Here is a list of lots of nicknames of active players. The Angels have three guys on the list. Tommy La Stella is on the list as well with a nickname coined for him by Joe Maddon. I didn’t find all that many interesting links to things that haven’t already been linked yesterday. The Angels are in the running in the Brad Hand sweepstakes. Have some sparse Thursday links.
Michael Brantley signed with the Astros for two years at $32 Million. For much of yesterday it was reported that he signed with Toronto. I guess not. Meanwhile, J. A. Happ signed with the Twins on a one year deal worth $8 Million. The Mets say they will not hire a new General Manager until the next off season.
Apparently, 24 teams attended the showcase featuring Julio Teheran and Anibal Sanchez. They both had terrible years in 2020. It will be interesting to see what kind of contracts they get. In the same link, the Tigers are reportedly interested in Jason Castro. I saw reports that the Giants and the Phillies were in attendance at the Teheran showcase.
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
I would be very surprised if we make any significant trades for SP this offseason. I don’t see Luis Castillo or Sonny Gray coming over. There is a little too much uncertainty for the team to be ready to go all in and trade the farm. Which version of Justin Upton will we get this year? At age 33, we are looking at a league average (hopefully) player in LF. Who is going to play RF while Adell develops and will Adell breakout when he is called up? Not to mention the pieces that Perry has picked up are players that are likely to be used as strong trade chips come mid-season (unless the Angels are actually in the hunt). I think the prudent move (considering that Arte is not going to significantly increase payroll) is to wait until Pujols AND Upton are off the books before trading away any well-regarded prospects.
Yeah, Castillo is a pipe dream. I think Gray was a possibility but the Reds have likely shred enough payroll. I wonder if snagging Iglesias helped the Reds keep Gray.
I’d love to add Gray, though. But I understand not wanting to trade prospects at this point.
Tanaka or bust, I guess?
We picked the Reds pocket once, it will be much harder the second time. The Reds took a beating from their fanbase for dumping Rasiel. So much so, that the Red must win the Gray trade. We are not getting him unless you’re talking Jon Gray.
After the rough year I have had, I simply hope we have a full season and are allowed to attend games. Bear in mind that I missed half of last season because of unconsciousness.
Manfred keeps saying to expect a full 162 games. I don’t trust Gavin Newsom to cooperate about the fan attendance issue, though. The only glimmer of hope is that the Angels play in Orange County rather than in the more draconian Los Angeles County.
You’ve had it tougher than most. I really think they will shoot for 162 but don’t expect fans in CA seats for a long time, especially considering the “speed” of our rollout compared to other states.
That said, by summer’s end I really hope/expect to go to a game with some level of attendance. I might even head to Dallas to see my uncle and catch a game there earlier in the year.
Hand/Iglesias sounds like a pretty good 1-2 punch to me. We would win a lot more games. Offense is good enough to hang in there late in most games.
I would say thanks but no thanks to Brad Hand.
I have never been a big fan of soft tossing relievers, especially when they are past their prime. This is a guy who has only had two really good seasons in a nine year career. More importantly, his Hard Contact rate the last two seasons have been the highest two numbers of his career, with 39.7% in 2019 and 34.7% last season.
And in keeping with that stat his fastball velocity is gradually going down, last season averaging only 91.8 mph on the fastball. I know he is primarily a slider guy, but again, I don’t think high volume, high-leverage relievers should be “off-speed” guys. It is too dangerous. The now defunct LOOGY could be a guy like Hand, but now that the three batter rule is in place I don’t think he has alot of value, in fact, he potentially hurts more than he helps at this stage of his career.
We are at least “okay” in the bullpen. Perry needs to be putting his energy and focus on trading for Gray or otherwise getting the stud SP not on acquiring fading relievers.
Hadn’t looked into his hard contact rate. Definitely not the right direction. And fastball velo is still relevant for slider pitchers. It is the difference in speeds that makes the off speed stuff so effective.
Still think there are far more bullpen arms I’d like to have than starters and that one will be added.
Yeah, I am aware of the importance of fastball velocity for setting up other pitches. That is why I mentioned the decline in fastball speed.
In Hand’s case the majority of his pitches are sliders so it could be argued that it is a little less important. The thing is, relievers usually come in with runners on base so the strike out and generating swings and misses becomes that much more important. With bases loaded and one out the strikeout is a pretty important tool in the bag, so to speak.
Thus my dislike of lower velocity relievers.
The Greg Allen effect scares us all.
I get that. I’m OK with lower K guys but I want ground balls and soft contact to offset that. Let that guy come in with runners on and get a double play, no problem.
But, as in your scenario, a base hit or even a fly ball and that’s a run.
Agreed. I think we can get as much or more of a hand (HEEEYYYOOOOOO!) from Justin Wilson as we can hand for less cash.
Two seasons ago someone posted that we should trade for Teheran and I replied that Teheran had lost it and was just going down hill. I got my info from a conversion with Don Sutton.
We have been for 3 seasons trying to recapture the magic from pitchers who are done.
BTW I do no longer think that Bauer is a good investment for the kind of money he is asking for. But unless we get big seasons out of three starters we have we are done before it starts. I will say Hand could be the missing piece at least maybe. Our starters are all good for 4 or 5 innings and turn it over to pen.
Of course if we turn every game over to the pen after 4 or 5 innings then the pen will be toast by July 1st, unless the season starts late.
Of course we all know that Trout’s REAL nickname is GOAT.
Or “The Millville Meteorologist”.
Yesterday a “Newbie” posted what seemed to another poster a “Whaaa”. I had along with most here thought that Arte releasing Eppler and bringing on Perry Minasian that maybe we were going to build up our Farm System, Development System, Scouting and Drafting by hiring qualified team players while holding on to what we have already. We (I) thought we may jump in the Free Agent Market and bring home pitching and maybe a catcher and trade with Colorado or the Reds for a pitcher.
The new boss is the same as the old boss. Mike Trout will not see the Playoffs this year unless there are a lot of break out and comeback players. The team has been rumored in so many FA signing I lost count. Trade rumors every day had us mentioned. The definition of stupid is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Well the real GM is Arte and like a Jerry Jones he is really clueless.
We should be every year rated across the board one of the top 4 teams to win it all with the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers because of our market and money and sadly we are not. The Mets and White Sox are going for the title, the Dodgers have the Padres chasing them closely and Mike Trout is again going to miss the October action. Like the Mets I hope Arte sells the team and we get the right people in place that have a clue.
How many Pennants has Arte brought home? How Many World Championships? Why does Arte not see what the rest of us see?
I don’t believe this is Call Larry H. Parker at 1-800-whaa, No GM since Stoneman has had a clue and that is about when Arte really took over as GM after Stoneman was told that Arte had to approve everything. Arte brought all his clueless cronies into the mix and how did that work out?
I’m done. Thanks for reading this long diatribe and comment with why I’m wrong or not.
LOL at freaking out when the season hasn’t even started yet. Still a ton of free agents and trade pieces available. It’s easy to talk about spending money when it’s not your own, and not your business to run.
Mets and White Sox have had a nice offseason SO FAR. Angels fans are wildly impatient. We should feel lucky we are a fan of a team that has an owner even willing to spend money, as there are many franchises that simply do not. How about we give Perry more than 3 months on the job before we start comparing him or thinking he sucks.
I think there is always going to be a contingent that will shit their own Cheerios every morning because Arte still owns the team. It won’t matter who the GM is or what he has done or who he has brought into the FO or how long he has been on the job. Arte’s rich. That gets under some people’s skin. He has to be castigated. Even winning isn’t going to change that, plenty of folks hated Arte when we were winning too. Every owner’s gone make big mistakes. There are factors you can’t control, like the top FA pitchers wanting to play back east for the last couple years or just about all of your young arms falling apart. It takes time and trial and error to build most teams unless you are the Yankees, and even Yankee fans bitch about ownership. New boss is same as the old boss because bitches is bitches is bitches. A lot of it is blaming Pharaoh cause the rain doesn’t fall.
I feel the same about Perry as Jerry and Billy. I’ll give him his four years, I want to be able to at least see what he’s trying to do (not just flailing around giving out contracts and drafting Tim Tebow), and if it doesn’t work after a good amount of time then try something else. I’m giving Perry at least 2 years before I can decide if he’s any good or not, but thus far what he’s doing makes sense, thus so does what Arte is doing, so meh OK.
I agree that a couple of months that don’t involve playing baseball is not sufficient to judge Perry.
Theoretically, though, if Perry doesn’t improve the club in 4 years then it could be evidence that the owner is the problem, either in not allowing his GMs the freedom to make deals or else just not being good at hiring GMs.
But yeah, I’m calmer than I thought I’d be, about 2021. We all want to win now but we also want to win consistently and for that we need to be creating a farm that will supply us with top talent. If we accept that Arte won’t spend the big money then the farm is the only way we’ll win.
That’s the thing, we need the farm either way, the whole “Arte doesn’t want to win enough to spend the big money” trope is tired as f***. No one spends money to win. Not the Yankees, the Red Sox, The Cubs or the Doyers. It has proven not to work, FAs just plain fail too often. You have got to have a farm that produces real MLB contributors, like the Doyers, Padres, Braves, White Sox, Yankees etc. Then, when you can identify one or two true holes, a good starter, a catcher, etc you spend like a sailor to address that completely. You don’t do that for two starters, three relievers, a catcher, an outfielder and a short stop. Long term, the farm is the only way we will win period, Arte spending is how you keep some of those players once they prove out.
Yessir, agree. Arte Moreno gets such a horrible rap. The “he’s cheap” talk is wrong and frankly…tiring. I will take the fact he is involved, any day. He does want to win bad and invests his money in the product. Some contracts don’t pan out. We got Anthony Rendon last year and it came with the freaking, “can he pitch” comments. Excuse me, we just plugged a serious hole in the organization for the next 6 years. Thank you for the cool suave 3rd baseman Arte. How is Carole doing?
The majority of the “Arte’s cheap” comments here are sarcasm. There’s no doubt Arte spends a lot of money on payroll. However, after owning the franchise for 17 years, there’s also little doubt that Arte meddles in player signings and trades, and has made some decisions that have limited consistent improvement of the on the field product.
The Angels are not one or two players or two or three years away from a championship. After 17 years of Arte’s leadership, at what point does he take more responsibility for the results? I get it – it’s his investment and he can do whatever he wants with it. However, it’s not realistic to expect much praise when we need Josh Hamilton’s contract to expire before plugging a 6 year hole at a key position.
am I not allowed to say “waah waah waaaah”?
No. Well, yes, but only if you understand someone’s gonna take issue with it.
I wish he had taken issue with it in the other thread instead — I don’t like the subtweet vibes I got from his essay today. We march on
Eh, he’s a Grandpa. I don’t think he is aware of subtweet vibes. He just types what’s on his mind, spell check or context be damned. It’s fine, unrealistic to expect different.
He’s old, be glad he remembered what he was going to do
Every move Perry has made so far I can get behind. He got us a huge upgrade in the pen with Raisel. He got us a solid SS for a year in Jose Iglesias, which is huge because it puts the Angels in play for a SS when they’ll have Pujols’ salary come off the books next year. Quintana has always been underrated and at 8 million is a much better deal than anything Eppler ever got us on the FA SP market. Suzuki is a solid backup catcher.
Also I think the Angels rotation is quite a bit better than you give them credit for. Fangraphs has them predicted as the 8th best SP by predicted WAR next year and the Bullpen as the 7th best bullpen by the same metric. And pitching is OBVIOUSLY the Angels weakness!
Overall Fangraphs has them as the team with the 8th most predicted WAR for next season. Do the Angels have flaws? For sure, but even the team we saw last year was pretty good once they finally decided to not play guys that were obviously done. Their record over the last half of the year was definitely one of a team that should have made the playoffs.
In case you want to see where those numbers come from….
https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=Team
thank you king, couldn’t agree more
So, if I am hearing you correctly, our offense is going to suck this year.
We already have two holes in the starting lineup. Both, if I was GM, would not let into the stadium.
It’s too early to freak out. If there was ever a year to sit back and wait for a few bargains to come to us, this is the one.
Correction: it is NEVER too early to freak out
I am totally freaking out. We will lose 200 games and Trout will sign with the Yankees or Phillies because he loves Derek Jeter.
Lol, I am only worried if there are confirmed gift basket sightings.
How often have trade rumors been right for the Angels? I am honestly curious, because you are right, there are a lot of rumors and so very few (for the Angels) seem true.
Just because some reporter speculates something, doesn’t mean we were in on things.
Our acquisitions usually come out of nowhere. Run silent, run deep. Nobody had us trading for the Iglesias brothers, Quintana or best one of all this year, Suzuki. Going back…Puljos was flat out of left field. Simba same as was Josh Hamilton. The day before the signing, Rendon popped up in the rumor mill but Angels had been on him from the get-go. Happy we are not like the Mets and Blue Jays…linked to everybody. Go Angels.
Jason Castro now has a two year deal with the Astros. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/01/astros-sign-jason-castro.html
Huge over pay, crazy world in MLB finances.