LA Angels Thursday News Crash: AZ Fall League

We certainly HAVE NOT seen it yet, but maybe we will see some uptick in developing hitters. I don’t care if they are high school bats. I just want some bats.

I know they are moving A Ball to Rancho Cockroach. A+ Ball is supposedly getting improved facility blah blah. Tempe is getting used more by players at all levels. Madison is a new park, SLC is SLC. I have no idea if the scouting and coaching are also getting upgrades, but I assume if they are baby stepping up in one area they aren’t against doing the same in others.

It seems like the Angels are at least paying more attention to their farm. Especially compared to the Dipoto/Eppler era. Not the grandiose flood of investment I hope for, but far more than Jam Jones era prospects were getting. So maybe we’ll see some improvement in the future.

But it’s a little silly to work hard at decrying the emergence of Jam Jones or ex-prospects and their “ceiling” as some major issue with the Angels. I mean Jones…. which of these top farm systems fixed him? Was it the Brewers? The Mets? The Dodgers? The Yankees? The Orioles? Oh wait, he finally made it to the top system in baseball, the Tigers…. now he’s survived all those shitty systems and can finally blossom for 100ABs at age 28.

Clearly the Angels did not select high school players very well and develops them poorly. But Marsh was not developed by the Phillies at all and is still a platoon bat for them. With A TON of line up protection. He is the best out of the bunch, other than Adell, I guess. The other guys? Am I supposed to work that hard at frowning at this?

All I’m saying is that 28 year old highly athletic guys finally stringing together a few useful innings of play is something I don’t really care about. Just like a Brewers fan isn’t gonna cry about the loss of Lucas Erceg. These things happen, they are a fact of baseball life. If we had a “Jam Jones” right now we’d all be pooh poohing how he’s old and not a real prospect and has insane BABIP luck and we didn’t develop him anyway or what ever.

A separate fact is that the post 2010 Angels farm system friggin sucks in almost every way and needs fixing. Even if we’d lucked into a super prospect like Jackson Churio over that time period we’d still have a crap farm and crap drafts over all.

Unfortunately we probably won’t even be able to tell if things are getting better. We’d have to draft some position players or, GASP!, trade a player like Jansen for prospects for that to happen.