The big news out of Anaheim yesterday was the Angels release of Albert Pujols. The news was big enough to warrant a press conference.
Over his tenure with the Angels, Albert Pujols was not the star we hoped he’d be. Not only was he replaced as the best player on the team the moment Mike Trout arrived, his contract prevented adding pieces around Trout the last few years.
That’s not to say there weren’t some good times. Angels fans had the pleasure of watching Albert collect hit 3000 and home runs 500 and 600. Here’s a nice fan video of 600.
He joined truly elite, inner circle HOF territory with the 3000 hit, 600 HR combination.
Overall the Angels paid Pujols roughly $42 million per WAR per Fangraphs. Does that make his mega deal an outlier or par for the course?
Where might Pujols land after this? I’d call this list a stretch other than maybe Cleveland. Baltimore might be a nice fit. HR friendly yard and division, no hopes of winning.
The present day Angels look to improve what has been a disastrous start to the year defensively.
Fangraphs breaks it down and the Angels rotation issues have a lot to do with the defense. “The Angels have been worse at converting batted balls into outs than any team in the majors, and not by a little.”
Moving Walsh off the grass and to first upgrades both right field and first base. Rendon coming back will fix third base. I can’t figure out Iglesias but and neither can FGs.
The hope has to be for an improved defense to get the teams expected ERA and real ERA in line. If that happens, L’s will turn into W’s.
For now the Angels aren’t just wasting Mike Trout, we’re wasting Shohei Ohtani too.
I hate to keep being the bearer of bad news, but the talented Chris Rodriguez is heading to the IL.
Looking towards the future, minor league baseball started this week.
Jordyn Adams made a great first impression. Our own Turk’s Teeth thinks he’s poised for a breakout year.
And perhaps the epic name Packy Naughton isn’t the only return in the Brian Goodwin trade. Jose Salvador recorded 12 K’s over 13 outs in his 66ers debut.
The 66ers roster has some interesting young talent. And with tickets at the Big A both rare and expensive, the minor league affiliate looks like a great spot to take the family for a night at the ballpark. I think I’ll head there myself soon.
Have a great, safe weekend. I’m going to enjoy the Canelo fight on Saturday and hope the Angels can somehow pull off a Douglas/Tyson level upset over the Brooklyn Logo Stealers.
Francisco Lindor is hitting .163 BA 1HR 3RBI’s
Meanwhile Marcus Semien
Semien .254…7HR’s…..16RBI’s
would’ve rather we signed Kolten Wong too than Jose Iglesias.
How’s BFF Semien’s defense been at Shortstop this year?
So does this mean that Arenado is ripping on the Angels for how they handled the Albertross or is he essentially pleading to Pujols to retire while he still has an ounce a dignity left?
https://twitter.com/katiejwoo/status/1390758428193218564
From one overpaid heavyweight to the next.
Arenado is not overpaid.
I differ immensely on that.
Arenado is on-pace for a 5.1 win season. Using rest of season projections, he projects out to a 4 win season. At $35 million (only $20M is being paid by the Cardinals!!) he’s doing fine.
Plus after all of these years he actually starting to hit consistently away from Coors Field
Sure, if you only count what his team is on the hook for, $20M okay. We shall see what he can do to earn those $35 million buckaroo’s. There really was no takers at $35M.
Which is ridiculous. If teams weren’t stupidly constrained by artificial salary numbers, every team should want him at $35M.
Compared to Matt Chapman he is.
This is Chapman’s first year of arbitration, so…of course that is true?
Confused what point you are making here.
Mike Trout is overpaid compared to Juan Soto.
“Trash Arte Moreno” for $500 Alex……
Butera from Texas for cash…Kruger DFA’ed.
I’m sur it’s already posted…just making sure.
once again showing an incredible lack of foresight
“In 541 career games, Butera owns a .198 (259-for-1,305) average”
.198. That’s a familiar number
WTF? Premium wasn’t available?
He is only a .187 avg.
My bad that is a much better upgrade. How’s his CERA feeling?
I will google “que cera, cera “ and see what the answer is.
With that average, he wins the battle to start tonight. Welcome Sal.
You forgot the added benefit with Butera. He has 6 whole innings of ML pitching under his belt so yes he can pitch.
What a joke. Arte loves shopping at the Dollar Store.
Hiw does this help the Pen?
What in the hell was the purpose of this? Is Kruger that bad? It was only going to be for a short while.
Well if someone snags Kruger through waivers the Answer would be no.
Why this signing now is more my question. Stassi is back next week. On the heels of the big news yesterday when all of our nerves are inflamed, they sign a player like this? We could have signed Tyler Flowers 2-days ago.
Better yet WTF didn’t they just keep Juan Graterol instead of trading him to Toronto for cash?
Stassi is going to have TJ on his neck
LMAO…he did walk off looking rather gloom.
Will that help him frame answers to the press’s questions better?
Dodgers have the ability to run. Suzuki cannot handle the run, as we have seen.
The answer was in fact no.
https://twitter.com/LAAngelsPR/status/1391464274388676614
Sell the team, Arte.
Sell! Sell! Sell!
Yes. Please.
Hate to break it to you guys but a new owner wont change anything…only quality pitching.
A new owner might be able to throw out a better first pitch.
The way it’s going I just hope Joe doesn’t get canned…NO JINX!!!
What if the new owner cares about pitching and developing pitching talent?
Because as long as Arte owns the team we know those aren’t priorities.
We’d probably end up with a “REAL” cheap owner.
I, for one, am concerned about going forward with Jon Jay on the roster.
Even if he gets DFAd when Rendon comes back, 10 days of Jon Jay sucks
it shows how poor our depth is. We can’t stress that enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcHPNUN-U8E
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V5gFAiPJhvI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBYcyDoh-XI
But we’ll get quality Supreme Court rulings out of him.
How dare you insult a great American statesman, patriot, diplomat, Founding Father, abolitionist, negotiator, and the signatory of the Treaty of Paris.
Oh…sorry…that was John Jay
Right with you, Senator. I always (deliberately) conflate the two.
I wan’t happy with how Torii and Vladi’s exits were handled, but have no issues with Pujols handling. Torii and Vladi still had positive value. Pujols hasn’t for a long time. Wish they’d given that kinda slack to Vladi, and give him a shot to retire here.
Torii’s departure was fine. The Angels told him they were prioritizing Greinke but that they’d circle back to him if that didn’t work out. Torii’s team was presented with a very solid offer on a winning team and took it.
I’d have loved for Torii to stay here but business is business and everyone knew the score going into the off season.
Vlad wanted to play RF and not DH. We didn’t offer him that, so he looked elsewhere. Of course, all that TEX offered him was DH as well, but he took it.
Jeff has the info on Torii in his reply.
Big Daddy went from making 15 million per year to accepting a one year deal from TexAss for $5.5M. That offer along with a position change would be an insult from the Angels to the future HOFer at the end of the 2009 season but begrudgingly he took that deal 2 months later.
Pujols has sucked at least for 6 years. But Perry is basically scapegoating the season on Albert. Can we find 1 good Perry move this season? Both Iglesias have sucked or cost games, Quintana awful, Schebler already DFA, Mayfield, Gosselin, Fowler, Jay, Guerra, making Mayers the setup guy, losing Jose Suarez for Luke Bard, not signing Kluber, keeping Matt Wise in charge, this may be worse than Eppler
He’s basically blaming our organizational failure on Pujols not digging out Jose’s bad throws. Walsh in RF looks better than the other trash OF he’s signed.
RE: “But Perry is basically scapegoating the season on Albert”
Huh? We have a bunch of games left.
Well there’s only only way to go from here 👆🏻🚀🌙
Deeper, go deep.
Sometimes those rockets crash back to earth…..like the huge Chinese rocket this weekend, bigger than an 18 wheeler.
71% of the earth covered by water, could land anywhere in between NY and New Zealand.
As an Angel fan, do you feel lucky?
Side benefit, if it took out the stadium this weekend, the Doyers will be there too.
I don’t wanna close mah eyes…
No more taxes, ever
I might just have to breakout my old KROQ Skylab catchers mitt this weekend.
It’s Early!
They’ll be 7 games under by Sunday and probably 7 behind As. It’s pretty over.
Yes!
Watch, he signs with Boston and knocks at least one GW HR off them next weekend.
It is hard to get this group of us to agree on any one thing. But yesterday and today everyone is in agreement that Albert over stayed his welcome and it was a good move in how it turned out. You Mia, Lana, Jessica and all you guys are just a fantastic group of Angels Fans, I think we know more about the game and team than any site I ever belonged to. Thanx. GPB
12 K’s in 13 outs, who does that?….Jose Salvador does that, impressive…..Will Jordyn Adams leap over Marsh and Adell? Stay tuned into Tucks Channel to find out…. Until 2020 came upon us, we would attend 6-10 66’ers games a year and about same with the Quakes. Both stadiums are great and prices are fair plus Cold Beer and Dogs….I live quite a long way for any professional games but minor league baseball is addicting. Another plus is the Angels and Dodgers would rehab player’s in Rancho and San Berdo and you would get a surprise. I always wondered why the Angeles thought to change venues with the Dodgers as both had long histories in the parks, but San Bernardino is 15 min. closer.
45 communities lost their teams. Some of those cities and towns went into indy leagues.
If you were a fan of the 1970’s Halos then you will remember No Pitch- No Hit teams and how long the drought was, 10 years! Every 4th game you did get a Ryan or Tanana game. Attendance went up slightly for those two but in reality know was really there, but there was no TV, just radio. But we always had great defense especially in CF and SS and Catcher, so basically up the middle but they could not hit real well and if they did they were traded away, funny stuff now but not then.
🪑👂👴🏻
**The Early to mid 70’s . !978 & 1979 were pretty damn exciting teams.
!968 thru 1977 were hard times. Then Baylor and Downing and others came in and we were competitive and fun. I remember Reggie made a deal with Autry that anything in attendance after 1.4 million he received .50 cents per turnstile count and he racked up extra 3 hundred thousand, in those days that was a ton.
“A cursory glance at his Baseball Reference page basically tells the story. Statistics are bold and italic when the player leads the league in a given category, and Pujols’ St. Louis tenure is dotted with evidence of league-leading status in runs, hits, homers, average and intentional walks. The only thing he ever led the league in as an Angel? Grounding into double plays.”
source: https://sports.yahoo.com/albert-pujols-a-legends-long-goodbye-140148455.html
Infield outs when the SS throws from the outfield grass?
I think I remember him getting thrown out by a left fielder before.
Not that I care about optics, according to the presser, Albert had been informed a while ago, playing time diminishing. As the Angels did not really have viable replacements on the roster/minors for him, he was going to sit on the bench and not be cut. BUT something that Albert said or did prompted the relationship to end. Joe looked pretty bothered at the presser. As reported, he was unhappy not facing Yarborough. Therefore, Angels while looking like the bad guy, I would say this is inaccurate, this was driven by the actions or request by AP.
(I was arguing in spring training, Angels should have told him he is going to be a captain of the bench)
I also wonder if there was more to it than him just being terrible in the new Front Office’s eyes. I wonder if his clubhouse presence isn’t always as positive or helpful as people make it out to be. Not uncommon to hear how young players in every sport usually resent the washed up, entitled veterans.
Pujols at DH instead of Gosselin is a fair argument
Well looking at Gosselin’s career splits he has a lifetime .743 OPS against lefties, and, albeit a small sample size of 45 PA’s, a 1.019 OPS as a DH. So this had to be factoring into Wednesday’s lineup.
Also Albert doesn’t really draw walks or run. Gosselin is obviously not great but it shows how poor Albert is that things like “can run to 1st base at league average time” is an upgrade.
yes. “Could possibly score from first or second on a hit that doesn’t leave the ballpark” is nice.
When the only teams that maybe make sense to scoop up Albert are ones with small yards and no hopes to contend, what is he even doing?
Just go to St. Louis for a week to pinch hit a few times and then retire to amazing fanfare you wouldn’t get in Anaheim.
I think in his mind he truly believes he will hit #,700 and then retire.
Small yards will help
If he was a Yankee instead of an Angel, he would already have 700
That picture of Hamilton and Pujols is god awful, great choice Jeff
Thanks. I’m glad you caught that.
To all of you who think we did Pujols dirty…GET OVER IT!!!
Major League Baseball is a business and Albert knows that.
This move should have been made right after number 600.
All of you who think Arte isn’t only after the bucks are fools.
I’ve been saying that since Mike Trout was signed for his big money long term deal in March of 2019 at the other place. Everybody was in a orgasm over that except me. The 5 yr long ridiculous dumpster diving for pitchers who suck and the ludicrous draft strategy ( Matt Thaiss, Will Wilson, avoiding pitchers above the 3rd round till 2020, still haven’t signed young pitchers either out of Latin America, 2 straight years of drafting HS outfielders in the first two rounds ). Arte will make a strong pitch for signing Dodger’s FA SS Corey Seeger this off season ( because it makes sense to Arte’s MO……..he’s a position player and not a pitcher who just won a championship for the Dodgers ) and meanwhile the shitshow of bad pitching and player development keeps on.
Looking at next years FA pitcher crop, not much there. This year there was nothing special. I would have no issue by adding an impactful bat if this is the case. Either SS or 1B (if Walsh takes a step back).
that’s why it’s so important to develop a real farm system. When you have 10 candidates in the minors you can pick the 3 best (or however many) instead of shelling out big money of free agent guesses.
Agree with that. We have selected like ~ 58 arms out of 85 total selections in the the last three drafts. So we are ‘focusing” on arms outside of the 1st pick. Yeah, we don’t seem to be selecting the good arms or not developing well enough. I don’t know which is true or maybe both.
Come next off season, would we turn down a chance for Arte to sink more money in a position player if the arm sections are poor? I realize there still would be folks complaining and asking, “can he pitch?” When we missed on Cole, we jumped in and got Rendon. I was pleased.
I would hope most of our draft picks would have 2 arms.
Abbott was pretty damn good if that was where you were going.
Forgot to say that it is Arte’s prerogative.
To do what ever he pleases…it’s his team.
I’ll still be a Halo Honk for life no matter what.
If Albert has even an once of common sense.
He signs one day contract with STL and retires.
But I can just see him coming into Big A as a Yank.
Taking over the game just crushing us single handedly.
retiring is the opposite of common sense
FYI: Retirement is fantastic…eight years now!!!
Just looked at the roster. Still showing Walsh as an outfielder. Jon Jay, seriously?
Maddon is like Scioscia. Plays his friends. Got to take away his favorite toys fast and early. The season isn’t lost, but they got to start building for the future and see what the prospect have. Stop with the bargain bin, has been journeymen, and washed up players and let the Bees and Trash Panda players earn their stripes.
We already took away Jon Jay and signed him right back up
Team is a definition of insanity with a few sprinkles of nice things, if they can stay healthy.
Hmmmm and who would you suggest he play then? The roster right now has been decimated by injuries so are you saying only Maddon’s friends stay healthy?. In fact the remaining Roster at Salt Lake City cant even afford to put a DH in the line up as the pitchers had to hit last night. This is not a matter of FOJ’s getting the nod over a more worthy candidate. Hell at this rate the Angels will be so desperate by this weekend they’ll be resigning Jose Mota to play some infield (which would be an upgrade on the television broadcast for sure)
My friends that I’ve talked to about Albert say the optics are horrible.
Yes, they are. However, if we’re going to be honest about it, unless they let him play out the contract, the optics were going to be horrible no matter WHEN they released him.
I see two reasons why the optics look horrible: 1) They should have released him in 2017 or 2018 at the latest. After letting him drag on for 4 years, what’s the point of releasing him now?
2) The new GM can justify rectifying the above mistake, but he should have released Pujols before the season started so Pujols had the best chance to find another team. Letting him play for a month before cutting bait was cruel, because there was no reasonable expectation that Pujols would rebound.
The problem is those earlier mistakes can’t be fixed, so you are stuck with either bad optics or a bad player. The Angels made the right call.
We were already paying Pujols. We didn’t know for sure that Walsh’s 2020 was for sure, or was an outlier. Until that was settled (and it is now), then having Pujols to man first (and since we were already shelling out 30M) made sense. Also, Ohtani was a ? at DH, and there were potential ABs there. With Ohtani playing both ways and more often (not taking days off on either side of starts, or even during starts), then there is even less room for Albert.
Perry said he was losing ABs. Pujols wants to play every day. Pujols was pissed he was benched the other night with Gosselin at DH – and realized he would get fewer and fewer ABs. So, things came to a head.
I honestly think that if Pujols would have been content with an occasional PH role, they would have just left him on the bench.
However, this is better for the Angels. And likely, if he is serious about continuing to play full-time, this is better for Albert too.
This is so wrong in my opinion. Pujols before this year had 4 straight years of below replacement level play. The youngest he could be is 41. Please find for me all the players that had 4 straight below replacement level seasons and then at age 41 started to again play above replacement level. I doubt that list has even one person on it. Certainly not in the age where every other pitcher you see is throwing 97.
Pujols definitely should have been gone before this season and they should have gotten another decent OF or 1B when they were readily available. Would have loved to have seen them get CJ Cron who signed a minor league contract or Mitch Moreland who signed for only 2.25 million.
essentially the used a roster spot on someone they KNEW was horrible, when they could have gotten someone that at the very least MIGHT have been useful. Pujols has been so bad for so long that anyone worth a darn should have known even his best foot forward wasn’t going to be enough to warrant him having a roster spot.
without looking I’ll guess Big Pill Popper.
This organization for what ever reason can’t seem to find a bargain basement serviceable OF the way Billy Beane does in Oakland ( Mark Canha, Stephen Piscotty, Chad Pinder why the fuck did we have to pay $21M for 7 yrs to Justin Upton? We could’ve just resigned Brian Goodwin and got Alex Verdugo for $650K……WTF!!!! Alex Verdugo stats ( read em and weep…LOL!!! )
.315 BA……4HR’s 16RBI’s for a one year deal!!!! 😫 😡
You should be allowed one “BB-Bomb” per month.
Watching Pujols play those 5 weeks was cruel. Organization gave him every opportunity and then some. Pujols couldn’t and can’t perform. Even Chris Davis has more grace (or what I like to see) in his struggles than Albert has ever displayed once.
Arte becomes the real GM every time they do a major signing ( from Vladdy and Bartolo Colon to everybody since 2011 ( Pujols, Hamilton, Rendon ). 😫 😖 💩
That was not the case for Vladdy or Big Sexy? so why the change? is it possible that Arte entrusted Stoneman more than the other GM’s who came after him?
I’m one who thought yesterday that it was a chickenshit move to release a HoF player in the manner it played out. I’m a believer that you don’t treat people like crap even if it’s “just business”.
However, I’ve moderated my perspective with the realization that Pujols was not going to allow the Angels to send him off with a celebration recognizing his numerous contributions to MLB and accomplishments during his career.
Pujols is clearly a proud man, and perhaps his pride is getting the better of his judgement. I hope he does come around and accept it’s time to hang up the cleats and embrace the gratitude of baseball fans for his performance – especially the first decade of his career.
I like this senator better than yesterday’s 😉
He is a Politician
I think, from an optics perspective, there are several things they could have done.
We still are not 100% sure if the Angels gave Pujols the option of remaining on the roster as a bench bat. We know that the team knew he wanted to play every day, but we don’t know if the team explicitly gave him that ultimatum (be a bench bat or get released).
Furthermore, as Jeff Fletcher notes, since Pujols wants to keep playing, DFA is the only way. If both parties agreed to mutually part ways, the Angels could have given permission for Pujols to seek a trade and see if there was any team out there who would be willing to start him and make him happy. If so, Pujols waives NTC, Angels retain 100% salary, everyone is happy. If not, Pujols goes back and has to make the choice above, but the Angels can say that he preferred to be released over a bench bat EXPLICITLY.
Plus if the trade happened, the trade framing would be really nice (traded him so he could have the opportunity to play every day).
My non-Angels fan friends wondered for years why they hadn’t moved on already. To say it looked bad now would be disingenuous.
Rosenthal nailed it in The Athletic: “Pujols’ release was awkward, uncomfortable, and necessary.”
He missed “a few years overdue.”
He alludes to that more than once in the article. Even says if an owner who openly loves Albert and is responsible for paying him decided to cut bait, who else is going to sign up to take him on for an everyday role?
Yeah, Rosenthal nailed it… but the real question is, “Who is responsible for it being awkward, uncomfortable and necessary?” 100% on AP, not the team. Had he found the humility to admit he isn’t anywhere near even a league-average player anymore and hung them up sooner he and he alone would have avoided this inevitable end. Perhaps if he would have just played better and produced more, the team wouldn’t have been stuck in this no-win situation.
The way he came running out this past offseason, when walking back his wife’s words about him retiring after this year was the sign to me. The fact that he couldn’t even admit that his career would be done when his godawful contract was done showed me he has complete denial of reality. The fact has been for at least 3 seasons now, that the ONLY reason he still had an MLB job was solely because of that damn contract the team already sunk, since they didn’t have any great options otherwise (perhaps CJ Cron would’ve worked out, at a much lower cost).
Had Pujols come out before this season started and confirmed that indeed it would be his last season and he would be retiring after 2021, and had the humility to tell the organization he was willing to do whatever was needed for them this season (even spend more time on the bench), he would still be in uniform for them.
I will be shocked if any team actually signs/trades for a 75 OPS+ hitter who is slower than every other player in MLB and can only play 1B at a mediocre level now.