Good morning Angels fans, have some links!
Angels News
Jeff and I all ended up going to the game last night without any of us knowing before Monday. Spontaneous, huh? And we will see each other tomorrow as well. Peolly. Speaking of, do you want a CTPG meetup this year? Comment below if you want to.
Oh yeah, as for the Angels themselves… they won, a walkoff win!
Chris Taylor has been decent. Aaaaaaaaaaand he is down with a fractured hand. We can’t have nice things.
Around Baseball
It is 2025, how do we still have messy broadcasts? No, I don’t just mean bad announcers or scorebugs, but stuff like this. I get that ads rule and ruin everything, and that this technology isn’t new, which is why it makes no sense for it to mess up this badly.
Remember when people moaned that the shift ban would mean less shenanigans? Well, they forgot that it is still legal to have 5 man infields.
Even though some teams are good, others are bad, and more are just mediocre, they are all full of professionals. Which means even the bad teams are best at SOMETHING.
MLB buys a stake in Jomboy Media. You may know them from their breakdowns of the Astros trashcan cheating, and being whiny Yankee fans. Sure, there is “no editorial control” from MLB, but, implicit control is always there.
The Las Vegas A’s may actually happen, as groundbreaking on the stadium is set to begin June 23rd. So much construction going on over there right now with this and Brightline West.
Anything I missed? Post below for upvotes!
Quick welfare check here. Is everyone in LA OK? With all the injuries and tens of millions of dollars lost to injured pitchers for the Dodgers I have recently learned that we are all supposed to weep for them and consider them an underdog. I bet Dave “The Cuck” Roberts feels a sense of threatening dread and nebulous micro-aggression from the universe as we speak. It’s all so unfair. They bought a sure fire World Series fair and square. Now it looks like they may have to sweat a little before they are allowed to buy a World Series. I wonder what mix of moronic development staff, cheap and ignorant coaching, inept and inexpensive training and med staff, and clearly bone headed POBO hiring has lead to this. How did Arte force them into this situation?
We need to dig a little deeper cause the Padres do not look scared of the Doyers at all… much less the Mets.
Here’s to them rushing Ohtani back early so his elbow snaps in half. Go Blew.
Roberts the “cuck”…classic. How about throwing the poor pitcher out there last night to be the sacrificial lamb and get his ss handed to him. It all just smelled so Dodgers to me. Thinking they are the smartest team in the bunch. Pricks.
I watched that Mountainhead movie on HBO…. it made me think of the Doyers.
WTF is “Outs Above Average”? (see STL). I mean doesn’t everyone get 3 per inning?
Not when they play against the Halos sometimes.
Nah, that’s just the Chowds. And they get 5 strikes.
I was confused by that one as well but I’m still laughing at the Orioles current claim to fame as the fattest team
It’s a statcast defensive metric of a fielder’s range, i.e., how many outs did they get that average defenders wouldn’t have.
What is the exchange rate of outs above average for defensive runs saved?
They don’t always correlate. Start here:
A new way to measure MLB’s best infield defenders
Or from the DRS folks:
“Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) and Outs Above Average (OAA) are two different things. Defensive Runs Saved is a holistic measure that tries to measure everything a player does in the field. It combines many different components into one number.
OAA is a metric created by MLB’s Statcast team that measures how well a player fares at turning batted balls into outs. The most directly analogous component of DRS to that is what we refer to as Plays Saved, which is calculated within the PART System. However, DRS also goes well beyond that with components related to things like outfielder throwing, infielder double plays, pitch framing, and more.
A more direct comparison between SIS stats and Statcast stats would come in comparing Defensive Runs Saved to Statcast’s Fielding Run Value, which is available on the Baseball Savant website.”
Whilst averting my gaze from the fugly batting averages of Trout (.214), Ward (.206) and Soler (.213), It’s nice to see what Neto (.282) and Schanuel (.284) are doing at the top of the lineup.
Neto, with his combination of decent power & good speed is now entrenched at leadoff. His K rate is a bit high but, otherwise, he’s a damn good ball player.
I’m game for a meetup if I can fit it into my busy schedule. Lot of traveling this summer.
Is there something going on where Taylor Ward can’t see the ball in Anaheim? Makes me wonder if it’s similar to how Trout has always said he can’t see in Houston.
AVG/OPS splits for the last 3 years:
2025: Home-.144/.514 Away-.255/.910
2024: Home-.226/.706 Away-.267/.792
2023: Home-.201/.697 Away-.294/.804
The splits aren’t as bad in the years before this, but it still makes me wonder.
Thanks for the numbers crunch. I always assumed players hit better at home but you know what they say about assumptions.
Ward is just trying to play up his trade value, that’s all.
Maybe, I think I recall Jered Weaver had great home splits because his particular delivery made it hard to see in Anaheim. I believe it had something to do with the CF background and might have only been day games.
Didn’t we discuss the batters eye at the Big A as a problem a few days ago?
Lineups are posted. https://www.mlb.com/gameday/athletics-vs-angels/2025/06/11/777542/preview
It’s cool that the Angels are pulling off the double plays. I dig it.
But, on the stats front, it is sad that we are getting into the “Pujols stats” era of Trout’s career already. “Mike Trout is the third youngest players to have thirty extra base hits against the Texas Rangers! ZOMZ!” and “Trout is the all time leader in hits to left field against the Astros! GASP!” followed by “Mike Trout has the third most home runs ever against the A’s! WEEEZ!”.
Who gives a fk? For 35+ million maybe try hitting .240? Or being able to run out a double play ball hit to 3B? It’s not Trout’s fault that the mouth pieces do this. But it’s sad.
Sadly, all true.
That said, hopefully he can dial back the clock today and jack one about 470 feet out.
Hey now, you guys keep shaming guys like Bill James, you know with his awesome analytical stats like, “…batting average in a day game on artificial turf following a night game”
Would like to see Trout stop watching the first pitch down the middle of the plate.
With decreased bat speed, the last thing Trout can afford to do is give a pitcher a free strike.
He’s been taking the first pitch (almost all the time) since like forever…. It didn’t hurt him early on… of course he is not the same guy now. I always felt like you need to mix it up so pitchers don’t exploit your habits… and Mike started to do that and numerous time hit bombs on fastballs down the middle.
Overall being a bit more patient is not bad but a good thing …
Fun meetup last night, but I’m not going today.
My son’s class is doing an end of year bonfire at the beach and family always comes before baseball.
Enjoy Jeff!
Very nice game last night-Nice to see d’Arnaud’s PH tater. Soriano was absolutely slingin’ the rock last night.
Alex, I’ll take Team needs more offense for $1000!
If your an MLB owner or GM – would you actually want your AAA team in SLC? Perhaps you want it as a confidence builder. Perhaps you want it for the market audience. But to test your guys skills, it seems like a poor place to get a read. Think of how many guys explode there, but would be happy to get to the Mendoza line when they are brought up. Scott Kingery is still Scott Kingery.
Yup. I don’t like SLC as a development city. Thing is, I also don’t think the Angels use it to develop much, other than to get prospects extra innings playing with guys with MLB experience. Maybe work on sequencing, etc. for pitchers. Fielding. Get ABs of some sort.
The question is, where do they put a farm club instead? You need a town with a fairly large facility and the population to fill it sometimes. SLC has that. You need to be a shortish plane flight from the team if possible. SLC has that. Unfortunately most of those towns, for western teams, are in the mountains. I guess maybe a team could try Tucson. Again. But that’s not all that low in elevation either. Boise? Same deal. And cold.
My two cent plan would be to figure out why Tri-Cities is such an outlier as far as killing offense and encourage a new/upgraded facility there. The Madison, Al facility, if you’ve ever seen it, is really nice. Ranch Cucawhitechick is nice. If they had a development route that used Rancho/Tri-Ci/Rocket City heavily and then SLC as a holding pen for AAAA players and kids they want to get around some experienced guys they could probably pull off a good development path. SLC has a shiny new facility too. Have players in SLC basically get used to “how things will work in Anaheim”. How they will spend their day, how they will be used in games, etc. Stuff where the offensive bloat is an afterthought.
Bakersfield would be nice
This may be the first time that sentence has been typed out….
They’ve had a couple Cal League teams that failed in a hot and dismal ballpark. Not sure Bako is gonna get it together. Redding is kind of in the same boat. Not sure either city is big enough on its own for AAA.
Portland is the only city I can think of. Or Orlando, but it’s far away. New Orleans? But they have Bako type issues.
Out of the box? Oakland/East Bay area? Or one of the Dallas megaburbs?
Oakland would be nice.
That’s got to be the first time those four words were used together in the same sentence…..ever.
Second only to Damascus or Mogadishu of course.
LMAO.
They’ve already started making changes in Tri-City including
— Expand the center field batter’s eye (the green center field wall, which helps hitters with a background to see the pitch better coming in).
— The outfield sod replaced (two seasons ago the Los Angeles Angels sent their grounds crew to assist the Dust Devils in replacing Gesa Stadium’s infield sod that the Tri-City team paid for, smoothing out bumps and eliminating any small pebbles).
— A brand-new padded outfield wall moved in by 15 feet along the foul lines.
— Upgrade the ballparks’ lights
Anecdotally the light upgrade is noticeable when watching Tri-City games on TV.
https://www.tricitiesbusinessnews.com/articles/4806-city-dust-devils-pitch-in-to-make-5-million-in-stadium-upgrades#:~:text=Changes%20coming,new%20climate%2Dcontrolled%20weight%20room.
https://www.applevalleynewsnow.com/news/upgraded-ballpark-enhances-player-and-fan-experience-for-dust-devils-this-season/article_b7dc43a2-ff2c-4132-9fe1-dd89acc440d6.html
Unpossible.
Turks posted something on this yesterday but bears repeating…
Electrifying pro debut by Gabriel Davalillo yesterday in the DR. I don’t know how many other players in the 130-plus-year history of MLB-affiliated pro baseball started off their career with a 2-home-run game… but it can’t be a long list. Maybe he’s The One. https://www.milb.com/gameday/dsl-angels-vs-dsl-tigers-1/2025/06/10/812496/final/box
Yilver De Paula off to a great start, too.
send them to Tempe
Yes on a meetup! We are capable of starting cool trÅditions and not just stuck with sad donkey ones imo. Yes we cÅn 🤣
Next game I’m going to is 6/21.
Blast21Dave had set up a suite for us early in may, and it was just him, Lana, and me.
Nolan’s plate discipline and approach are really paying off. If only some of the other struggling players could adopt his batting philosophy.
Last 30: 324/.434/.426 OBP .434
Season: .284/.382/.391. OBP .391
A 22 BB vs 14 K during that span is incredible . But the big question is whether his last 30+ games BABIP of .375 is sustainable
Having a BABIP of .375 for the season isn’t very likely, but I think his current season BABIP of .321 is. I don’t expect Nolan to field like Keith Hernandez, but if he can hit like him (career BABIP of .322) that would be a valuable first baseman even if he doesn’t hit a dozen homeruns.
Fair point. Would be nice to see more of the team get their BABIP in a positive direction. As a team only the Rangers have a lower BABIP in all of MLB.
This is because we have had to use some crap players. Plus Newman and Rengifo, and currently Soler are underperforming. And Trout. And Ward sort of.
One thing I noticed about Nolan recently is he only swings when he can square up the ball. He doesn’t reach, swing out of the K zone, or even swing IN K zone but can’t square up. I don’t know if that has anything to do with his BABIP now, but if he succeeds in being this selective and still being able to put the ball in play, I think he should do well for the rest of the season.
Well, yes. But he also clearly knows how to swing and get a foul ball on purpose…. not an accidental ground out or pop up. He defends the plate well and doesn’t get out doing it. A lot of those pitches are outside his zone, but he seems pretty confident he can put em out of play.
I’m sure Nolan is HOT now, and those numbers will tail back some. I am curious to see how bad/long his struggles will be when they arrive. If his development is at the point that he looks like now, and his “slump” version is the guy we saw the first three weeks, then he’s clearly taken a step towards Boggsness.
He’s 23 now. So a AAA player. My fantasy is what he may look like at 27. It’s all hopium, but a .330 AVG would make me smile big.
With the .391 OBP he is approaching Chone Figgins territory of .400. Figgy was our last really good lead-off guy, excluding Trout of course who only did it a short time.
As an ex-pitcher, I love when a hitter like Nolan is hot and can basically take a 1-2 count and make a pitcher work six more pitches and eventually walk him. That shit is demoralizing as a pitcher. Having to throw ten pitches to get an out sucks.
If say a guy like Rada who doesn’t have pop also develops this skill, maybe another guy, that’s when you have a line up pitchers HATE seeing. 1/3 of a line up that requires 25 pitches to deal with every time through? You are NOT going deep into that game and you are more likely to make mistakes to guys like Trout.
Not to mention that fact Rada can run like the wind.
Speed doesn’t suffer thru slumps and this team needs much more speed.
I think CWS took the worst of that list. Fewest sacrifice bunts allowed = no need to ever try to manufacture a run to beat them.
Fewest by % allowed would be good, but not by pure counting number.
Look at Nolan so pumped up with his walk-off hit. It was no disrespect by the A’s manager as it made more sense to do a lefty-lefty matchup – Wash would have done the same (I would hope) – but even the good strategies are sometimes beaten by actual performance. Like with the previous game, Nolan didn’t try to do too much and just made sure he put the ball where no one in the infield can get to it.
Nolan’s hit was the highlight of course, but it was a great team win. Soriano with the nice bounceback game, Travis with the PH HR, 5 hits between Zach and Nolan, Hunter-Kenley-Reid holding down the fort again. And wow for Reid – two nasty Ks and once again, he didn’t allow the ghost runner to move a single base. Maybe Reid is the connection to Jansen that the team has been looking for.
Character building wins like this for the yutes!
My wife and I were at Nolan’s first game, sitting behind home plate as it was for her birthday. Anyway, Nolan’s brother was in the section as well and was so pumped for his brother’s MLB debut. It was really cool to see, and we’ve been fans of Nolan ever since.
I’m liking this young core of Neto, Nolan, and O’Hoppe. It would be nice if O’Hoppe could improve his defensive skills.
It is pretty awesome what Neato and Schanny have accomplished in recent games as a 1-2 punch at the top of the order for the team. Fun stuff watching Jo hit of late too. The three of them right now are Snap, Crackle and Pop. 😍
Angels also lead MLB in least amount of LOBs.
That would mean then that we have improved from previous seasons with batting with men on base-kool.
or an extremely low OBP
“DING! Number one answer!”
Recently we played the Yankees, and our pitchers did a credible job holding “Here comes the Judge in check. The rest of the American League and even MLB are not having the same results as we did. I read this morning that Aaron Judge may be on pace the break the single season hit record set in 2004 by Ichiro Suzuki of 262. That would be most remarkable if he accomplishes that feat.
Judge is currently on pace for 242 hits. That’s still a remarkable number, but I don’t think he’ll improve his pace and get to 262.
Much as I despise the MFY, I can’t bring myself to dislike Judge (except as an opponent). He seems like a decent guy.
Yeah. It’s so funny because you acn’t put your finger on it, but he has followed up Jeter as Mr Yankee and for some reason he just seems so much less fake a douchey. But you can’t articulate why, other than Jeets was overrated as fk and even a hater has to admit Judge is the real deal as a player. But Jeetz just has that vibe… the “friend” who tries to bang a girl he knows you like and then explain that you should be cool about it vibe.
Thank you. That’s it, I think. I couldn’t stand BHSJ and his gift baskets.