LA Angels Tuesday News Crash: Mike Trout

It’s been about a month, so decisions are gonna come down the line.

I am a big fan of the 5 man rotation idea because we can never get six quality starts in a row. That rotation you listed looks as good as we can get to me, though Turks mentioned below, some sort of coaching intervention needs to happen with Anderson. But it’s a positive idea, and it wouldn’t be set in stone, if a gap start is needed we can throw Davidson or an MiLB arm in there when needed. Will they do it? Probably not. Moving Suarez to the pen in favor of Canning may actually help though.

I’d replace Lamb with Cabbage, as has been suggested. If for no other reason, for enthusiasm. Combine that with Neto’s effect. Maybe Querro down the line if he keeps murdering AA. That enthusiasm, combined with guys like Trout and the veterans who are healthy, could actually be some good chemistry. Walsh returning will also elevate the mood a good bit.

As for MiLB pitching, right now you’d have to pick your poison. Rosenburg maybe? Diaz? Devinski, Webb, Garza? Maybe Torres, Yovan or Ingram from AA? Total crap shoot. In the pen, which horse do you shoot? I mean, you only have Loup as a permanent seething target left. Barria? Otherwise it’s some fairly solid arms that screwed the pooch recently.

I think the weird fear of letting the fat Latino soft tossers leave is kind of a burden, not an asset. If any of the AAA arms other than Warren were killing it this would annoy me.

If I were calling guys into my office heading into May it would be Lamb, Rengifo (who will go crush it on another team as soon as he gets away from Sad Donkey JuJu), Loup, Suarez, Barria… I’m not a child and this isn’t my first season watching baseball so I know they can’t “just DFA them” but Suarez to the pen, Lamb DFA, maybe start letting some right handers work more against lefty batters to show Loup we are investigating platoon splits, go to a 5 man rotation with Davidson spot starting, tell the rest of the losers that they need to get working or they’ll get moving as soon as options present themselves…

See if that does anything. I think this is realistically what they can do. I think even the demotion of Suarez would warn the rest of our pitchers. Pretty much only Anderson is safe.