So now we shift gears from “The Angels Must Trade Ohtani” to “The Angels Screwed Up By Not Trading Ohtani.” By all means, though, let’s continue speculating about where he goes in free agency. I think it’s safe to say he won’t accept a qualifying offer. The Orioles claimed Jacob Webb off waivers from the Angels. The Guardians claimed Ramon Laureano off waivers from the Athletics.
I’m trying to find good news to link. It’s not easy. Tim Anderson got suspended six games for joining Fight Club, while Jose Ramirez got a three game suspension. Both are appealing. Others got shorter suspensions in the matter. Anderson has more problems than just a glass jaw. His hitting fell off of a cliff this year. Here are a bunch of NSFW social media messages he shared in the wake of that brawl he got suspended for.
The Red Sox designated Richard Bleier for assignment.
Injuries
Rangers third baseman Josh Jung suffered a left thumb fracture while turning a double play. The Rangers called up Jonathan Ornelas to take his place. Michael Grove has right lat tightness which earned him a stint on the 15 day IL. Anthony DeSclafani has the dreaded flexor strain. He just got a PRP injection and will be shut down for 6 to 8 weeks.
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
This team sucks. No excuses even with the injures. Poor depth. Altuve and Alavarez missed a lot of time. I think Brantley has been out to. That’s just some of the Astors and they weathered the storm. Playoff teams still win even with injuries.
Slight correction- this Organization sucks.
I bet if we win 3 in a row we’ll be cautiously optimistic again
I’m pretty sure that optimism has gone the way of the wicked witch
🪣 💧 🫠🫠🫠
They’d have to win the next 2 against SF and sweep both the Astros and Rangers to make me cautiously optimistic, and then they’d have to win every series for the rest of the month to keep me there.
The Foundation Building Materials keystone of the game tonight for the Halos against the San Francisco Cruise is “The King of Fuh” by Brute Force.
This one is for all of the angry, frustrated, despairing — and dyslexic — Angel fans out there right now suffering through our team’s inexcusable inability to feed us the wins we so desperately desired.
https://youtu.be/4NuaQetsDbk
My keystone songs are:
“It’s too Late”
“Lonesome Loser”
“Failure by Design”
and
“Only Happy When It Rains”
Third WC is probably out of reach now.
They can still however end the 7 year consecutive losing seasons streak and give it back to the Pirates, where it belongs.
Angels not only bad vs good teams. They are an impressive 2-12 vs the NL West. I think Giolito has a bounce back start tonight. It can’t get any worse, can it??
I think it was 4 of those losses against the Dodgers?
Don’t think there gonna well against the Giants either, they’re a way more fundamentally sound team than we are.
Yes. 0-4 vs Dodgers. Only wins vs Colorado (25-1 game) and Arizona
What makes anyone think Arte’s going to approve a “tear down and rebuild” action on the roster?
The FO will rationalize all this on injuries and “we really tried” to aggressively trade at the deadline.
Arte will sign a few free agents in the offseason to replace Ohtani (a bat and an arm for the fraction of the cost of Ohtani), and we’ll be right back here in 2024.
Yep, they’ll just blame this season’s failures solely on injuries and say if healthy things would be different. Reality is, even when healthy, this team is still mediocre at best.
You don’t think injuries played a factor this season? Ffs, man. That’s pretty stupid of you.
I didn’t say it wasn’t a factor. This team coming out of Spring training was a .500 team at best and it was healthy for the most part – at least all the key players were. Maybe think next time before making a stupid reply.
.500 team at best says who? You? Just because you believed the team was mediocre doesn’t negate the fact injuries did impact this team in a negative way.
Walsh, stassi, ohoppe, urshela, ward, trout, drury, adell, relief pitchers, and starting pitchers have been out due to injuries.
Who says this was a playoff team? You?
I didn’t say injuries haven’t played a factor – where did I say that smart guy? I said even when healthy this team is mediocre. Tell me which MLB experts projected the Angels to be a world series contender out of spring training. Where were the Angels projected to finish this season? We had all our key players at the start of the season and the team was still projected to finish 4th behind the Astros, Rangers and Mariners.
You 2 really are sounding like children on the school yard fighting more out of frustration more than anything else. Of course, injuries play a devastating role in what happened as a result. N one is saying different. Many pundits and projections had the team making the Playoffs than did not. Cool your jets boys and turn the page. you’re both respected for your opinions here. 😊
Not me however…..LOL!!
Why do I feel like Woody Harrelson from the “2012” movie?
Actually it was the other way around – more experts projected the Angels not making the playoffs than did. Coming out of Spring training, the biggest weakness of this team was pitching, especially the bullpen. It’s been the Achilles heel of this team for the past 5+ seasons.
Even factoring in the injuries it still doesn’t make up for the fact that our bullpen is just not that great. When you got guys like Barria, Loup, Teperra, Herget in the pen, you’re not going to close out many games and early on we blew quite a few very winnable games because of it. Pen has been better as of late with the exception of Estevez. Plus the the addition of Lopez & Leone has helped. Still tho – injuries didn’t factor into our bullpen failures.
Anyways, I respect everyone’s opinion here even if I don’t agree with them but when you respond to me by calling me “stupid” then I take issue with it.
Angels pitching was ninth best or better in all categories in 2022 in all MLB, sixth n AL.
Bullpen ranked 18th(3.95 ERA) in ’22, 24th(4.59 ERA) in ’21, 21st(4.63 ERA) in ’20 and 20th(4.64 ERA) in ’19.
And we’re 22nd(4.30 ERA) this season.
I feel sorry for the keyboards 🤷♂️
Injuries has been the cop out every season since 2015, and it’s going to be the same old excuse the following seasons. They even have a new athletic trainer and the players are still getting injured. Obviously the issue stems farther than the athletic trainer. Should inspect their nutrition program or even training facilities.
And the Indian burial ground theory.
The Overlook Hotel!!!
😳 😵
Might be many of these guys came here with a history of being injured often in the first place.
That’s also possible
easy WC team without half the injuries.
Maybe but I doubt it.
We will never know though, will we? So, we all have different variants of opinions of what might have been.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1pzXJuvdAY
Without key injuries, this team certainly would have been a team to win out in the first 2 rounds, if not got to the WS. losing players to injury actually accounts to a lot of production missed. So yeah, we would have had a very good, if not great team.
Bullpen would have been the same without the key injuries so I doubt we still make it.
Agreed, the past couple of years, the bullpen has been the blowpen
You doubt everything, why bother even watching a team that makes you so miserable? My apologies for earlier, I meant to call your reply stupid for saying injuries didn’t have a big impact on where the team is now.
I don’t doubt anything. Yeah, I was hopeful this team would prove me wrong and do well after the trades they made and still be in it by the time Trout gets back but that didn’t happen – it sucks – but the reality is, this team just isn’t good enough to compete with the elite teams in this league, even when healthy.
I’m going to keep watching because I’m a sucker for punishment.
But then we’d hypothetically also have to play everyone else’s teams with zero uninjured players, so we’d likely be back to to where we came from. Nobody is immune to injuries, rains on everybody.
Help me out here Nishiogwakun, have you ever seen a team lose 7 of nine starters in the line up, then lose 3 of the replacements, all to injury? I do not recall having ever seen that before. Ok, sure all teams go through injuries, agreed, but we retained a RFer and a DH, now that is a lot of production that I have never witnessed before, it actually is mind blowing really. The injury factor, the lack of coaching, game prep, training, in game decisions, and weak ownership all have taken a toll, sure, but injuries this year are over the top.
But even without the injuries to our lineup our bullpen is still the same. We started the season with guys like Herget, Barria, Loup and Teperra coming out of the pen and look how many of those games we lost early on because of them..and that was when we had everyone in our lineup healthy.
I’ll admit the Angels might be top 3 of that list this year, of course not happy about that. But case in point, if you look at the Dodgers injury list it doesn’t look pretty either, yet there they sit on the top of their division. To me injuries are more like umpires. Some games are better or worse than others, some seasons are better or worse than others. But after a long enough time window, it typically averages out to be a wash.
This year could have been one of our tougher injury years, but truly we’ve used that excuse more than once already.
injuries might have been the straw to break the camels back this year, but we’ve been loading up “debt” for almost two decades at this point. It’s way more than injuries, and injuries shouldn’t be, can’t be the excuse this org gets to trot out as cover.
I agree here. Sure injuries have wreaked havoc on the Angels over the years, but we are all Angel fans so how much do you really pay attention to other teams and their issues? Other teams face many of the same problems we do aside one – many of these other teams who experience injuries and so forth have owners who understand baseball, how to build a competitive team, and that depth really is something that matters.
The point was made that the Dodgers are on top of the division and have gone through a myriad of injuries as well. I don’t think anyone will ever mistake our farm system for the Dodgers farm system, but where does the difference in the two systems begin? Our approach is throw tons of money at a player and hope he continues to be the player he was before the huge contract. Other teams tend to develop players and create a balance between solid veterans and players from the farm. We aren’t one of those teams. Here we are again in 2023 trying to trade the few pieces in the farm we have and again it’s not working. Until the approach is changed this team will never be more than one that begins the season with hope and ends it with “what could have been”.
Injuries played a huge factor this season.
Injuries always play a huge factor on the Angels because they don’t have the depth that other teams like the Dodgers, Red Sox, Astros, Rays, Braves, etc have due to their farm system. Look at the Astros. They’ve been out of their key players offensively for the vast majority of the season and are battling for 1st place in the division. So Arte has no one to blame but himself for completely disregarding investing in player development.
They built depth this year. Nobody expected walsh, fletcher, stassi, herget, etc to completely fall off the cliff.
As much as it sucks that the Angels are playing bad ball, I’m not surprised. They have struggled against winning teams all season long. It took them months into the season to win a series against a winning team. Phil will get a ejected a few more times before the season is over, his time will be done. Im sure they will clean house, rightfully so, especially Haselman, he deserves to be banned from Angel Stadium for sending Neto home and hurting his back. Back injuries never heal. Any ways, start looking towards next season, enjoy the remaining days of summer and get excited for the NFL season.
At this rate I’m looking forward to NBA season. My team (Rams) also seem to be stuck in the middle. At least they properly executed going all in and it paid off.
Rams fan here, just have to enjoy watching the rebuild.
I was really hoping they would have blown it completely up and tried to tank for Caleb this year. I get trading away Stafford and Kupp is a hard thing to do, but man I’m high on Caleb. I see him the same way I see Burrow. Franchise changing player. But I agree, I just the full rebuild starts sooner rather than later.
Go Hawks!
Having Caleb Williams would be super nice. They will probably be stuck with Drake Maye if they are lucky or if they end up drafting a QB next draft.
The Angels tried and failed. The situation wasn’t easy. An owner cannot telegraph to Ohtani, Trout, etc. he isn’t trying and is fine with not making the playoffs. Certain times a big effort needs to be made.
Was the decision to go for it wise long-term per the couch potatoes admiring the prospects traded? Likely not. But sometimes you need to take a swing just for the sake of it.
Bad luck has pervaded this season. The injury report is stunning. And even when Ward started hitting, he went down. The relievers lost to injury, plus position players out, are hard to imagine. Arte basically had to make trades just to field an MLB roster. The schedule got hard at the wrong time also.
It’s baseball. We all know it’s frustrating and I cannot imagine how Arte feels. He likely is walking around as if someone just hit him with a pie in the face.
But they did try. The best laid plans don’t always work out.
This is the post. You can’t win if you don’t try and management & ownership clearly tried.
The problems snowballed and led to an avalanche.
Obviously the psyche of the team is shell shocked after going from “in it” to probably “out of it” in the space of 1 week.
Carlos went from the most interesting man in the world to:
I don’t always blow Saves, but when I do they are spectacularly destructive.
This season will stick with me for a while because the talent was in place to win and the reinforcements would have been excellent complimentary pieces as opposed to being thrust into the front line trenches whilst the enemy is mounting a massive offensive and many of your best weapons are unavailable.
it was horrible decision knowing the august schedule. i can’t believe FO is getting props for “welp they tried.”
I come from more of that point of view too. I understand that others see it differently.
But if you have a guide in charge of people going on a trek, and he sees iffy weather, but the people really would like to hike, you don’t say “well at least he tried” if he took the people onwards and they got stuck in a storm.
The leader needs to objectively read the situation and make a decision that is best for the group, regardless of the natural human desire for some excitement.
Who wants to see the titanic with me in my submersible i welded in shop class?
That’s not the analogy. None of this is life or death. It’s sports and entertainment. Arte needs to show some commitment and he has to keep putting butts in the seats. He cannot just pull a Marlins via Jeter or a Pirates move and say maybe we’ll be ok in 3-4 years. To be a fan of those teams is lousy. The 3-4 years when a team actually wins rarely come, if ever. You do your best with what you have. Hot prospects for the future don’t necessarily turn out. You can argue both sides and in hindsight one is plainly correct. But not trying is a hard habit to break.
I figured someone would get hung up on the life/safety thing. I’m just making an analogy, and I use it just to paint a picture, where it doesn’t make sense to give in to excitement or emotion when there are clear warning signs.
While you note the Marlins/Pirates, there are a bunch of other teams who have done the cyclical approach of building up a strong young team, competing, and then when they get expensive, it is fire sale and rebuild. I’ve seen many people on this site stating that they would have preferred we did that for the past 9 years and made serious playoff pushes twice or more, instead of 9 straight years of average.
“But not trying is a hard habit to break”…
I think most people on this site have agreed over the past few years that Arte has the opposite habit. That is why we’ve been stuck where we are. So I disagree that the idea of us “not trying” (meaning rebuild) is some sort of poison that would wreck our team.
Holding onto Ohtani and the other veterans can only signal that you intend to win. If you intend to win, you add pieces.
One thing I think has to change is the Angel’s failed strategy of being heavily invested in reliever pitching. They spent a lot on veteran FA signings (Raisel Iglesias, Aaron Loup, Carlos Esteves) there and Perry still hasn’t drafted a high pick on starting pitching in the draft. Has he even signed a Latin American talent there since he’s been here?
Maybe — but their bullpen sucks and has for years. They haven’t home-grown the arms needed so they have to overpay for others. I’m hoping next year they keep López and maybe Leone plus being back Joyce. Loup and Tepera come off the books. 😀😀
Completely agree with, “So now we shift gears from “The Angels Must Trade Ohtani” the “The Angels Screwed Up by Not Trading Ohtani.” I didn’t read any more before commenting… I’ve really given up and I’ thinking that the one thing that stands out to me during this losing era, is that the Angels just haven’t had the starting pitching that they had in the Soscia era. There’s just no one, two punch that the better teams in baseball have had. They’ve had the one-two punch on offense, without much to back it up usually, but no one-two punch in pitching. Maybe I’m just frustrated…
TBH I think we have enough pitching to be more competitive than we’ve been. I think the problem is the coaching/advance scouting/game plans etc.
It’s not a coincidence guys suddenly learn how to pitch well in Tampa or LA or Cleveland and regress when they leave. I’m pretty sure if you imported Ohtani/Sandy/Detmers/Anderson/Giolito onto the Dodgers they would perform at a much higher level.
That’s the problem. The game has changed and the teams that are good every year have found out how to improve at all the margins to make average guys above average and turn above average guys into studs.
The T-Rays and Giants both win with a bunch of nameless, faceless parts.
This is the new Moneyball!
I agree, there’s something that the Dodgers and even the Astros appear to be doing that the Angels are not. It’s not money and it’s not injuries but players just appear to be better while playing for the Dodgers.
They all eat Farmer John’s hot-dogs before every game, I’m telling you…
Last year the offense sucked.
Yeah, but they really didn’t have that solid 1-2 that makes a winning team even with Ohtani.
As I said to Rev last night, “Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes. Arte finally goes all in, and the team falls off a cliff.”
I bet Arte sent the Angelos family a bouquet for diverting national attention off his own ineptitude.
was that really worse than arte firing sutton after 4 months?
For all the humiliation on the field, some of the off-field failures are the most embarrassing for Arte. The broadcast stuff was insane.
The carousel of voices and delayed remote calls was pretty surreal. How hard is it to hire a guy who just travels with the team and does every game? Literally every team in every sport manages to do this but yet it was too much for Angels executives to handle.
I agree with this so much. It’s pathetic we still don’t have our own play by play guy. How hard is that?
This is another good point – is there anything the Angels organization can do right?
Sutton deserved to be let go with his over the top homerism and breathless pimping of every home run like it was an event. Paddy is definitely a Sutton disciple, pimping every HR by an Angel like it just won a pennant, and Ohtani HR’s like the Angels just walked off a WS win.
The thud as we hit rock bottom hurts so much more as we were emotionally on high with the trade deadline. I’m happy we went for it and had all the hope in the world… but alas TrAdition rears its ugly head again. I’m actually proud of what Perry did this year. I also have been looking ahead and I feel like there is a good set of good young core players to build around.
There are going to be a few lean years ahead, but I think the rebuild will be shorter than expected.
Sorry it is causing you this much pain. I’ve been in your shoes when I lived and died this team. The last 10+ years of Arte’s ownership has caused me to detach to some extent. It’s both helpful and a bit sad. It has definitely helped me to see the reality this season and not buy into the false hope created by playing the Pirates and Tigers.
I’m hoping for an Arte sale and a relatively quick rebuild utilizing the young talent that the Angels have. That would get me excited again.
I’ve really been out of it with the Angels ever since I quit working for them in 2014. It’s amazing to see what Arte has done with internal employees. It was so good at the start, and became a terrible place to be around in about 5-7 years. Carpino was the worst person I’ve ever met in the world, and Arte just ripped everything out of that place.
I’m with you all and just hope for someone to come in and rip the band-aid off and renew what the Angels could/should be. A local home grown team that suppliments their players with a few key FA.
I can’t watch anymore this year, and I stress when I look at my app to see what the score of the game might be.
For the most part I’ve been a lurker at Halos Heaven back in the day and now CTPG. And I too was super invested in this team as I grew up during the golden age of Angels baseball 2000s. But the past decade has really detached me from the franchise. Where I started drawing the line is the numerous reports of how terrible the organization treated its minor leaguers. The last string of the straw to me was when Arte was the only owner to fire all of his scouts 2 weeks before the draft in 2020. Oh and to make matters worse, was the only owner to suggest forfeiting the draft completely.
Arte is a true piece of shit. Sure most owners are, but on top of that he’s absolutely clueless on what it takes to run a winning franchise. Just look at what the damn Dodgers do. As much as I dislike that franchise, they are the model and best franchise in baseball from top to bottom. Heck I have more respect for the Dodgers organization now than the Angels. Something I never thought I would say but it’s all thanks to Arte. I already know when Shohei leaves to the Dodgers in free agency, Arte is going to panic and instead of doing the smart thing which is completely rebuilding, he’ll do a series of free agent signings that will excite the franchise and leave them stuck once again in mediocrity for another decade.
The day Arte sells the franchise is the day I’m back to being fully invested in this franchise for better or worse. Right now, I just can’t justify giving my time and energy to this team like I used to before. It’s why I stopped buying merchandise to begin with.
If Arte loses Ohtani, then look for him to do something Uber stupid for offense like tell Perry he has to trade to get Stanton from The Yankees. Thereby bailing out The Skanks and getting another in a long list of Albert tross contracts. TrAdition.
If there was an overhaul of the front office things could move quicker. The Giants are a good example of a team with pretty no-name guys that seem to overachieve every year similar to how the Dodgers seem to turn random guys into solid depth. They have better information and apply it better.
We need that kind of modern operation with superior talent behind the scenes. Arte thinks superior talent only exists in the free agent market which is why his team stopped being good as analytics took off.
And the Mets probably should’ve gone for it as the NL Wild card is wide open.
Records dont mean anything. Standings do.
Is Estevez hurt…you don’t start giving up this many runs for no reason?
Either that or he’s fallen into a predictable pattern or he’s tipping his pitches
He got over used, just like the angels do with most of their good bp pieces.
I’m not sure I agree. He was only used as a closer when the games were late and tight.
If you look at his prior seasons, he has reverted to his averages. He had an unusually great 1/2 season (for him) this year and his numbers now are what would be expected.
Baseball and it’s 162 game season has a tendency to reveal reality.
23 saves before the all star game was the most he has ever had prior to this year. 11 is the most saves he’s had in a year. I think he was definitely over used. His fast ball didn’t touch 100 the last 2 games.
During an in-game comment after the all star break, Erica mentioned that Carlos Estevez metwith Kenley Jansen during the all-star break “to learn how to deal with adversity and how to bounce back after a bad outing”
Holy shit – what happened as a result of that conversation???? Sounds like he wanted to test his new learning.
Wait till he starts hearing boos in the stadium. Then we will see if he can Kenley zen himself into performing well.
It’s pretty rare for players to dominate from start to finish. I always think of baseball as two halves. Guys that dominate early are due to regress. Guys that start slow tend to get hot.
We were being propped up by Ohtani and some guys who were due to cool off. And the guys who were due to heat up broke their hand and face.
Eight back in the Wild Card on August 8th…even more than not good!!
🏳🏳🏳🏳
Put away the rainbows, it’s time to wave the white flags
🏳🏳🏳🏳
I’m not giving up until it’s 10 back!!
😂
so in 2 days