Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
Yay! The Angels made this list of the longest playoff droughts in Major League Baseball. At least the author thinks the Angels can get back into the playoffs in 2022. He thinks Arte and Perry will spend on pitching next winter. Dream on!
Here is some more hype of Shohei Ohtani heading into his Wednesday night start against the Cleveland Baseball Team.
Noέ Ramirez cleared waivers and opted for free agency.
The Angels have signed veteran reliever Tim Peterson to a minor league contract. He’ll be in Salt Lake City for the time being. Perhaps he is our replacement for Noέ Ramirez.
Bill Shaikin writes about where the Angels go now without Mike Trout. He even pulls out the venerable “trade Justin Upton” card. Assuming Upton would waive his no-trade clause, we still have to ask, “Who would want him and what are they willing to trade?”
Links From Around Baseball
Chris Davis is out for the season after arthroscopic hip surgery. This leads me to believe the Orioles might have been one of the teams that were in on Albert Pujols. They just got outclassed.
The Braves acquired Kevan Smith for cash and in a corresponding move they designated Jeff Mathis for assignment.
The obsession about velocity without attention to command is blamed here for the epidemic of hit batters.
The Padres got back almost all their players who were on the injured list due to COVID-19.
Meanwhile Keone Kela underwent Tommy John surgery, ending his season early.
The Mets can’t seem to catch a break. Now it’s Taijuan Walker to the IL with left side tightness.
Here’s the real SH*T that this blog doesn’t wanna admit.
Maybe that mega nuclear orgasm that many of you had back at the old place in March 2019 wasn’t such a good thing after all ( Mike Trout’s mega deal ). Maybe if Mikey was making $10M a year less than Ebenezer Moreno and Perry would have more money to spend on better depth than John Jay. I still think he’s gonna ask to be traded eventually, since this organization is total turmoil right now ( just like the Late Great “Big Nasty Joe McDonnell” and former channel 5 sports director and anchor Keith Olberman said ).
Am I the only one here who is concerned that Ohtani’s enormous loss of velocity last night is a precursor to a visit to Dr. Andrews. As Angels fans, we just don’t get to have anything nice for very long. I hope I am just being paranoid.
No Walsh either
Joe is starting to lean towards sitting Walsh with a left hander going….great idea if they guy replacing him hits above .200.
Yeah, Walsh hits .238 at least against lefties
Rojas .179, Ward .156 Suzuki .185 Gold Gove .192 against everyone.
I’ll take .238
In limited sample size, Rojas has reverse splits, Ward has normal (but bad) splits, Suzuki is getting one start today anyway (and Butera is worse offensively), and Lagares…someone competent has to man center field.
Any reason you see why Schebler isn’t up yet?
Not too sure, but they probably don’t want to clear a 40-man roster spot that is occupied for a pitcher for an OF that will provide similar production to who we already have at the big league level.
makes sense…..I was thinking defensively too. Ward looks pretty comfortable out there, not bad, but I would say Schebler is a better overall option with him in center Ward in right. Of course we have Gold Glove
game 1 is classified as throw away game. Ward, Suz, gold glove, Rojas 5-8.
Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) Tweeted:
Shohei Ohtani, who admitted feeling a little sluggish yesterday, is not in the lineup for Game 1 vs Twins. #Angels facing a LHP. No Walsh either.
https://twitter.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1395436877176475652?s=20
It’s awesome how Grampa Joe feels no sense of urgency to win games when our season is on the brink.
Both Walsh and Ohtani have pronounced splits, and they are available off the bench. Additionally, it’s a tough ask for a lot of guys to play 14 innings (Ohtani literally said he was feeling sluggish yesterday).
Rojas and Ward will probably be in the lineup both games….
Ohtani should definitely have a complete off day, Walsh should be in the lineup. For nothing else to see more left handed pitching.
I agree, Walsh should probably be in there. Just taking issue with “no sense of urgency”
He’s changing relievers every three batters trying to tinker with matchups, I see a lot of urgency there, lol
But it wouldn’t be the Angelsnet if there wasn’t someone talking about grit, urgency, accountability or invisible baseball mitaclorians.
True Grit…That is why we’re starting Rooster Cobb-burn
I’m not from Michigan, but the Governor declares they have lots of grit there. Since she apparently knows grit, maybe we need her instead of Maddon?
Who is Andrew Cuomo?
I’ll take Gritty Governors for $2000 Alex.
No Ohtani in 1st game
Is it just me, or when I saw that Corey Kluber threw a no-hitter last night, my reaction was… well of course he did, because the Yankees signed him. Had the Angels signed Kluber as yet another 1-year vet coming back from injury deal, no way he pitches this well for us. So frustrating.
We bring in Matt Harvey 2 years ago, he’s horrid. Suddenly in Baltimore, he remembers he can pitch again. WTF?!?
Perhaps the coaching staff has something to do with it?
Have you checked Harvey’s numbers lately? Tanked by his last 2 outings.
I had the same feeling ha ha.
If he was here he’d already be hurt and sporting and ERA similar to our area code.
>Looks at Matt Harvey’s stats
…What are we excited about here?
How much was Ohtani’s velocity down last night?
By about 4th inning (when I tuned in), low 90’s. Based on what I heard, low 90s in first couple of innings, up to mid 90s in 3rd, and down to low 90s in 4th.
Yeah, I remember him hitting 95 a couple times, but generally he was in the 91-93 range with his fastball. He had to focus a little more on location to set up his breaking stuff, but once he figured it out he was pretty good. The second homer he gave up was 91 right on the lower outside corner if I remember. If he was at full strength it probably would’ve been a swing and miss.
That’s interesting, because I personally don’t think location was good at all. The splitter especially was just hanging up, and it’s still a good pitch and the Indians are one of the weakest teams, so he was still getting whiffs. But combined with velo, location, and the sun, just because he got results doesn’t mean I think he pitched particularly well at all
Down 6 mph on all pitches in innings 1-3 to about 82 on splitter, 90 on fastball.
In fourth inning, hit 95 three times I think, and that settled everyone down.
Threw one fastball in the fifth and I think it was 91.
Let’s hope it’s just a bit of dead arm. That happens. Or he has Ebola…. cause Angels.
The 2022 prediction for us is reasonable I think. Taking off my cynical hat and looking at things historically, I think our current team is in the same place as the late ’90s Angels. A couple of stud homegrown players approaching the grizzled veteran stage of their careers, but shit pitching and an overall inability to get the lineup, pitching, and defense clicking at the same time. Trout is Salmon, Ohtani is Anderson, Walsh is Erstad, Fletcher is Eckstein. When that team finally gelled and won the World Series in ’02, those players were 33, 30, 28, and 27 respectively.
The pitching in ’02 was a cobbled together lucky break from what I remember. We could recreate that by moving C-Rod to the rotation, getting Detmers up here, retaining Bundy, and adding Stroman and/or Scherzer to Ohtani and Canning. That’s not a top-5 rotation but it’s a solid one, which will help fix the bullpen simply by nature of not needing to use it for 12+ outs every single night. One or two guys from the farm and a short-term acquisition or two like we did with Iglesias and Watson this year will help even more.
Our offense is going to be good for the foreseeable future. If we fix the pitching, I could see us winning it all by the time Trout is 32-33, Ohtani is 27-28, etc in line with the ’02 analogy. Even if we don’t win it all or “only” win once, we probably make the playoffs a couple times for the mid-late primes of our current core’s careers. That’s totally fine and cements Trout and Ohtani’s (hopefully) HOF legacy.
Also, there’s an outside chance we can still salvage this year. The next two weeks will tell. We smash the Twins who suck as bad as we do right now and take 2 of 3 in the next two series with the A’s and we’re back in the mix. If we sweep Texas in that two game set and at least split with Seattle (both of which we should do on paper), then even better and we’re back into trade-for-Scherzer territory. If not though, then yeah, burn your jerseys and all that stuff.
So where are we going to get a Bengie Molina?
…Hope that Cuban guy we’re going to sign has a similarly vague birth certificate situation as Pujols?
There has to be another Molina brother out there somewhere
Trade for Yadi at the break?
Drew Butera….done.
I hear Mathis is available. Dfa’d the other day. Let’s pick up another aging non hitting catcher.
Disagree with 2002heaven at your own peril and be wrong 90 days later.
Mike Mayers is already looking like, well like Mike Mayers and not Trevor Hoffman or Mariano Rivera. Our BP is looking like the 1940 Maginot Line again ( Hansel Robles & Ty Buttrey going into 2020……ask Gitcho what that means pertaining to false security ).
2 : a defensive barrier or strategy that inspires a false sense of security. Maginot Line.
Merriam Webster Dictionary
March 23, 2021……..I’m right again 💪 👈
We’re 6 games under .500 today.
If our offense is going to be good, 14th in Runs per Game, (lot of injuries so far) haven’t shown what he are capable of yet, we’ll need some help.
From game 1 this year, 4/9 of this lineup has been for the most part, auto-outs. Most of the 4/9 auto-outs are playing out of position and average/poor defensively. I’m seeing an average offense, not good.
When it’s good, usually for one inning, it’s riding a unsafe roller coaster while staring at funhouse mirror, it’s a fun experience.
Most nights, most innings, we are getting sick eating deep fried Twinkies and the traveling Carny workers have their way with us.
Bad as the pitching is, we need a lot of help making this offense better, good, great.
I think we start being solid contenders as soon as next season. An extra 30 mil will be nice to have to use for pitching.
Yes, basically all of Pujols’s and Heaney’s money needs to go to pitching. Small exception maybe to retain Iggy for 2-3 years and avoid the stupid expensive shortstop sweepstakes.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/31460822/inside-mlb-crackdown-pitchers-using-foreign-substances-why-now-why-important
Been fun to listen to jomboy break down video on the subject too
Well, we will probably get to see an appearance by none other than …….. Dillon Peters !!!
he of the 6.15 ERA in Triple A.
“Now cut that out” (Jack Benny) “Our Angels need all the help that they can get and the name Dillion Peters sounds like a decent kid”.
Well at 30 yrs old he’s not a kid ant more.
And he has a killer Mullet
What would a tear down even look like? As always we have no attractive pieces to cash in outside of maybe Raisel Iglesias.
Reboot the coaching staff. If Maddon can’t be fired then turnover everyone else and bring in people who can at least straighten out this team’s sloppy fundamentals on defense and pitching. You hate to say it but Scioscia teams would never last this long playing this shitty.
Why DFA Upton? He’s been around or slightly below league average this year according to BB-Ref and seems to be picking it up a bit lately. Plus, he’s gone after next year anyway.
I think he’s perfect to move to something like a 3/4 time player later this year when Marsh or Adell come up and Trout’s back. He’d be valuable off the bench too when he’s not starting. Imagine him replacing Ohtani on his pitch/hit days instead of Phil Gosselin and the starting OF being Trout, Marsh, Lagares/Ward or something like that.
He’s not gonna live up to his contract value, but he still strengthens the team in the right role.
On the other hand he’s Upton…. so we need to bend reality and trade him or DFA him because Upton.
Trade Upton along with Reid Detmers to the Yankees ( hey, we’ve seen that bad movie before, LOL!!! ). 😆 😫 😥 💩
Ok , my last thought of today is about how difficult it truly is to listen to Daren Sutton call games for the Angels. His voice is irritating, the words he uses are irritating, the subject matter is all over the place, the speed of reporting in inconsistent, the talking down to the listener is bothersome, and the yucky love affair with Gubby is just disgusting. Add to all this is “Folks” and his so many questions constantly makes staying with the game impossible for me. It really is best to have a two man booth and not a 3 man booth. And maybe turn to someone other than Sutton as a PxP man who can stick to the game like the Old Timers did. Enberg and Scully had stories about each player and on opposing players to share, they talked to use like they were next to use. Today announcers think we are all uninformed passers by and are unknowledgeable and like to show off all their gained knowledge. And do not allow dead air even for 2 seconds. I’m out, have a great morning “Folks”.
I was telling the wife the other day that it would be nice if the broadcast had voice recognition so you could mute Darron
Sutton does both color and play by play. They should save some money and remove one of the two, Gubby or Jose and in invest that money in finding the next Dillion Peters or Tim Peterson.
I agree with you so much. The only thing that made all the losing seasons tolerable back in the day was being able to listen to the late great Dick Enberg. When Bob “my burritos are starting to repeat on me” had the reins it was the same kind of intolerable it is today.
We are going to need our brooms out today as we sweep the Twins. Kurt Suzuki is at the end of a very good career. Ward is got to get it going if he is to continue as a ML ball player.
Ward was rated by some in 2015 around 95 to 105 as the best player in the draft, but someone in our org. was someone on thinking a report that was filed that he was a valuable catcher and instead of high third rd. Ward was drafted in the first rd. I went screaming yellow zonkers and just flat out could not believe it, how dumb. But I keep rooting for him to blossom, but alas I am prepared to move on.
I think he may blossom in another organization.
Big day today as we are in a Manfred double header with the Twins at 1pm. Near the top of the list of just plan not needed, the 7 inning double header still is as something that’s unwelcome.
Many years ago a bargain baseball deal was the DH. You got 2 games for one price. Then it became 2 different games in one day, not the bargain of before but still interesting but not popular and they were removed from the schedule and used only for make up games.
Paying for 7 inning games is Manfred’s way on shortening games instead of addressing the real issue of pitchers taking to much time between pitches and allowing hitters to respond by stepping out.
Major League pitchers are to delicate. Oh and also Manfred, he hates Baseball. 7 inning games are Phoey.