Good morning Angels fans? How do you feel today? That bad huh? Well, have some links anyway.
Angels News
The Angels lost to the Rangers yesterday. The nerve. Q was bad again, the offense didn’t do much, and the ump sucked.
Jack Mayfield was claimed off waivers. The infielder went from Houston to Atlanta to Anaheim to Seattle. All in a few months. Long road trip for him.
Fangraphs gush about Ohtani again. Yay! Also other stuff.
Around Baseball
Hector Rondon retires. The reliever spent 8 years in the majors but couldn’t get anything this season.
Another retirement. This time reliver Jerry Blevins.Was great vs leftys. Could have used him.
Trade time. NYY traded Mike Tauchman to the Giants for Wandy Peralta. Not earth shattering or anything.
The youngest Molina brother is on the 10 day IL. He had caught a ton of innings but has a foot strain.
Luis Robert goes on the IL for flu like symptoms. Might be precautionary or that is a really bad flu.
Dodgers place two more players on the IL. Angels get healthy and everyone else gets injured.
Yonder Alonso joins MLB Network. Right from playing to TV work, wow.
Hate the new extra innings rule? Well Manfred made the pioneer league decide games with a home run derby. Yep. Man hates baseball and needs to be stopped.
Fangraphs analyze how the new ball has impacted things.
Anything I missed? Post below for upvotes.
I’m not putting this forth as an excuse for last night or for the Angels’ general underperformance, but I am constantly annoyed with just how bad the ball/strike calls have been on a consistent basis this season. Was it Ron Kulpa last night? He was consistently calling low outside balls as strikes for us, but not nearly as often for Texas. I remember at least once that it forced Fletcher to swing at such a ball for strike 3, because it was in the same place as the ball out of the zone called for strike 2.
Kulpa was terrible, and he was probably only the third-worst or so game last night.
https://twitter.com/UmpScorecards/status/1387410413545877514
State of umpiring is in shambles right now. This is not a dig at umpires, because I know how hard it is. Just a comment on the fact that there is a huge gap between what the fans think umpiring quality should be and what it is right now.
Not sure it is as “hard” as you are saying. It is hard to be perfect. But we are not asking for perfection, only consistency.
We want a low outside pitch to be called a strike for BOTH SIDES if you’re going to call it at all. Just fairness, I think that is all most of us want.
If you talk to the players themselves they say the same thing. If a HP Ump has a wide strike zone they just want it to be wide for both teams. But this is usually not what is happening.
Genuine question: so Kulpa missed one pitch in his established strike zone, per the graphic. Consistency higher than league average. Were you fine with last night’s zone?
To be honest, I did not watch on TV but followed with mlb.com Gameday.
What I saw there (it is sometimes good to “watch” a game this way because you become more aware of how really bad a lot of these ball/strike calls are) confirmed what rspencer was saying. Fletcher, Pujols, etc. Alot of our guys had balls called strikes against them and then immediately started swinging out of the zone, which is natural.
To answer your question, it was noticeably bad.
Also, not sure what “established strike zone” means. How long does it take to “establish” the K zone. While this is happening do we forgive the “mistakes” re: the traditional zone?
To me it looked like he missed more than one call. For sure.
“the smallest polygonal area that can contain all of the pitches that were called a strike”
he expanded the zone and didn’t call anything a ball inside what he established. that’s consistency.
and that kind of consistency sucked af.
So no, consistency is not and should not be all that we ask for from umpires.
Good point. We don’t want them to be consistently bad (even though it might be consistent, lol!).
Ideally, they would make calls that are in accordance with the knees to armpits zone (traditional). Seems that is not happening. The width of the zone however seems to be more problematic than the height.
Jack and H.T., thanks for your sensible and highly informative responses.
Your complaint is legit. It is not an excuse. What you say about hitters expanding their zone and swinging at bad pitches after a ball has been called a strike is absolutely true and a good observation on your part.
In fact, most pitchers are smart enough to notice a pattern when the HP ump gives them those gifts and they keep pitching outside the zone,just outside the edges of the K Zone KNOWING they’ll get the call. That is a HUGE advantage.
Maddon says Pena is ready but holding him down is a baseball decision.
Is Maddon seeing the same Claudio we are?
Stassi is back tonight with Cobb on the hill, let’s get that series W!
2 of 3….and repeat.
With shitty pitching like we have, it will be hard to get on many winning streaks.
Cool chart of all time Angel position player WAR leaders.
https://twitter.com/BetweenTheNums/status/1387147276792078340?s=20
This is awesome. Thanks for sharing.
And that is why Trout is so important. Other franchises have their guy like Trout, or multiple guys. The Angels rarely got a long longevity prime player and those did not stick around.
It is funny how the Dodgers best guy is Kershaw which is saying something given their super long history. Of course their depth is massive, so many 60 BWAR players, but they didn’t have that super guy.
Trout has dragged the Angels from the low 20’s to 18th place when it comes to BWAR WARLORD leaders. He just past the White Sox now too (as this only went to 2020)
Actually, if it wasn’t for Trout and Finely, the Angels would be 29th, ahead of only the Marlins.
Longoria was higher than Fregosi.
That is awesome. Thanks for sharing it.
Better than the Kentucky Derby, was waiting for the guy Trout to round the 4th turn and blow away the field. But he actually lapped everyone. MIKE “Fing” TROUT!
It’s so nice to see the names of so many of my favorite players pass by, especially Albie Pearson, the number one reason I became an Angels fan instead of a Dodgers fan. And watching Fregosi stay at number two position is really nice, as he is the number two reason I root for the Angels today. I still remember how ANGRY I was when they traded Fregosi away, although I did get over that pretty quickly.
And now, completely unrelated to baseball…
RIP to Major Gen. Michael Collins. Collins was the command module pilot on Apollo 11, among his many other achievements.
All of my childhood heroes are passing.
Buzz is still buzzing
And hopefully still punching flat-earthers.
I have always considered Collins to have been the bravest member of the Apollo 11 crew, because he was faced with the possible decision to leave the other two behind if something went wrong. And his daughter was a big part of the soap All My Children back when I was watching it as a youngster, which I got a big kick out of.
What a life and truly a great American.
To be fair to Q, the Angels haven’t shutout anyone this year and 1 run production isn’t going to win a game for the Angels. If Q gets the 9 runs the Angels pit on the board the day before, we win. Q went 5 innings giving up 1 run in his April 21st start vs Texas. For an Angel that is a Quality Start. I don’t think Q is trash just yet. He needs runs support, something we all knew our pitching would need from our Offense 1st team
Ya gotta plate them lobsters.
Year after year after year we sign a guy thinking he’ll be 180 innings of meh just to see him implode and suck. Why? Because we have none of those guys on our farm.
People talk about the Dodgers payroll but Buehler, Kershaw, Gonsolin, Urias, and May all came up through their minor league system. Meanwhile the Angels are signing the likes of Teheran and Q.
Exactly! The closest (and it’s not even close) example for the Angels is Chris Rodriguez.
2002 does not happen without Lackey and Francisco Rodriguez.
And the crazy thing is the Dodgers have done it mostly without top-10 draft picks.
That’s what a baseball organization does for a team.
The Angels remain a marketing-first organization not a baseball-first. By comparison a team like the Dodgers has invested heavily in player evaluation and development which results in Bueler, Urias, May, Kershaw etc.
The comparison results in the conclusion that there is no comparison. See links below:
https://www.mlb.com/angels/team/front-office
https://www.mlb.com/dodgers/team/front-office
Uh you forgot Troy Percival, Brendan Donnelly (Minor league Free agent in 2001) Scott Schoeneweis, Scot Shields, Ramon Ortiz & staff ace Jarrod Washburn. All home grown pitchers that made up an integral part of a World Series Champion pitching staff.
Compare that to 2021’s Homegrown Griffin Canning, Shohei Ohtani, Chris Rodriguez (Possibly Reid Detmers) . Even with Shohei thats no contest. So basically we’re screwed.
Yep! I did the readers digest version.
Add elite player development to large market/budget and you get the monster that is the current Dodgers.
The Angels have to fill so many holes each year that they can’t fill them all with elite talent. The Dodgers needed one pitcher, so they got the best out there. We needed 2 starters, an entirely new bullpen, a short stop, a catcher and a right fielder. So we got meh pretty much across the board.
Correct. It starts with the organization which includes player development. Look at Adell’s defense. Need I say more?
Good Morning, new day and last night is behind us. Well Q was behind a Mia Q (Question), why not give Sandoval Quintana’s next start. Why Not? Q is just another mess of course, just like Teheran or Harvey or Cahil. Sandoval (Sandoval = Sandy) can use the work and the results may remain the same but but the experience is very valuable. I think pitching Sandy is a great idea.
I have to disagree Grandpa. In my mind, Canning, Rodriguez, Sandoval should all be ticketed for regular AAA duty. They all have major league “stuff” but having been rushed in desperation to the bigs, they haven’t learned to pitch! This is how you “develop” major leaguers.
What the hell is a “Slozak”? One of the creatures from “Land of the Lost”? Q sure made the guy look like Ty Cobb (no relation to our Cobb).
Yeah!!! Love it. Those guys were so funny. They moved slower than turtles, didn’t carry weapons, and were not in the least bit scary, and yet they were supposed to pose some sort of threat…
But isn’t it spelled “Sleestak” or “Sleestack. ??