LA Angels Thursday News Crash: Trout Slam

The Angels’ version of the Breakfast Club rises before dawn and takes the half field behind the batting cages not long after the sun rises.

Angels shortstop Zach Neto is there to work on his defense, not taking for granted the skill that wowed observers in his standout rookie season of 2023. On hand to provide early-morning instruction is none other than new manager Ron Washington.

A longtime coach and manager, Washington played the majority of his 10 major league seasons as a middle infielder, mostly at shortstop. Infield play is Washington’s passion and he immediately has become passionate about Neto.

“Oh, there is a ton to like. Not a lot, a ton,” Washington said of his 23-year-old shortstop.

On a quiet recent morning, with only the sound of great-tailed grackle squawking in the background, Washington conducted a backhand fielding drill. The middle infielders took their positions, with Washington a mere 25-30 feet away holding a bat near a bucket of baseballs. Washington drilled short hops to the backhand side, leaving little time to react.

“I showed (Neto) some stuff out there on the backhand side and he just took to it,” Washington said. “It looked a little shaky in the beginning but then, all of a sudden, he got a feel for it. Now, it looks like something he’s always been able to do.

“He has that acumen. You can see he comes from a good (college) program. You give him something and he’s able to apply (it).”

Neto is open to any and all instruction from Washington.

“He has a lot of wisdom, a lot of knowledge about this game, a lot of years in this game,” Neto said. “A young guy like me, being able to learn something new from him, it’s like candy for a kid at Halloween.”

A star shortstop at Campbell, south of the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina, Neto was selected by the Angels as the 13th overall draft pick in 2022. Less than a year after he was drafted and attended his final college class, Neto was in the major leagues when he made his debut on April 15 last season.

In short order, he erased any doubt that a player from the Big South Conference could make an immediate impact. The defense transferred right away, with the offense already showing improvement this spring.

Another area Neto hopes to improve is with an ability to stay on the field. The grind of a major league season took its toll with Neto missing time with oblique and lower back injuries.

He played in just more than half of the Angels’ games last season but his impact was evident in the team’s 43-41 record when he was on the field and 30-48 mark when he was not.

“Going into the offseason, it was something I needed to work on, getting my body right,” Neto said. “I looked at it as a restart button for me. New (coaching) staff, new everything, new year for me coming up. Coming into spring training, it was head down, nice and easy, no more (first-season) pressure or anything like that.”

Neto said he did core work to help avoid soft tissue injuries in and around his torso. A byproduct of that work seems to be an uptick in power, at least from early Cactus League results.

Neto clobbered a towering home run approximately 450 feet to straightaway center field last week against the Cleveland Guardians. He smashed another to left field Monday against the Texas Rangers.

On offense last season, Neto batted .225 with a .685 OPS that was 26th among shortstops who played at least 80 games. In his final season at Campbell, he had a .407 batting average with a 1.283 OPS in 53 games.

Through Tuesday’s Cactus League games, Neto was batting .333 (7 for 21) with 16 total bases and a 1.110 OPS. He had two stolen bases, both Tuesday in a 4-0 victory over the Dodgers, along with a hit, a run scored and a leaping catch on a line drive.

While Neto might be young, with a small sample size to judge his offense as a major leaguer, he has seen enough to feel confident about the player he can become in short order.

That all-glove-no-stick tag that surfaced last season? Neto said he heard it and is up for the challenge.

“Oh yeah, it’s gonna be fun proving people wrong,” Neto said. “That’s what I’ve always been about my whole life. So here, at the biggest stage, if there are people still doubting, it just keeps creating that underdog mentality and chip on my shoulder to keep proving people wrong.

“I just gotta keep trusting myself, having that confidence and going out there and having fun.”

Go git it kid, it’s yours for the taking.

Who is moar corrupt, city government or billionaire ownership? Yes!

The plea agreement signed by former Anaheim mayor Harry Sidhu was damning: At a time the city of Anaheim was negotiating a stadium deal with the Angels, Sidhu slipped relevant and confidential information to the team, in the hope the team would thank him with a million-dollar campaign contribution. When the FBI asked him about it, he lied and denied.

The deal ultimately collapsed, but the question lingered: Was the corruption within City Hall limited to the mayor, or did the city itself break the rules?

On Wednesday, for the second time in three years, a court cleared the city of allegations it violated the state’s open government laws in negotiating the Angel Stadium deal.

A three-judge panel of the state appellate court largely upheld an Orange County Superior Court decision that the city had complied with the Brown Act in negotiating the proposed $150-million sale of Angel Stadium and the surrounding property to an entity controlled by Angels owner Arte Moreno.

Under the deal, Moreno’s company would have renovated or replaced the 58-year-old stadium and built a village — homes, shops, restaurants, hotels and offices — upon more than 100 acres of parking lots.

For the second time in a decade, Moreno thought he had reached a deal with Anaheim, only to see the city back out. The Angels’ lease extends through 2029, with team options through 2038.

Moreno, 77, told the Orange County Register last month that he had no plans for a third round of negotiations.

“Right now I’d say no,” Moreno said. “I don’t like the word never. Right now I don’t believe [Anaheim officials] have an appetite for it.”

In response, Anaheim mayor Ashleigh Aitken issued a statement in which she said the city would be willing to talk.

“We welcome a fair proposal,” she said. “As a city, we’re committed to building on decades of baseball in Anaheim for generations to come.”

In Wednesday’s ruling, the appellate court panel rejected four of five arguments made by the People’s Homeless Task Force, confirming the Superior Court finding that the city did not improperly negotiate the stadium deal behind closed doors.

The appellate court validated one argument, ruling that the city should have allowed public comment by telephone and not just email during the pandemic, so that citizens could “directly address the City Council.”

“As most everyone has experienced at this point,” Wednesday’s opinion read, “email is easily and often ignored.”

In 2022, the Orange County grand jury blasted not just Sidhu but the council majority that backed him.

“The City Council majority’s inappropriate handling of the stadium property transactions betrayed its constituents,” the grand jury report read.

The grand jury, which said it started its probe before it became aware of the FBI investigation, said the city had demonstrated “persistent lack of transparency and rushed decision-making in its handling of the stadium property transactions, exacerbating distrust by the public, state and local government officials, and even some members of its own City Council.”

The FBI agent who investigated Sidhu said the former mayor’s actions “may have violated the Brown Act.” Kelly Aviles, the attorney for the People’s Homeless Task Force, said the agent’s report was disclosed after the Superior Court ruling and would not have been considered by an appellate court charged with reviewing whether the Superior Court acted properly with the information it had.

Aviles said she disagreed with Wednesday’s ruling but anticipated her clients would consider the case closed and would not ask the state supreme court to consider taking up the matter.

Mike Lyster, the spokesman for the city of Anaheim, said the city “welcomed” Wednesday’s decision.

“For a second time now, a court has determined that Anaheim followed the Brown Act,” he said. “For whatever other issues may have come to light with the stadium proposal, we stand by the city’s open, public process.”

In short, most likely the brown act is as corrupt as Arte and Anaheim city council… go figure.