LA Angels Weekend News Crash: What A Week!

The Marlins. Yet another team that has been to the play offs recently, crashed to earth, and rebuilt. Already. They don’t reload.

Cassie is the latest piece, but they are sneaky solid. Everyone knows that if their young pitchers all switch on at once they are scary. Kind of like the Pirates, their issue is offense. But unlike the Pirates, they have a lot to bet on.

There is that outfield of course. They are a gamble, but a solid one. Another thing they have going for them is general baseball skills. They were not highly ranked defensively last year, but they went through A LOT of players. What they do have is guys like Liam Hicks and Graham Pauley on the roster. Who? Exactly. These are guys who just don’t hit enough, especially slug enough, to start. But they have OBPs over .300 and cover catcher and the entire infield with fairly solid defense. Between the two of them they pooped out 2 WAR. That’s not impressive. But it’s also not the huge drop off you get when say an Angels bench piece has to play. The same holds true for CF Derek Hill and IF/OF Javier Sanoja. Their OBPs are lower. But they are EXACTLY what a bench piece should look like. Solid defense. Fairly fast. Play multiple positions. OPS+ under 100. Hill needs to hit a little better. But point is, even those two sad sacks had a 2.3 WAR. Infielder Connor Norby is also on this list of positive meh.

So they don’t have a massive drop off when their line up has to shuffle a bit.

They also have a huge pile of “what if/maybe good” in the rest of the line up. Maybe the change in scenery brings Christopher Morel back to positive WAR. Xavier Edwards and Otto Lopez combined for 6.7 WAR last year up the middle in the infield. Both had sub 100 OPS+. If both managed to crack 100 they’d basically be two Netos.Heriberto Hernandez is a man so ugly he’s got to be good at DH. He had a positive 116 OPS+ and 0.9 WAR in 256 ABs. He has power and takes walks but his BA is likely to slip, but he is still useful.

This is a team that could really stand to just add one or two veterans with pop who can play corner IF and DH some. Rhys Hoskins or Wilmer Flores or Paul Goldschmidt at 1B. Suarez would be a dream for them at 3B, but Yoan Moncada is a good fit for them. Just add a little more threat to the line up around Stowers/Cassie.

Prospects wise they have Cassie coming in the OF and Joe Mack at catcher. Mack is more likely to have an impact than our Nelson Rada. They also have two looming power sources in Deyvison De Los Santos and Kemp Alderman. Both are more Willie Mo Pena than anything right now and chase lots of pitches, some of which bounce off the back wall of the stadium. But if either gets their chase rate under some control they will add power in a Trumbo sort of way. Maximo Acosta is an MLB ready SS with contact skills who may be useful depth this year. Their system isn’t great, but it looks a lot like ours if a bunch of pitchers have graduated and we’d drafted some position players lately with guys like Starlyn Caba, Aiva Arquette, Max Williams, Cam Canarella, Dillon Head, Brandon Compton and dark horse OF prospect Fenwick Trimble in the lower system.

The Marlins are the ant-A’s. The A’s look almost ready if they just get some pitching to go with all that offensive spice. The Marlins have a ton of pitching and just need some runs.

They are mired in a division with Philly, the Mets and Atlanta. But they are still way ahead of the Angels as a hopium producer.