Good morning Angels fans, how are you today? Frozen you say? Well, have some nice warm links on the Winter Solstice!
Angels News
It is officially winter, and the Angels did a thing again! Brandon Drury, who was on the Reds and Padres last year, signed with the Angels on a 2/17M deal! It is great depth at worst, and another solid player if he repeats his 2022 season.
With nothing else to report, you can watch the Marble elimination World Series on r/baseball at 3PM Pacific. The Angels face the Rockies in the finale of a long and epic people-are-waiting-for-spring extravaganza!
Around Baseball
Correa won’t have a press conference with the Giants yet due to medical concerns? The trash cans are not aligned it seems…
Oh wow they really weren’t aligned, Correa didn’t sign with the Giants after all and is now a Met for 12/315M. SF got screwed by Heyman AGAIN!
RP Adam Ottavino is going to the Mets on a 2/14.5M deal. Mets still spending like an addict.
Matt Carpenter refuses to retire, signs with Padres.The most famous carpenter really was religious so it makes sense.
Oh wait it is a one year deal with a club option. Kinda wish the Angels did that with Loup…
Mets do ship one of their players to Japan though to make room. That is a long flight.
Coming back from Asia is former Angel Drew Rucinski. He is an A’s player now, so a downgrade for sure.
Jordan Lyle will go to KC for 2/17M. It is Missouri, not Kansas. For now at least.
Sick of Reginal Sports Networks? Well they may finally die as the BIG 4 American sports won’t save them this time.
Fangraphs is so bored they asked the question we have been asking since the 50’s… is Charlie Brown the worst Baseball manager?
Anything I missed? Post below for upvotes!
So….
Tyler Anderson (SP)
Hunter Renfroe (OF)
Brandon Drury (UTL)
Gio Urshela (UTL)
Carlos Estevez (RP)
Jake Lamb (3B/1B/OF)
I have to say we picked up a whole lot more than I thought we would in a lame duck off season. I was expecting almost nothing.
I think my favorite part is where we didn’t give some guy like Cody Bellinger 15M or sign Chris Bassitt to an eight year deal.
Seeing that list spelled out like that, and remembering we went after Contreras (C), and Drury could be considered 2B……
makes me laugh about what I said yesterday: that covers every position except SS, our biggest need.
Is it just me or does the Correa deal wreak of tampering by the Mets? On Monday Cohen states in an interview he really like Correa but got involved too late to sway him to bring him to Queens and then magically late the next evening Correa switches to the Mets.
Now reading about what happened, it was all about the Giants getting cold feet. Boras knew that SF outbid the Mets so that’s where the team of Boras and Correa went always knowing that the Mets wanted to sign them up, so when cold feet showed up it was adios. New tampering here.
Love him or hate him, Boras took care of his client and had a fallback plan in place.
Boras got butt hurt because the Giants wanted to get a second opinion. He pressed them to “execute” or else. He basically forced this.
Dom Smith, if on the cheap??
Yes, good idea.
I got a fever and the only prescription is…another minors deal signing tomorrow…..
Lets go Perry!!
Farrell’s floopy gut was priceless.
Don’t forget the gold-plated-diaper giveaway this season at the big A
Yeah, lol. Looking for the pick up from the Independent League..
Jake Lamb on minors deal.
Do you get the impression an announcement about Rendon not being ready for the start of the season is coming?
No, that announcement comes after the, “…I’m healthy now and ready for the season” announcement from Rendon.
Don’t forget “in the best shape of my life”
Yes, and,”…ready to contribute”
There’s always the classic, “taking a precautionary off day” pronouncement by the team as well.
ANNNDDD Jhonny Diaz is in duh house!
Lamb is classic waiver wire trash at this point. Guessing from his tight spending habits, Perry drinks beer out of plastic cups
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTbYN62YHR4
Cohen is probably just spending the PPP money he received.
Is he afraid that the Twitter police will try to cancel him if he doesn’t spend PPP on payroll? The feds don’t really care.
I am going to go way out on a limb here. I’m betting the first move from the new owner will NOT be to lower beer prices.
They will do the exact opposite: beer prices will be RAISED.
Ha ha. Guess what? I will be happy to pay an extra $1.00 or $1.50 per beer when my ownership goes out each off-season and fills the teams’ holes with actual players through a willingness to pay for real talent.
I think they’ll juke more towards a 20% ticket price increase.
Whatever. The point still stands. I would be willing to pay for quality. I think most fans are so disposed.
Until you sit through a 10-0 drubbing . then you’ll be questioning those $25.00 nachos and $65. 00 view level seats
Well, if you only go to one game all season despite the fact the team is a playoff team and you happened to choose the night they lose 10-0 that is on you. You chose badly.
It’ll be signing Shohei for 12 yrs and a shiny new stadium proposal for Anaheim.
otherwise, not sure I’d drop several B.
Jake Lamb spring training invite. We are definitely preparing for Rendon to sneeze himself onto the IL
Hah, Jake Lamb. Back when we didn’t have a 3B to complain about and instead complained about how daddy wouldn’t buy us a third baseman I kinda wanted to trade for Lamb after his first down year with the snakes. This shows how good I am at picking trade targets.
Huh. I would have thought the Lamb would have ended up on Broadway
Or roasting in the oven 🐑
only if he lies down
I found an interesting trade on the Trade Simulator:
Mets get Shoehei, Trout, Neto, & Moreno – Angels get Cohen.
Seems fair.
By the way, I don’t know why I can’t attach an image to a post.
Try imgur
Never heard of it. Maybe Red Floyd knows what it is. Sounds like a crypto coin.
imgur?
Ha!
But can he pitch?
Great. In the future, if I want to watch sports, I’ll have to let YourLifeOurLife.com slip it’s hand a little further up my thigh. Awesome.
For football? Probably. For baseball? I’m not so sure. MLB better address the fact that 90% of their games on any given day are boring as fck.
MLB is adding a pitch clock and taking away the shift to promote more offense, so it seems like they’re at least trying to be less boring.
Not so sure about Charlie Brown. Wasn’t Joe Shlabotnik a manager for a few games?
Nothing has really changed. The original owners were still gamblers, con-men and made a fortune exploiting their workers, exploiting the consumers that are forced to by their crap and most of all exploiting the people and resources around the world. It only makes people mad when it’s sports, but it’s off because strangely enough so many people romanticize having and equal -ish playing field in a game but not in life…
Steve Cohen probably belongs in prison for his crimes but whatever, instead he’s out here buying Carlos Correa. And Angels fans all hope another Uber rich guy buys our team to buy more players. It’s a cycle you can’t go back from. I mean the Suns are 4 billion?
i know someone whos getting a che guevara shirt for christmas
Let’s chill on this thread. I actually like both yours and 13’s post but this has a serious chance to go down a rabbit hole.
lol no worries, you can nuke mine. honestly wasnt trying to be mean spirited.
But I thought we decided yesterday we were pro-Castro?
You bring up a point that’s been in my head. I L-O-V-E the fact that so many CtPG guyz are all fired up about exorcizing their daddy issues by “winning” and getting Arte out of there when any single human with the money to buy the team is so likely to basically be Arte x 10. That, or we get a partnership that will frustrate us with it’s “corporate bullshit” blah blah blah and we can all be super purist and punk rock about it. It’s not a sure thing, but it is likely that NewOwnerz the Unicorn will be an egomaniac who doesn’t listen to CtPG guyz wisdom even more so than Arte. The rectal rawness and flared nostrils could eventually get so out of control that we kill some poor player with our shit fanbase JuJu.
Great points. Can we hate them now, or is it proper etiquette to wait for the deal to close?
Finally some ownership chatter. We need some gossip.
Correa is a Met now? I guess you can’t tell the players without a score card!
Suns sell for $4B (I know the headlines say Mercury too but get real lol)
it got done quick too. It was announced a month after Arte put up the for sale sign (Aug vs. Sept) and they were rumored to be worth $3B.
At this point, Arte has to be getting much more than $4B too.
A lot of chatter about Cohen an his net worth, but Balmer is 3x Cohen and would love to see a guy with $70B buy the team
I don’t think the Halos sell for anywhere close to $4B. The NBA is a different animal than MLB.
Agreed but it will still set an MLB record
Suns last summer were worth $2.7B per Forbes.
Nothing in NBA changed – franchise inflation is real
Including the Mercury probably hurt the purchase price, ha ha.
That said Ishbia is an absolute nut. He’s famous in the mortgage industry for dropping “if you work with Rocket you can’t work with us” during a video update one random Tuesday morning. Made us all choose who we wanted like kids in a divorce.
He says he didn’t lose business but we went with Rocket as did many others I know. And UWM’s stock price went from about $15 at the IPO to about $3 a share now. That message was dropped about six weeks after the IPO.
This led to one of my favorite corporate crackbacks when Rocket’s VP sent out a video saying “we love to compete and won’t tell you who you can and can’t do business with.”
But he’s a billionaire and I’m sure he doesn’t even know it if he just has a few hundred million dollars disappear…. and neither do his accountants.
interesting tidbit Jeff.
while the WNBA franchise is lucky to be called an asset, it has BG under contract and coming back – that will see some tickets
They can do give aways to bring out extra fans. Like Brit Griner souvenir AK47 round night and play games like “Match the severed limb to the African child soldier and win free WNBA tickets for life.”
They can also probably make a solid $200 a night extra off local dispensary adevrts.
“So, I’ll let you buy this totally restored HEMI Superbee…. but you also have to take this Yugo with a broken axel. Enjoy.”
https://theathletic.com/4023405/2022/12/21/brandon-drury-phil-nevin-angels-signing/?amp=1
I love that Drury grew up an Angels fan, wanted to play with us last year, and has close ties to Nevin. It’s pretty clear Walsh is going to have a platoon partner and that they want plenty of backup to cover 3B when Rendon hits the DL. He did hit .298 in Cincy and .240 everywhere else. I think he and Gio are too similar, and that we may have paid for Drury’s career year, but appreciate we are paying for a stronger roster. The biggest question left is how do we cover SS effectively?
Nice article, but imagine if Nevin convinced him to sign here. he steps right in when Rendon goes down and we make the playoffs.
Yes, so we have much better MIFs and something legit at 1B to cover Walsh but still, no great SS plan yet. It is still a hole – i have to believe something gets done there before February.
Totally agree. I don’t see who is every day at that position.
I cut cable12 years ago and do not miss commercials, or cable at all. I’ve found it more peaceful and liberating than anything except divorcing my cheating ex-wife. However, I’d pay $20 (maybe even $30, but I think a fair price would be $10, $15 without commercials) a month to be able to stream Angel games but as far as I can tell, my only step reading option is $85 a month for cable (ATT?). So, I pirate which is difficult and results in me not watching many games. I’m looking forward to the total collapse of the regional networks for this reason even though I did enjoy their content when I did have cable.
Get the MLB package. They often offer deals after the season starts.
Yeah, but… blackouts.
has their playoff coverage improved? I bought it one year and all I could do is pick one camera angle at a time. It was ridiculous.
Sigh. This works if you don’t live in Southern California.
You can get a VPN that blocks your IP address and you’re good to go.
I have my cable internet with Spectrum from Charter. Was able to get a streaming package for $30 (Spectrum TV Choice) that included Fox, FS1. But they add those BS broadcast surcharges. Was $12.95 at start (so ~$43 in reality), but they gradually increased it to $21 (now $51). My bundle discounts expire this month, so I’ll be cancelling (or renegotiating a new package) soon.
Plan A would be keeping Ohtani but if we made him available in July and the Mets have some kind of pitching injury or Cohen wants to go for it….might be able to extract some good prospects after all if theres a bidding war with the Dodgers/Yankees etc.
Guy seems reckless enough to overpay at the deadline.
And remember it was Eppler who convinced Ohtani to come to Anaheim.
And also remember that pretty much every deadline deal for prospects ends in bitter disappointment for the selling team.
It’s true. But unless the new owner is willing to spend like a drunken sailor- the Angels will be out of the Ohtani sweepstakes. So better to get something than be left with a 2nd round draft pick when he leaves.
And I am certain they will.
The “newer Owners for the Doyers (2012) Phillies (2015) Padres (2020) & Mets (2020) have been experiencing weekend benders for some time now.
I have not seen the Doyers do anything that looks like they are not planning on Ohtani 2024.
“Planning” on him does not mean they are going to get him.
The Angels are not trading Ohtani. But Fan won’t get it through his thick skull.
If the halos have a losing record and a plethora of injuries to their best players (sans Ohtani) at the trade deadline, you don’t think they could trade him? You think Perry will risk that Ohtani would want to re-sign with a team that has done nothing but lose with him, when he could just go to a winner while still making an insane amount of money? What makes you believe this, and why are you for letting Ohtani walk without getting anything in return?
No. Here, obviously you and your overly common sense are the stupid one in this conversation. Let me help you….
See. Impeccable logic. You can’t possibly peck that shit.
And…. congratulations, you too can be a twat.
Do Angel fans have thicker skulls than the normal human baseball fan?
They may not trade Ohtani. They should trade Ohtani.
It’s true, but it is highly unlikely the Angels will outbid everybody for Ohtani, so comes down to, do we want something or nothing for Ohtani as he exits the building.
You never give up, do you ?
Lol.
Ha! You sound like my wife!
While the Ohtani-Eppler connection is real, I don’t think Shohei would want to overshadow Senga. In my mind, the Senga signing took the Mets out of contention.
I heard Ohtani hates the University of Florida…. Mets are same colors. Nuff said.
I think the Angels will be cursed for 80 years and WWIII may start but, unless they are contending, you have to do the Dodger/Piazza thing and trade him.
Cohen is worth 15x the average owner. He clearly sees these huge contracts from a different viewpoint than others. It’s mind altering.
Yep. He’s worth roughly $10 billion. If his investments return 4% annually, that’s $400M
He can absolutely afford to lose $100M on the Mets and gleefully accept the tax benefits.
Actually…..from Forbes.
“As of April 8, 2022, Steve Cohen’s net worth is approximately $17.4 billion.“
So at 4% he’s making $680 million in interest. Except guys like that make much more on their money than 4%.
And his Payroll after CBT assessments will be around $500 million.
Party on.
So he could spend another $200m and still not touch principal!
Thanks for confirming. I was being conservative with the data, but as you’ve illustrated the reality for him is even better. As Cowboy notes below – Cohen could get stupid and not impact his personal wealth.
Steve Ballmer is worth $70B. That’s the guy we need – super duper rich
Yes!
Then he can throw chairs, and jump around doing a monkey dance while shouting “Pitching pitching pitching pitching pitching!”
I’m really having a difficult time finding out what happened in San Francisco. Correa did not pass a physical and before the phone dropped on the receiver, he was a Met. The Mets currently have 2 high priced SS’s. Did the Giants come out of the ether and find a loophole or are the Mets doctors Lenny and Squigy. This is so bazaar, don’t you think. Boy did the Giants dodge a bullet. A SS with a bad back for 13 years into his 40’s. Have the Mets gone over 400 million is payroll?
The only way to save the game from the owners is two pronged, have a commissioner from the business world who is not biased and a hard salary cap period. How are all these players going to be paid down the road. Is there going to be parity in the game and how long are fans going to put up with watching the game being destroyed?
Ped’s, saber-math, changing balls at different stadiums, the shift or not to shift, changing the bases, adding clocks, soaring prices for the fans to pay, crazy and stupid owners, GREED, and more GREED, lawsuits, drugs, cheating, lying, gambling, all that is just in football, wait until it comes to Baseball. 😵
Well said Grandpa. The hard cap would make a big difference.
It aint going to happen. They canceled a World Series over a hard cap almost 30 years ago. They would do it again in a heartbeat.
BTW it is plausible that Squiggy could have been involved in the Correa signing since he was also along time baseball scout (even worked for the Angels) but he’s passed away now so the Mets cant blame him.
This is based solely on my own limited brains ability to see things but….
I think a guy like Cohen (and maybe two more like him) could actually cause a salary cap. There just aren’t 30+ humans out there with more than 15B dollars who want to piss away tons of money on a baseball team. Ownership groups? Even more cutthroat about the money.
But if say the Mets, Angels (Yay! Unicormz!) and Nats all get bought by insane owners who just give everyone 200+ Million contracts and these teams pretty much win all the time while no other owners come forth with the intention of paying 500M payrolls (and even if they do the Big 3 just jump to 700M) every year you get the MLBPA jammed up.
Sure, 24 players are getting IMMENSELY rich on these teams, but 3/4 of the players are stuck on teams that can’t compete… and those teams are now including the Cardinals, Phillies, Braves, Cubs etc…. not just the Rays types. Players have to either find a spot on the three huge spenders or be also rans. Teams like the Brewers aren’t even bothering to pay anybody anymore. Solidarity or not, I just don’t see that vast majority of players wanting the status quo at that point.
This could be how we finally get a salary cap…. and probably a salary floor too.
And it will take just long enough that only white people between the ages of 55 and DEATH still give two shits about baseball.
I was thinking the exact same thing this morning re the cap being something the owners push for to save them from themselves.
They have for years but to no avail. The union is way too powerful to let that happen.
Yah. The only way a cap happens is if the vast majority of players decide they need it. Right now they won’t because they can see that Bogarts getting 28 a year makes them at least worth 7.
But if they all get to be also rans, and 70% of them get to be also rans that still make 7M a year while “star” makes 52M on a different team…. and while most of them don’t even survive arbitration because all the franchises that have given up feel like it’s a better value to just give Joe Prospect a try….. that’s when real change happens, after things are truly fcked.
The Giants are saying it was NOT a back issue with Correa. So you can cut that part out of your comment. He may have that history, but this is reportedly not the current issue.
So doesn’t that make it even scarier? Player has a known history of injured backs, but something else came out on the injury report that made the Giants pause?
I read the Mets deal is still pending a physical to be final. I guess they will hand-waive and shrug off whatever it is that would come out on their own medical reports.
Kind of ironic that Mets pull out of the much less Kumar Rocker signing but then swoop in and sign Correa for 30+ times more.
They kind of have too because their idiot owner already opened his mouth publicly about the contract etc.
Why would the Giants lie, then are not afraid of a lawsuit, right.
Correa really doesn’t have a history of IR visits: he had back problems in 2019 and a finger injury last year. Whatever happened to make the Giants squeamish will come out into the public domain soon enough.
Not IR visits but you can see he racked up ABs only on his pivotal contract years.
Susan Slusser is saying the Correa “injury” was pre-MLB and hadn’t recurred during his MLB career.
This is sounding more like Giants ownership got cold feet and created a reason to get out from under the contract.
I wondered about this too. In that scenario the doctors were mum in order to back up their employers.
Doctors always have to be mum or they don’t get to be doctors anymore…. unless they move to Burkina Faso.
Tell that to Dr. Fauci.
Don’t thou shall nope take his name in vein!
Hard cap will never happen with the Players Union, there is no reason for them to agree to it, most of the owners would love a hard cap.
Cold feet. Even though SF owner is wealthy, they pretend to be a small market team, and got used to winning with a junk roster. They were trying to appease an entitled fan base, but now have created enormous ill will. It’s kind of funny for someone like me who dislikes them.