Mike Trout is back to hitting home runs again. He has now hit six of them on his birthday. This article says Zach Neto refuses to give an answer on his future in Los Angeles. Chances are, he just doesn’t know. Sam Bachman is on the 15 day IL with right forearm radial nerve inflammation. Arjun Nimmala is off to a hot start at Rocket City. Cade Marlowe plans to trigger his upward mobility clause today. The Angels claimed Ryan Watson off waivers from the Red Sox on Friday.
Andrew Velazquez rejected an outright assignment and elected free agency. The Pirates granted a release to Mike Clevinger.
Max Scherzer passed Walter Johnson on the all-time strikeouts list.
Tommy John has officially said goodbye. He is 83 and battling recurring bladder cancer. Former Red Sox pitcher Stephen Gonsalves announced his retirement at 32 after 11 professional seasons.
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
Sammy Peralta-“…he has thrown 16 1/3 innings for Triple-A Salt Lake, allowing 17 earned runs.” He’ll fit right in.
Anderson to IR, Peralta up. He should carry-on Anderson’s stellar performance:
“Peralta, 28, signed a minor league deal with the Halos in June. He had just elected free agency after being outrighted by the Rockies. Since then, he has thrown 16 1/3 innings for Triple-A Salt Lake, allowing 17 earned runs.”
This is how you taaaaaank
LOL, just saw this.
Tonight’s line up is a cut and paste of last month’s plus Mo.
Oh well.
Wouldn’t this be an absolutely incredible time to change the angels tired banged out uniforms? Yes. Yes it would. Maybe bring back the bring back the navy, ditch the Red Sox Y2K A?
Sounds good to me. And also other me.
you really think Arte is going to pay to repaint those stupid giant hats at the home plate gate? nah, we’re stuck with red so long as Arte is the owner. Its Arte’s “perfect” counter to Dodger blue.
Never been a fan of these clipart inspired uniforms.
I feel obligated to post again about the apparent direction of the Angels. This time of year, many teams are bringing up prospects and releasing their 41st best player. I am so glad that the Angels are ignoring almost all of them.
You can see other teams – out of contention – picking 35 year old relief pitchers with negative WAR. And you have to think “what could they possibly be doing.”
They’re all on Perry’s fantasy team.
Zach has been doing better at defense lately.
OH MAH GIRD AH HATE LINE UP KURDT SO STOOPID!
lol lineup not out yet for tonight’s game
THARZ WHA AH HATE! SNEEKZ UPS ON MEH!
Lmao
These are more fun to read if you use a pirate accent
?
13 errors at 2nd base – yikes.
Poor Willy Abreu, gets bad notoriety in two positions.
It is my own fault. I decided to change teams to follow and I picked the Angels last Winter. Now I am looking forward to Draft day in June 2027 – if there is one.
Well at least if MLB TV continues to carry the Bees, etc. I can get excited for 2029 – if the strike/lockout is settled by then.
On the plus side you might be able to one day say you joined up just in time for the rebuild ha ha.
Please don’t throw rocks at me but that was my “magnet.” I thought it would start by ST but what do I know. Thankfully it has started and should be fun to watch. I seriously don’t think it will be like the Astros, nor Orioles. But “time will tell.”
I wish I could change my allegiance to another team. I have tried. But I am stuck with the team that brought me to the dance. They certainly have not earned my loyalty as of late – but here I am. Loyal to a fault.
That said, not a penny for Arte. That is the only line in the sand I am not crossing with regard to this team.
We all take different paths to “fandom.” I started with the Beaumont Roughnecks. Then minor league baseball left Texas. Then the God Awful Colt 45’s came to town. Then the Texas Strangers. So I learned to go to a game and basically enjoy the professionals on the other team. There are certain teams I want to win, but if they don’t I don’t worry.
But through the years I have enjoyed “Good Baseball.” So my tolerance for TOOTBLANs and mental errors is very short. So let’s enjoy the ride to the playoffs SOON.
I loved the Colt 45s, they had some really good hitters like the “Toy Cannon”.
Lost 90+ games 7 years in a row.
But loved going to the Astrodome. The original Colt Stadium had mosquitos that drank a pint of blood each.
The only game I have attended was the Meetup game, to see you lugs. Did see the Halos at Chase Field and they actually looked good. Then again it was Hello Kitty night for the D-backs. Will be seeing them in about a month against the Nationals in DC. Squeezing the game in between various chunks of the Smithsonian.
True dat. Ant-bandwagon. Tex got on after it burned.
Can someone please share BA’s new top 30 prospect list please? Thanks!
1. Arjun Nimmala
SS
2. Tyler Bremner
RHP
3. Hayden Alvarez
OF
4. Johnny Slawinski
LHP
5. Jared Grindlinger
OF
6. Dylan Jordan
RHP
7. George Klassen
RHP
8. Trey Gregory-Alford
RHP
9. Talon Haley
LHP
10. Gavin Grahovac
1B
11. Jarren Advincula
2B
12. Nelson Rada
OF
13. Joswa Lugo
3B / SS
14. Gabriel Davalillo
3B
15. Chase Shores
RHP
16. Nate Snead
RHP
17. CJ Gray
RHP
18. Raudi Rodriguez
OF
19. Jacob Cozart
C
20. Juan Flores
C
21. Jaxon Willits
SS
22. Garrett Wright
C / OF
23. Rylan Lujo
OF
24. Mason McGwire
RHP
25. Jeyson Horton
SS
26. Barrett Kent
RHP
27. Jake Munroe
3B
28. Peyton Olejnik
RHP
29. Kendri Fana
RHP
30. Yilver De Paula
SS / 2B
You da 🐐
Wow it looks like an actual farm! Doesn’t include CMo or Dana either.
https://www.mlb.com/milb/prospects/angels/
Another opinion – just rearranged.
Big disparity with Rada. I’m in agreement with the BBA ranking, I don’t see much with him, I know I am not in alignment with this board.
He reminds me of Cedric Mullins. He plays centerfield and steals a few bases. Very little power. Leads off when he is hot. Bats 9th or to the bench when cold. But Rada is young.
Rada seems to get a mixed bag of reviews a lot of places.
Defensively there is a consensus but offensively is where the gap lies.
There will be no power. That is a given. But so far there has been a lot of getting on base.
His proponents will say elite strike zone control and a solid contact rate will lead to plenty of walks and soft singles and he will still get on base.
His detractors say that MLB hitters will simply attack him in the strike zone because they know he can not hurt them deep. Giving up a single is the same as giving up a walk.
True, but if he can get on base at an elite level, he can lead off and provide strong defense in CF. That would be the hope.
I think part of it is needle moving…. or what ever the old pink crowds calling it these days.
Because he has VERY little power, his OPS will be low. He may still work out to be an OBP machine with good defense and some steals. I’d be fine with that. But as far as prospect rankings go? Yeah, that’s middling. It’s a 4th OF who may be a little more.
So his rank isn’t crazy high. I mean, look how Airaz is valued. win some batting titles. who cares? No power plus bad defense. At least Rada can field, but he’ll never be a 45+ grade.
This season has been somewhat disappointing… maybe the first in which he failed to show substantial improvement in at least one metric vs. the previous. But he’s still the youngest guy in AAA and he’s batting .280. That’s bad ass. He’s a bad ass. And it’s still within the realm of possibility he develops a bit of pop. He’s 20! Players that age commonly add strength/power.
MLB Pipeline doesn’t include our 2026 draft picks. BA’s rankings are fresh out the oven
It is also interesting on this list than 11 are AA and up. 19 are A and down.
MLB’s doesn’t include 2026 draftees.
Yah. That’s a way less sad collection of prospects
My top 15 faves:
Tier 1 – impact 1st rounders
Nimmala, Bremner, Grindlinger
Tier 2 – upside prep arms
Slaw, Jordan, Haley
Tier 2 – upside LATAM bats
Alvarez, Lugo, Davalillo
Others favorites:
Klassen, Raudi, Munroe, Flores, Advincula, Shores
Where is Angel Arredondo? I thought that he was going to change the face of the franchise.
He was 28th on the list below. I guess that I’ll tip him well when he’s selling peanuts in the stands.
He’s out in Cucamonga, bring your Tiki’s
True. Good point. This is a special opportunity for everyone on this site. Anybody who wants to can likely get right in front of Angel Arredondo in person. Just catch him on his way to the car. Tell him what you think of him. Be real. Speak truth. Let us know how that works out for you.
We definitely need to bitch about the return for Silseth and O’Hoppe til the end of time. Let’s make Angel Arredondo our new whipping boy on 1, 2, 3 break!
Ironic that we traded O’Hoppe for him, because he has been the whipping boy of the last trade that went sour
In totality, we have now traded Brandon Marsh + Silseth for Angel Arredondo. We need to let the kid hear about it!
“hey shithead, we traded an all-star outfielder and the greatest reliever in franchise history for your sorry ass. Hurry up and get to Anaheim so I can whine about how you aren’t the savior everyone on CTPG promised you’d be!”
much improved list from 12 months ago. Still not an elite farm system but definitely no longer a bad one.
getting to a better mix of ceiling and floor. Do wonder if it gets an off season infusion by trading Detmers and/or Neto.
Hayden is the future
I’d like to see the rankings based on the prospect having a minimum of 2 years in the system. IMHO, without a basis of performance in the minors, the rankings are a higher degree of guesswork than is normally found in these ratings.
That would disqualify four of the top five on BA’s list.
Nobody loves “shiny new thing” like dudes who make prospect lists.
Home attendance numbers will be interesting to track moving forward.
Angels have been out of contention since April, 5th in ave/game in the AL attrendance, 13th overall
We are officially in the big long boring. Will I even give a shit about baseball when it’s done? Probably, but less so.
I have been to one game in Anaheim since the last strike. It’s not that the team sucks. I watch crap teams. It’s that the owners and MLBPA decided that it was a good idea to go on strike after Covid instead of considering my happiness. It had a real impact on how much I enjoy MLB baseball as a whole. My low level sense of “Fuck these guys” has never really gone away. I got much more into the MiLB.
Since then we’ve had the Dodgerfucation of baseball. We have dumbfks smirking and telling me “your team could do it too.” The Angels suck. At the same time football is still fun. I started learning hockey. MMA and boxing are both easier to watch now and far more interesting. I work a lot. I’m in a band. I do artist stuff. I do stock market stuff. I go to the gym.
So my team sucks and there’s no reason to watch them all that often. Just check in on how a guy like Klassen does. Depending on the teams that make it there’s the post season. It’s fun to watch real baseball for a month. Then the season ends and we get a lock out. Brilliant.
I am about one new interest away from not really having real room in my life for watching the Angels. What if I want to get better at cooking? Join a bar trivia team? Take on a few more freelance clients? Learn Spanish for real? Get a dog?
I’d imagine there are piles of fans that are kind of in the same boat. Baseball was #1 for a long time. Now it’s just in the mix. Less and less so. Give us another Doyer title, then a lock out, then a 2027 Doyers/Yankees World Series…. it’s likely I’ll still like baseball, I’ll check in on it, but I’m not gonna be a serious watch the network and attend games guy. I already go to way more MiLB games than Angels games. The MLB should worry about losing the consuming interest of a guy like me. Even more so if a guy like me has kids.
But they don’t.
It sure makes me wish the college season was longer. College World Series was awesome once again. But so is league play. It blows me away how few fans UCLA got as the number one team in the country. Their tiny stadium (if you want to call it that) was usually empty when I watched on TV. Went to Georgia@A&M last year and it was standing room only (around 8,000 fans).
Lot’s of choices for watching baseball here in SoCal, Dodgers, Angels, 3 Class A teams, more Universities than we can name and add to that the number of colleges that play baseball also. Then there is high school baseball along with kids starting at 4 years old playing Pony League and Little League baseball in a metro area bigger in population than the whole state of Georgia and you see that we in SoCal watch in person a whole heck of a lot of baseball. ⚾ ❤
Yeah, they need to try to line it up with the school calendar but it starts way too early.
Been fun watching minor league baseball lately. The Bees played the Dodgers AAA squad last night and that was a far more exciting game than any the big club has played in a while.
Which MiLB games do you go to?
It’s a great road trip if you live in Ventura County. I’ve been to IE, Rancho, Fresno, Stockton, Visalia, Sacramento… It’s kind of like you can get in your car on a Saturday and when you’re sick of driving you are near a Cal League game. I’m gonna try to get to Rancho before the season ends and see one more.
Visalia is VERY down home old school kids with sparklers perhaps game gets interrupted by a cow on the field style MiLB baseball. I highly recommend seeing a game there before the team demands better facilities.
The Dodgers have certainly killed my interest in baseball, absolutely destroyed my desire to even bother keeping up with the NL. I don’t even know who is playing well in that league 🤣
Mike Trout 2024-2026
1,124 PA
.232 BA
28.5% K rate
I know he’s having a nice “bounce back” season but this man’s hit tool has eroded. Look around and you’ll see the other greats Ohtani, Judge, Freeman hitting for much higher averages. Until this year Betts and Machado as well.
Trout is passive at the plate, usually looks like his plan is to draw a walk and when that doesn’t happen he looks lost more often than not. I don’t mind if he wants to stay as an Angel because he values loyalty, I don’t really care about what stories came out during the Kay trial, but I do care about his decline as a hitter.
.230 average is a joke. Get it together Mike
Unfortunately there is no “getting it together”. He is just well past his prime. This has happened to a lot of great ball players.
I listed the names of his contemporaries (forgot Harper) who have been able to keep their BAs higher as they’ve began to age out of their primes. Trout’s decline is especially pronounced
Everyone’s decline is different. Bodies are different. Minds are different. Motivations are different. Being on such a crappy team can’t help.
Plus how the weight of his giant contract extension seemed to crush his body and make his soft gooey parts easy to tear. It’s just like when players I hate get off steroids after grabbing the bag. But it’s a player I like so he has just been weirdly injury prone all of the sudden right after he got paid and started having kids.
I watched scenes like Trout happen before like Mickey Mantle for instance, injuries erode a player’s abilities sooner than we wish for, but the greater the player the more noticeable and when he is on your team it is more pronounced. Mike Trout first 4 years were over the top spectacular, his nest 4 were still great but not like the first four and since them he still has been above average but as he ages the decline is more noticeable. He is no longer “The Kid” but he is ours. If he quit now, he would carry a great legacy into the Hall of Fame. The longer he hangs on with diminished skills that will be what folks will remember more than his superhuman years.
But it’s not like he’s hit the Willie Mays regression, that was truly sad.
Yeah but that was after age 40. His age 40 season he generated 6.3 WAR and was an Allstar. Then the tires fell off.
At Trout’s age Mays had an 11 WAR season and then followed that up with a 9 WAR season.
They all hit the wall at different times.
Way different. While former greats hang around too long because of the love of the game, they sputter but Trout’s decline started near age 32, freaking sad.
Anyone that saw Willie Mays last few games with the Mets had to cry. He couldn’t even pick up a grounder.
And he was 45
Thing is, Mantle exploded his knee on a sprinkler. Mike exploded multiple body parts on a baby boy and a huge contract.
Has trout played alot more games than these guys? Trout also wants to play cf full time which is a demanding position the coaches need to tell him he can’t pull off anymore.
What coaches? I don’t see any coaches on this team who are going to convince Trout to play LF or just DH. Absolutely no coach in this org with the chops to get his attention. As much as Trout might be interested in weather, which is data driven, I’m not sure he is that data driven when it comes to his baseball career.
Reminds me to find the Allen Iverson ‘practice’ video and find an AI that will change it to say “coaches?”.
I recall the last time a manager/coach tried to move Trout out of CF, Mikey was not a happy camper and Manager Maddon backtracked
Suzuki isn’t the only coach. we’re going on a few years of new coaches and trout’s injuries
Definitely true 71, but he could and should adapt his approach at the plate. His refusal to swing at meatball first pitches confounds me. Don’t be so predictable Mike!
Everyone in the league knows you throw him a fastball letter high and he turns into a whirling dervish. But at DH, he is heads above Soler and most others on the team today.
I am not interested in comparing him to Soler or anyone else on this team. Trout gets compared to the other greats in the game because he is an all-time great.
Funny enough he’s done well vs. FBs this year and can’t hit a breaking ball to save his life.
Curvy ball bats are afraid.
Since you mentioned it.
Dale Murphy
Age WAR PA BA OBP SLG OPS+
32 3.1 671 .225/.313/.421 106
33 1.6 642 .228/.306/.361 89
34 1.0 629 . 245/.318/.417 99
Reggie Jackson
Age WAR PA BA OBP SLG OPS+
32 3.5 581 .274/.356/.477 136
33 3.5 537 .297/.382/.544 150
34 4.8 601 .300/.398/.597 172
Albert Pujols
Age WAR PA BA OBP SLG OPS+
32 4.8 670 .285/.343/.516 138
33 1.6 443 .258/.330/.437 116
34 3.9 695 .272/.324/.466 126
Yup. He used to not be able to handle the high 90s heat, now he can’t even handle mid 90s.
I think this is precisely the wake-up call he needs. Thank you so much for posting it.
What’s shocking is to realize he’s now 35 years old.
If he focuses on average, the HR production will likely decrease. His OPS is currently.820, the OPS+ is currently 135. If he can hold those metrics at or near those levels though the end of his contract, we all should be thrilled.
Sad, hard to call him the GOAT at this point but what a ride for about 11 years.
Clearly he’s not what he was. But if he had anyone hitting behind him – he’d be hitting 30 points higher. Teams don’t have to pitch to him, so they don’t. Plug him into the Dodgers lineup and his OPS would probably be up another 100 points. Nobody else on the Angels puts any fear in opponents. The game plan looks common – “Don’t let Trout beat us.”
This is why he should be leading off. He’s a natural leadoff guy. Teams would also have no choice but to pitch to him.
The latter is how the Angels found their accidental leadoff guy in 2023. And how the Doyers have their leadoff guy for the next 8 years.
He finally put up back-to-back years with 500+ ABs (in 8 years) so we can throw out the injury excuse. Just not putting up the numbers.
Tickets for upcoming Texas series are dirt cheap. With the team tanking, attendance is dropping with only boosts expected to come from fans of popular visiting teams. Or giveaways, seems people are interested in Wednesday give away Mickey Mouse bobble head. Almost a joke because the term ‘Mickey Mouse’ is sometimes used to describe cheap/half-effort labor.
Sponge Bob night killed it
On the Cade Marlowe post, one comment really hurts.
“Does joining the Angels roster actually count as upward mobility?”
….and the survey said: “No”
It will be interesting to see if another club picks him up.
So bad ass.