Savvy baseball fans know a rebuild when we see one. All year I’ve treated the 2024 season like a 162 game Spring Training slate. We’re getting deep enough into the year to get a really good idea of who to build around and who can go. But there are still plenty of questions out there.
Zach Neto is making his case to be THE face of the future Angels. He’s been killing it on both sides of the ball and his catch in NY on Wednesday is easily the Highlight of the Week.
He also hit is first MLB grand slam and drove in 6 runs in the double header.
Ron Washington has been very hands on with with the young shortstop; changing his swing a bit and bringing some old school tough love to the dugout. Neto credits Washington with helping his development.
If Neto played in pinstripes, he’d be a bigger story in baseball. Take a look at this comparison.
Perry Minasian came from Atlanta where they lock up their core pieces early. I think extensions for Neto and O’Hoppe need to be on the agenda in the next year or so. Yes, there’s risk but there’s also a high potential for reward.
Looking a little further down the road, Neto’s future double play partner is getting off to a glorious start in the minors.
Where does Luis Rengifo fit into this future? We’ll have to find out next year. Rengifo and pitcher Chase Silseth underwent season ending surgeries this week.
I’ll eat a little crow here. Rengifo’s health almost certainly tanked his trade value and Perry acted professionally. I was almost certainly wrong about that lack of trade.
And don’t look now but there just might be a super athletic center fielder that contributes in the near future.
That’s a really nice looking swing from Adams right now. He’s more compact and straight to the ball than we’ve seen in the past. He’s 24 and should get some looks late this year or next.
From around baseball:
A 21 game losing streak cost White Sox manager Pedro Grifol his job. Here are 5 candidates to replace him.
What other managers might be fired?
Personally I like Ron Washington for this stage of the team’s development and hope they keep him around another couple of years.
Link what I missed and enjoy your weekend. After a super busy June and July, I see lots of family time on the calendar for August. My son is growing up so quickly and I want to savor every minute I can.
If we only had the experienced Baldoquin still in the system at the trade deadline we could have picked up Skenes.
Scoreboard?
https://x.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1822022925353902300
🤣🤣🤣🤣🥲🥲🥲🥲
That’s unsane!
He’s played a similar number of games for both franchises over that time.
I count 8 releases ( or the PC term of “Granted Free Agency”)
Is that a record for an Angels Draftee?
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/08/marlins-designate-kyle-tyler-for-assignment.html
Lineups are posted. More Drury. Ward is back.
https://www.mlb.com/gameday/angels-vs-nationals/2024/08/09/744818/preview
Schaunel has an ouchie? Why DH him instead of playing him at first base?
He did slide head first into first base. Or maybe just a semi-rest day?
Gotta get Drury and his .154 offense into the game!
What am I missing? Something is wrong here. Flashback to a week ago, August 1st:
Trout, Heefy out for year, they blew the draft, they blew the trade deadline, and Arte still owned the team. Complete doom.
now all I read is hope. Are you guys ok? Is it smoggy there? Too much time in the Sun? PTSD? Seems straight from the Twilight Zone.
My shop was running a special on hopium this week.
Trout hurt for the year sucks but I’ve been pretty consistent in treating this year like a long spring training.
I was wrong about blowing the Rengifo trade market. Still might’ve been right about Ward and Anderson.
My other option is to state we have exactly one starter for next year in Soriano and a maybe in Dana and that we’re going to suck for a while. So I highlight the building blocks we have uncovered.
It’s all a head fake. Reality is lurking very close by.
Just go with the good JuJu baby! Turns out sometimes players actually get better over time. Turns out some players turn out to be pretty good fairly fast even if “HAR AH NAR BEEF LEAVE EN FARMZ! NAH GOOD SANDICHEZ! DEEZ DRAFT NAH GOO!”. Turns out Arte can’t use the power of his evil to thwart everything.
As for predictions:
“You’re gonna eat a bowl of chow mein and get hungry real soon, I predict!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH5USLpPa_0
I get an assist!!
Taking a series from the Stankees feels……….so good. Now beat up on the Senators…..I mean Nationals.
Go Halos!!
Jordyn Adams the last 29 Games at AAA: 127 PA’s .352/.440/.556 3 HR’s 9 2B’s 2 3B’s 6 SB’s (out of 10 attempts) 29 K’s 15 BB’s . The K rate is still very concerning but these are extremely encouraging numbers for sure.
Adams (To me) is similar to a Devon White type player-He needs to threaten the bunt almost every at-bat, but just like White, he won’t ever and will let the IF play back and he’ll swing away for the fences.
Definitely and dude runs like the wind. Very fluid and smooth.
I hadn’t thought of White as a comp until 4ever said it up there, but I’d take it.
I agree that Washington has done a good job with what he’s given. I only wish they went full rebuild while they’ve gotten. Hopefully he doesn’t retire too soon and continues to help the organization grow.
Sometimes I feel like Wash was hired by Willy Wonka to run his factory, then he was not really supplied any chocolate or sugar and most of his (Supposedly) dependable Oompa-Loompas had various short and long-term disabilities. Then Willy Wonka gave Wash sub-par sugar and outdated products expecting top shelf Wonka bars.
It’s all so tragic.
Can any of them Oompa-Loompas Pitch?
No, they suffer from rotator puff issues.
Getting excited for the young guns. Have to tip your cap to Perry. He has put together a young core that appear destined to be AllStar quality. If Moore is the real deal and the team gets some starting pitching- well it could be quite good!
For all the Perry detractors- you have to give credit where credit is due.
Arte will find a way to divert money to an aging ex-superstar to make sure we don’t have an empty IL.
But the trades at the deadline last year, and letting Ohtani go for nothing. Sure, it’s all Arturo’s fault and he had nothing to do with it.
The deadline trades last year were REALLY BAD…. as long as you look at them now and not on the day they were made. They weren’t brilliant then, but if Gio had not broken down, Trout had made it back, etc things would have looked much different. Probably not GOOD, because the whole premise of “chips in for the unicorn” was stupid. But better.
But hindsight experting is ass.
NEED
MOAR
PITCHIN’
I also fully credit him for Loup and Tepera.
In all fairness, Tepera did have that excellent 2/3 of an inning….that one time….
And I was stoked when we signed both. The reasoning was good, the results were not.
It’s his job to be smarter than fans on a website. I didn’t have an opinion. The results were my opinion.
I’m willing to give him credit for his good moves (Logan and Neto) and blame for the bad ones. I kind of feel his future rests on how Moore does when he’s called up in the next few days.
But if PTP were as good as (name cherry here) he’d have known those guys would totally fall apart.
As well as :
Alex Claudio
Jose Quintana
Steve Cishek
Aaron Slegers
Zack Weiss
Touki ToussaintAdam Kolerek
Robert Stephenson
Adam Cimber
Matt Moore 2.0
Guillo Zuñiga
Yeah, the problem is needing to sign all those guys in the first place.
Bullpen arms should be at least half home grown. That was a big emphasis in the 2021 draft when he selected stud closers like Luke Murphy.
Thanks for this list. I’m too GA to produce one.
I really wonder how much of that was Matt Wise ruining them.
Perry may not be perfect, but he is good at his job.
It’s easier to admit that today seeing results, but he’s been laying the groundwork and executing for several years now.
Admit Nothing. Complain Bitterly. Win WS. Declare you’ve been with it the whole time. Feel brilliant. Demandachamp
Perhaps I’m being negative but Arte’s meddling ways are the stick in the mud. If they had truly capitalized on the opportunity to trade Ohtani in 2022 for a huge prospect haul along with the core guys that they did draft we would all be talking about how soon this team will reach the playoffs, not if and when.
Sigh. Yeah. Or we’d at least be having a good time rooting for the kids.
Perry has done good. Perry has also done bad. My interim grade of his performance thus far is a “C”.
His entire body of work can’t receive a final grade for 3 or 4 years.
I’ve said it over and over. While it would be great for the farm to generate 100 great prospects and be ranked #1, especially for trades, we really only need it to generate about 12 solid players between hitters/pitchers. That’s far from done. But if we have six position players, three starters, and three good pen arms doing a good job from an otherwise “barren” farm that “dint dervelop dem players” or what ever I don’t care. We need around 5 prospects to look MLBish per season for a couple years in a row. The rest is gravy.
Especially if we offer players early extensions….
Based on stats alone, Dana is pitching like a Top 25 prospect. How many other 20-year-olds are doing what he’s doing in AA? I don’t see any this year. The last one to my recollection was Painter in Philly… right before he blew out his elbow to start the season in 2023. Which invites the question: Do they shut him down pretty soon here? Up to 120 innings this season, double last year.
Post-script on Neto: No. 6 in all of MLB in defensive WAR
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB-leaders.shtml
So with just a little under 30% left in the season, here’s how I did with my predictions:
80-82 – most likely 👎
Trout and Rendon staying healthy for most of the season – 👎👎👎
Reid will be a #2 frontline starter and win the Nick Adenhart Award – 👎👎👎
Nolan will be sent down middle of the season while Drury/Sano timeshare at 1st – 👎👎👎🤣🤣🤣
Neto exploding into the scene as a legitimate young star – 👍👍
Logan O’Hoppe reaching 25 HRs with horrible BA and OBP – on pace to reach 25 HRs, with decent BA and OBP so far. 👍
Pitching of Detmers/Canning/Sandoval will improve – 👎👎👎
Estevez will rebound from last year – 👍👍👍 (and netted us good prospects in return)
Surprise DFA of Rendon – hasn’t happened yet.
Boy I wouldn’t be playing the lotto any time soon Smithy
Thanks for your honesty and I think we all make bad predictions.
As for the win-loss record, I went through the remaining schedule and I predict 24 more wins. That would make the team 75-87 or two games better than 2023 and 2022.
That would be fantastic. It would mean, from the low point of 17 games under .500, that the team would finish 54-49
Tickets for Shohei’s return to the Big A are getting cheaper by the day… I’m getting pretty close to buying that ticket.
Anyone already planning to attend the Freeway Series?
Who?
oh nobody, just the greatest baseball player ever
Hold on their!!! He’s still got some longevity to go. I’m still going with Wilie Mays overall, and in my lifetime, Trout still wins but Mr. O could surpass him if he gets back to pitching like he was.
Ohtani will never win the longevity argument, but he is absolutely the greatest player this sport has ever seen.
Ohtani will never win the longevity argument, but he is absolutely one of the greatest player this sport has ever seen.
Him and Pete 😏
Japanese guy, used to pitch.
While O’Hoppe has cooled a bit, Neto is playing out of his mind. Without sustaining this level of performance year-after-year, it’s too early to declare him a “superstar”. He’s showing the ability to get there, but the consistency needs to be there too.
If you like winning teams, this has been a bummer of a season. However, if you want to see player development in multiple positions, this has been a good season.
pretty fun to see Zach go atomic in from of NYC over the last week
“Feeling good right now,” Dana said. “I’m throwing pitches with conviction instead of just throwing them to throw them. There is actually meaning behind what I’m doing.”
https://www.milb.com/news/angels-prospect-caden-dana-keeps-posting-zeros-at-double-a
Nationals suck…we can take another series!!
That’s what I’m worried about.
Indeed
Tyler Anderson = 4.9 WAR
Zach Neto = 4.1 WAR
Neto is rapidly closing in on TA for the team lead in WAR.
Mike Trout was for 5 years the best player in MLB, some might say for 8 seasons the best and who am I to argue. So, what happened to the guy affectionally referred to as the GOAT or Trouty? He outgrew his body is what I believe, and his body just could not handle the strength produced by the way he played. Mike, as I’ve said for years needs to work at learning 1B as accept the DH role. Will that be enough to get him in 145 games a season? Probably not as something will break down inside him somewhere or somehow. But the team needs his bat in the lineup a much as possible. No Angels fan will ever forget his ’12 – ’15 seasons as long as they live. As with almost every great player there is the what if’s.
What if Babe Ruth was a RF his whole career? What if Lou Gehrig didn’t come down with ALS? What is there was no WW1 or WW2. Was Ted Williams as good as the Babe? What if Teddy Ballgame played in Yankee Stadium, what if Tony C. didn’t get hit with a baseball? How good would have MLB without steroids? How good would have Trouty been playing healthy?
Always in every sport are the what ifs. So, for Mike’s sake I hope the message gets through to him and the team to make the adjustments very soon.
I’ve been wondering for awhile how much more he can/will take. It has to be absolutely draining to spend the majority of days every single year hurt, in Pain, and rehabbing. 6 years is a long time to spend having constant surgery and doing all the BS steps of recovery. He has a ton of money left on The table and I don’t think he’s mentally there to walk away but at some point it has to wear him down. His body is toast. We know it. He probably knows it. No way to know how he actually feels but it has to be getting old. Plus the longer he goes he risks long term damage that will haunt him forever. Nothing would make me happier than a full year of healthy trout I just don’t think it’s possible.
But the same can’t POSSIBLY be true for Rendon. That guy’s just an asshole who hates baseball but loves money.
The problem with him switching positions is he injures himself baserunning and hitting.
You’re right ML, Most all of the GOAT’s injuries have been from hitting and base running
I’m loving how you and I are agreeing on many things these days!😀
But playing CF everyday did add to the wear and tear.
Calf strain
Torn Meniscus
All those running, needing to cover such a huge ground, sliding catches, jumping to rob HRs…it all adds up for 10 years.
But the injuries occurred running the bases with his patented base cutting technique.
I agree with you completely. It probably should have happened a few years ago.
Neto is the real thing, now is time to learn to be a little more selective with the pitches and work the count. I had loved him since I first was him, but I like all great fielders. Neto has surprised me with his HR power this season and we can watch him get better, much better for sure in ’25. He is imho the third best SS in the AL in ’24 and headed to the top in direction.