The Angels continue to be the only team doing anything as we now have our backup catcher. Does this mean no more Thaiss? Possibly.
Travis was worth 1.1 BWAR last year, and has been above average at the plate for a catcher in his career. He will be going into his age 36 season, however. Still, he may be able to teach Logan something, as he has been around since 2013.
Travis is significantly better in BA and in HR numbers… He is also alot better defensively. You can argue the cost but he is certainly a big ugrade.Also, if OHope gets hurt he is a better replacement over a long stretch of games..
Not the shiny solution that we wanted, but nevertheless, a wise signing as he can mentor the pitching staff and O’ Hoppe.
Per the Trade Simulator Thaiss has a -0.3 trade value. So trading him for anything other than a bag of balls is unlikely unless you package him with a player of some value. If guessing it’s DFA for Thaiss.
Thaiss won’t be DFA’ed, he’ll get traded for someone else’s project.
I’m not sure who would want him and whether he would have any value to be traded for anything. But I guess we’ll see.
I’m fine with the positives but these low impact signings don’t give me a lot of confidence. Thaiss was decent backup and ok glove. But spending $6M/yr on a position of lesser importance, I have concerns. If he’s a good clubhouse guy and mentor cool. I like it, and add more. But this is cheap Angels and this isn’t giving me optimism past 70 wins.
So you’d rather endure this shit next season with career long AAAA playerswhen the injury bug rears up again?
These are the type of moves you make while rebuilding. I’m guessing this guy will help turn ohoppe into a hybrid napoli/mathis machine.
I guess. I mean catcher is not really a hole with O’Hoppe and Thaiss. . Seems like an overpay. But Thaiss, I guess, was expendable so there you go. A meaningless addition eating into payroll. This maybe equates to 1 more win at most.
Geeze, can Perry trade or sign anyone anymore without Braves/AA or Blue Jays/AA past connections?
Now that that his baby brother is GM of the Giants, maybe PTP can take some more teams off of his no trade list.
I feel like every move perry makes revolves around the nl east.
At 3m per year I would be pretty happy, at 6m per year I think it eats too far into limited financial resources for the return. I guess they will just release Thaiss.
This move makes us better, yet I felt we still have more important holes to fill. The $$ spent is not bad.
Well, I called this one a few days ago. This is a good signing.
He’s been 20% better as a Hitter than Thaiss for his career and is superior defensively. He can be traded as Gitch suggests. I wish he wasn’t quite so expensive. He was essentially Nolan Schanuel in catching gear last year as a hitter and a lot more expensicve but he’s certainly an improvement over Thaiss. My only fear is at 36 he could become Matt Thaiss as a hitter very quickly. It would be nice to still have the guy we traded away last year for Giolito. At least though, he is a real major league player as opposed to a wannabe major league player.
“That guy” we traded for Giolito is the #59 ranked prospect in baseball.
We traded a top 100 prospect for…nothing.
Well at least we aint paying Giolito $19 million this upcoming season to continue to rehab from his elbow surgery.
Even Perry isn’t that stoopid.
NAR! We traded him to get play off run players to prove to Ohtani that he shouldn’t sign with the Doyers cause YEW NARVARH TRAY GERNRATIONALS TALANT UNIRORMS!
I like this move, as we’ve all taken notice that O’Hoppe just flat out was used to the point of burn out and don’t forget the catching position is a very demanding and very physical position. Also, as pointed out this adds some very good teaching opportunities to this move. 👍
Thaiss did t work for you?
Same for me. My brother gave me the standard “Aren’t the Angels stupid” call and I had to disagree with him. A proven solid backup that cost a bit more than you prefer to pay is probably about right in this marketplace.
Low risk move to obtain a quality backup. What’s not to like?
Goodbye Thaiss. You never should have been a first round pick.
Travis can also be traded if he plays really well. Teams need catchers, and almost every year the “What Do These Contenders Need in the 2nd Half” articles list a catcher for at least a couple teams.
He had one of the highest college rated hit tool in the draft, just happened to leave it at Virginia.
Was even showing some of that hit tool this season. So much that the Angels were trying to find ways to get him in the lineup. But riding the bench every other day and sitting the day after a 3 hit day cools you off pretty fast. It seemed like if he did something good (HR) they would sit him the next day.
I was pulling for Thaiss as he had one of the longer tenure in the organization and seemed to be a good guy, just never hit enough. Was able to overcome the embarrassment of two catchers interference calls against the Red Sox that cost the Halos a victory. He’s got moxie, I tell ya.
Ah yes back in the halcyon days when all we would draft were catchers who couldn’t catch.
Sounds like a good move…enough so that it makes me wonder if he got the address wrong….meant to sign with the doyer bastards up north?
Was nearly unanimously considered to have the best bat in his class. Fortunately the Angels development team went right about changing his swing a bunch of times.
Something happened for sure or he never made the adjustments to wood
&ct=g
Hey. There’s a quality move right there. I doubt the Angels do anything as drastic as moving Logan to part time 1B cause he has enough to think about, but he’ll catch a little less and both O’Hoppe and Travis can DH some along with Kavadas, Soler and Trout.
PTP’s mostly making small moves that I can dig. Fassano as assistant pitching coach aint bad either. Damnright + An Old Catcher with a Championship Mustache sounds like a good coaching combo to me.
Only trouble is he keeps making so many early moves I have to scrap my IIWPM…. I may just have to do a “what I would have done instead” version….
Or don’t do it at all and just post images of Brent Rooker and Teddy Higuera all the time.
Don’t hate it at all, 2-yrs provides some stability. Not a needle mover but raises the floor. Needed a veteran not named Wallach or Suzuki.
$12 million for a backup catcher. He will be backing up one of the Halos two best young players. That means he sees action in maybe 1/3 of games? I’m sorry, but other than Perry’s love for ex-Braves, this doesn’t make much sense. Thaiss was fine as a backup at $1 million or so. Paying middling guys decent salaries doesn’t lead to wins — especially at positions already filled.
One question: Can he play first base too and maybe increase his game participation to 40-50 percent? That would help some.
He played 147 innings at first base in 2019. None since then.
He’s currently also our only decent bat off the bench and likely helps the young pitchers.
I think he’ll rarely play in “offense heavy” line ups too. Him, O’hoppe, Soler, Trout in line ups where offense matters more than defense with Trout and Soler making up an ugly OF and Logan at DH.
He read my Perry piece, ha ha.
Travis catches against lefties and is a potent bench bat. Add in the fact O’Hoppe has yet to have a real mentor at the MLB level and this signing makes sense on multiple fronts.
Cowboy showed how O’Hoppe wore down below. This should mitigate that and replace Thaiss well below average bat.
d’arnaud d’stroys LHP . So you could give him 500-600 innings centered around tough lefties ( or maybe even platoon him at first with Shanny) and then give O’Hoppe more rest than he got last year.
O’Hoppe 1st half OPS: .800
2nd half OPS: .578
This is a good move especially when you add the mentorship role.
I think he’s going to get 1-2 games a week as catcher and play 1B against lefties. The move makes some sense if you squint really hard
I’m squinting. Still not sure I see it. As noted above, the 1B angle would help materially. As for being a bat off the bench, thats only true if we sit down one of our two best players. Hence, it’s not a very useable bat. Teams with payroll limits don’t pay pinch hitters real money.
This club needs SP, RP mainly plus a 2B and/or SS if Neto is out any length of time. $19 million for 2025 has been spent on a DH and backup catcher. Oh, and $3.5 million more on an old 6th starter likely no one else wanted. What has been is coming here next?
Yah. Good move. Move is gold if he can learn 1B enough to even spell Nolan/Niko say ten-twenty games.
Can we stop this false narrative.
He had a horrid August which dragged down his stats but his July & September numbers were above average based on OPS
July 299 /.365/.429/.793
Aug 099/.163 /.176/.339
Sept 266/.338/.453/.791
