure deal on the table. How has he not jumped across that table to sign it?
Fangraphs does their usual outstanding job, this time looking at what DJ LeMahieu could mean to the Yankees. Who’d have guessed a righty in Yankee Stadium would lead the league in opposite field home runs? Astounding.
In further Yankee news, they brought in Corey Kluber for one year $11 million. Too big of a roll of the dice for my taste, but that’s pocket change in in the Steinbrenner household. Here’s how it went down, and how Masahiro Tanaka is now almost certainly without a place in NY.
Trade for Musgrove, add Tanaka? Wouldn’t be the 90s Braves but nobody would embarrass themselves, either. I just don’t think Cincy is trading Gray, they definitely are downplaying trading Castillo.
SI took a look at MLB’s to-do list prior to the season and came up with the same answers we have: no clue. It’s almost like a complete lack of leadership leads to a lack of direction and half the league still not even knowing how to construct their rosters.
At least he’s not trying to fundamentally change the game with hairbrained ideas like giving out free base runners and shortening some games to seven innings. Oh wait, he is.
I’d call Manfred a clown, but he makes entertaining children look like a noble profession.
I wasn’t planning on doing links today, which is why I’d linked King’s most famous speech on Friday. However, since many of us have the day off, I do propose a longer form read. You see, MLK credited Jackie Robinson for helping pave his way and Joe Louis paved the way for Jackie. Prior to WW2 the entire nation rooted for a black man to beat a white man in boxing, which was far and away the largest sport in the country at the time. This is truly one of my favorite stories in sports and American histories, enjoy it.
Enjoy your day. Take a look at your friends and loved ones. If they don’t all share your complexion, thank Dr. King. If they do, get out and live a little.
Good grief, glad Arte didn’t hire Jared Porter, that’s all this org needs now.
Yep. Eric Kay, Bubba Harkins and Jared Porter. We’d have all the major food groups covered
Someday, while the boring off season slides by, it may be interesting to work out some way to see what the Angels would have had to send off in order to match some of these pitching trades that have been made.
If we can’t find a pitcher to trade for that involves some salary relief for the other team we may be in trouble. I mean, I wasn’t expecting huge things after Stroman/Gaussman stayed put, so I guess I should settle down and not be too surprised if we only get two starters in the Tijuan Walker area. I am just surprised the Cubs and the Pirates got so much back for the two pitchers they traded.
What is, things we don’t have.
For $1,000 Aaron Rodgers
Just looking at Walker today, along with your Brett Anderson idea. There are still plenty of reasonable options, even in the RP area. Minasian and crew really have done a good job without losing their mind so far in filling openings.
Based on the roster holes and what’s been done so far, Perry’s grade is a C.
Turk’s Teeth, who knows prospects much better than I do, basically equated the Musgrove return to the Bundy return plus Jordyn Adams, albeit with these arms closer to MLB.
I’ll take Walker, or Anderson and one of Richards or Mike Leake. And what is Jose Quintana’s worth right now? We are still a large market, and fairly large payroll, team and I would like to see us sign the $8mm-$12mm a year type of free agent pitchers. 2 yr or 3 yr deals.
Good gah! If that’s what it took to trade for Musgrove what the hell would it cost to get Castillo off the Reds? We may trade for a starter, but holy crap I may need to adjust my expectations cause Hudson Head is easily as good a prospect as Brandon Marsh and we don’t have any MLB experienced pitchers to trade away much less a couple more good prospects to throw in. I like Musgrove but the Pirates got a lot of solid prospects back for him. I don’t know if I’d have made that trade unless our system was as stacked as the Padres…. maybe we need to suck for 15 years and sell off every good player we have until we just have an unending supply of kids GMs want. I’m sure we’d all be able to sit through a few 95 loss seasons to get this done.
What’s going to be interesting in 5 years will be the article about what happened with all the prospects the Padres traded during the 12 month period they bartered for a rotation they can afford to pay for 2 years. It’s smart though, if this doesn’t ignite Padre fan frenzy post Covid I don’t know what will. It’s a gamble on their top end pitching prospects though, they need those guys to work out, otherwise the team will look like the old Marlins when they have to let all their starters leave for salary reasons.
If the team makes no more moves or fails to get starting pitching with the clear needs that exist, it will confirm to me that Eppler’s failure was more about Arte than Eppler.
I swear I read this comment when Dipoto left.
Since the Padres are focused on pitching and still have plenty of minor leaguers left on their farm who would immediately position in the upper reaches of the Angels’ current prospect list, let’s trade them Raisel Iglesias for a player who could help Trout win a championship in the final years of his contract.
Really – The Friars did not touch any of their 7 top 100 prospects to do this deal? If accurate, they are loaded to compete well beyond 2021.
Stupid budget setting cash poor Arte.
/s
Cash pour, please.
Cash pore?
Ok you win. My hopes evaporated.
Musgrove is gone, Tanaka might go back to Japan…
At least we can probably count San Diego out of the Bauer sweepstakes.
I wouldn’t count The Padres out on Bauer until he signs.
If they sign Bauer I may not even watch the Angels next year, haha.
It will at least be fun to watch The Padres beat The Dodgers.
So fun!
I’m an inklin’ towards the Dads
Pod Rays (see: Snell, Blake).
Check out AJ Propeller, MLB Executive of the Year heh heh.
Musgrove to San Diego
for Hudson Head, #7 prospect in the SD system, plus something else probably.
Time to sign Tanaka and Garrett Richards and just hope for the best
Why you wanna curse GRich with another TJ like that.
Yeah that was very rude of me
I think it’s more likely we sign Odorizzi and funnyman Jim Gaffigan.
At this point The Angels may only sign more bull pen pieces and then strive to get to .500 in 2021. 2016 again folks!
We already have Fluffy.
If that is the outcome, I’d give him high marks for at least trying.
Maybe we buy some Odor Eaters and take the short walk down to the cellar.
Believe it or not, there are at least a few SP/RP options available that could help the club, even avoiding the highest injury risk options. At least the market is moving a little.
It has to rhyme or it’s destined to fail
Tom Verducci wrote a piece for MLK Day about a fundraising game in March of 1970 at Dodger Stadium called the East-West Major League Baseball Classic, which benefited organizations that King supported. His article said the rosters were made up of two players from each team, but never mentions which Angels participated.
A little searching around the interweb turned up a program sold for the game that lists Angel shortstop Jim Fregosi and relief pitcher Ken Tatum on the roster of the West team.
The game aired on Gene Autry’s KTLA channel 5 the next day.
Nice.
Thinking about Manfred’s desired changes. I can see continuing the 7-inning doubleheader rule, but I don’t much like it. Don’t think we will be seeing the same need for makeup games as last season. Still could happen, though. I’m trying to remember anybody that wrote about liking the runner-on-second-base rule, though. That one seemed universally unpopular. I’m not a hidebound traditionalist, I can see changing the league alignments and the doubleheader rule, but runner on second is just ridiculous. Changes the entire dynamic of the game in extra innings. Screws over fly ball heavy pitchers. No thank you.
Read the story “Prior to WWII, very well written story, enjoy.
The Commissioner of Major League Baseball is deservedly across the board disrespected and why not. He believes his changes to the Americas Game were for decades were needed. If you are a casual fan of the NFL you know the names of Mahomes, Tom Brady or Drew Brews and Peyton Manning. Casual fans of MLB don’t know of the names of Mike Trout or Mookie Betts. The “Clown” does not know how to promote the game or it’s Stars. Instead let’s mess up the game to get younger people who want Homeruns on every other pitch to pay attention. 40 different cities have lost their Baseball Identity and their young fans will turn away from the sport and play video games or turn to Soccer or some other sport. The game of seven innings, really?
Reminds me of Arena Football – with different rules intended to speed up the game, increase excitement, but which never really competed with the NFL.
It seems more and more that the Commissioner isn’t even a fan of the game.
Glad you liked that story. Max wasn’t really a Nazi. In fact he hid some Jews during WW2. Him and Joe ended up being good friends. It’s truly a fascinating story with several books abs movies.