LA Angels Tuesday News Crash: Rainy Day

It’s part of an organizational plan spearheaded by general manager Perry Minasian, who is looking to build the best roster he can and isn’t leaning on things like experience or contract status.

Borrowing this quote from smithy, I would like to continue with the another problem that needs to be addressed. I take a lot of incoming for this, but it truly is an elephant in the room.

So now underperforming Fletcher and Tepera have been removed from the roster through different means, when is something going to be done about Rendon. A tenth of the way into the season, for the third season in a row, our nominal clean up hitter has no power at all and also has continuing throwing issues, probably caused by injuries both past and present, or simply age- related decline. And that incident with the idiot in Oakland can’t be ignored. It tells me he is dealing with psychological issues, and I actually feel sorry for him. Players like Daniel Bard or our own Jared Walsh are given time away from the game to deal with such issues. It must be a drag to suck at baseball the way he does, after being quite a good player as recently as 2019. Or perhaps there is something deeper we just don’t know about. All this speculation aside, he is still being treated like Pujols was due to his massive contract, where the underperformance is being either excused or ignored by the club.

I would prefer Urshela to be getting the every day reps at 3rd.

Minasian claimed this was the year playing time would be given based on performance. It’s time for that rubber to meet the road. Let’s take off our rose-colored glasses and face the reality of one of the worst contracts in major league history. At the very least, he should be dropped into the Brett Phillips area of the lineup to see if he can straighten himself out, although I’m on the record that he is done. He could be stuck at lead off where his singles and walks would be more useful as a table setter for Trout and Ohtani, rather than protection for them

it appears that Minasian’s pickups of Gio and Drury anticipated the removal of Fletcher, but did not account for Rendon’s decline. So it looks like the best lineup for now is wait for Walsh to return at first, Drury at 2B, Neto at SS, and Gio at 3B, with Rengifo as the backup everywhere. Maybe they can park Rendon at first or let him DH on Ohtani’s off days so he won’t hurt himself playing a position he can no longer handle. He also really needs to be coached out of trying to hit homers with his warning track power.

None of this is perfect, but if we want to save the season, we must address this, as well as the bullpen. I’m sick of him killing rallies and not supporting our pitchers with his fielding.