Baseball season ahoy! It’s official. Jose Rojas made the Angels opening day roster. This is the link to watch that spectacular play by Jo Adell in Saturday’s game. The Angels organization ranked seventh in this list of the values of MLB franchises. In this list of predictions for all the 2021 MLB awards, Mike Trout got votes for AL MVP naturally. Surprisingly Zachary Rymer voted for Shohei Ohtani to win the MVP. If Ohtani and Trout go 1-2 in AL MVP voting, Lookout Landing will probably erupt. Shohei Ohtani ranks as one of the biggest surprises this spring, at least for some people.
The Reds released Noe Ramirez and it looks like the Angels will get him back on a minor league deal. Mike Trout tweeted this photo of his little Angel. Put some eye black on him and he’s ready to go. Grrrr! The Angels are considered a possible landing spot for Carlos “Bang Bang” Correa. We are officially done with playing in Tempe for this year. We did not win that last game, but “We will win some games.”
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It looks like the Cubs pulled a Jon Jay on Cameron Maybin. They released him and then re-signed him to a minor league deal. He’ll be at the alternate facility. The Brewers did the same thing to Brad Boxberger and Jordan Zimmerman. The Rangers did it to Nick Vincent. The race to the bottom is quite competitive. Matt Harvey will be on the Orioles opening day 40 man roster. Matt Harvey, for his part, claims he intends to be better than ever. All right! What the heck was this? In sad news, the Twins bench coach Mike Bell died of cancer at the age of 46.
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
Baseball season ahoy!
Yeah, noe can stay in the minors. He does nothing good for them up here.
Is the shift killing Walsh? Seems like teams have shifted against him more lately.
Is there a reason the Angels haven’t signed a guy like Shane Greene?
yeah, he probably wants more money than they would like to pay him. does that make sense?
With this front office, it does make sense. Oh wait, no it doesn’t.
I was really hoping we’d sign one more bullpen piece this off season. Melancon or Wilson, maybe Greene although he greatly outperformed his peripherals last year.
Yah. I have to defer to Perry on this one. He saw all of Greene’s innings last year and he’s the one reading the peripherals. If he didn’t seem all that excited about signing him I have to assume he made an informed decision. Wilson is hurt already, so dodged that. Don’t think Melancon was taking us over the Padres.
I wouldn’t mind if they signed the recently released Tony Watson though.
Padres snagged Melancon for only $3 million. I figured he’d get more than 1/3. But, as with Greene, Perry spent last year watching him every day.
As far as Wilson, keep in mind I was also pining for Sonny Gray and Carlos Carrasco this off season. Both are injured. If I really was Perry, my off season would’ve sucked.
Annnnnndddd…. we just signed Cishek and Watson.
You were the first person I thought of.
Abs snagged Hoyt, who has an option. Major rebuild of the bullpen on the eve of the season. Crazy.
Jeff we didn’t just sign one but two bullpen pieces in AJ and Noe.
Noe vs Houston was terrific.
Greene, as mentioned below, would have been scooped up if Perry thought he was good enough to make a difference, he selected Ramos instead, so that speaks volume what Perry thinks of Greene. Ramos is a waste of a AAA roster spot.
Thankfully, Reds added Bedrosian to their MLB roster or Joe Perry might have selected him to return along with the other lost soul, Noe.
This pen is unreliable, that is a formula for mental fatigue, watching leads evaporate breakdown players psyche. If one allow themselves to settle for mediocrity, you begin to embrace it and be satisfied. This will get worse until our GM finds flamethrowers who hold the opposition to under a 0.200 BA.
I suppose that’s the rationale. I happen to think Greene is a pretty solid reliever and I’m surprised he’s still on the market
I think it’ll be interesting to revisit the HH debate over what value Ohtani brings to the Angels has a two-way player. For instance if he goes 110 innings (which would be a huge one-year leap) I can see a 2.5 fWar season if literally it all goes right and he stays healthy and has success. On the other side he is a DH so his hit tool could accumulate around 2-2.5fwar over 400AB. Are they going to let him steal bases? Or shut him down like they did Trout long ago?So he could be a max 5fWar player . I don’t think that’s enough for MVP.
My prediction is 15 starts and 80ish innings. Based on six man rotation, pitch limits, etc. I think he’ll be the guy skipped when there are multiple off days in a week.
I’m not a huge fan of WAR for pitchers. And in this case, Ohtani getting out there 15 times likely adds more actual wins than it does hypothetical ones.
Pitcher WAR seems really highly correlated with IP (and for Fangraphs it’s Ks also). And with modern starters not going a lot of innings, it makes sense that we don’t see many huge WAR numbers from pitchers.
True. There’s also an art to pitching that I don’t think most metrics pick up. A guy gets a lot of ground balls but no K’s so his FIP sucks, for example. And that is a component of WAR.
Shohei for 5 innings and Sandoval for 2 should turn a lead over more days than not.
Exactly, if a pitcher gets outs, it doesn’t matter much how the outs are achieved, does it? I do understand the value of a starter going a lot of innings, however.
This is one weird Trout baseball card.
Let’s beat the Dodgers two in a row.
Ward has earned the RF position, but roots grow deep with Joe It would seem.
With the expectancy of the Breakdown of the pitching staff guys being sent down will return quickly.
We now know Shohei can hit once again, I would very much like to see his pitching return also.
The game a few days back that had Marsh and Adell doing stuff in the OF such as a funny reaction by Marsh after a warning track response and Adell’s own superman catch later in the game are my favorite moments of ST.
Walsh has a history of slow starting of the season, but I would like for him to show us something similar in April like we saw in September.
Enjoy the game with the Dodgers everyone.
PS. The NCAA Basketball March Madness is just down right awesome this year as underdogs have really come through. Tomorrow the Trojans and the Bruins play as underdogs.
I still believe that a Healthy pitching and hitting Ohtani will be the MVP in a Landslide.