In case you missed it, the Angels made history yesterday.
Here is the final playoff bracket. Here are the final stats leaders for 2026.
Blake Treinan injured his shoulder and will not participate in the postseason.
Dan Wilson will not return as the Mariners manager.
JiMan Choi just got drafted by the KT Wiz of the KBO.
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
Too tunny
I don’t get the Suzuki hate tbh Gitch is right when he says this group is a reactive, over-emotional lot.
The guy is for sure awful at actually managing. That was at least somewhat expected by the Front Office, but he was brought in to fill a temporary gap and did as he was told.
No serious manager with real aspirations of winning would take the gig at the moment Suzuki was offered the job. The org had no direction, no hopes of contending, and no clear understanding of how to turn things around. Think about that for a second.
Even if he’s around another year or two, it’ll be closer to a 4-5 year timeline before we’re taken seriously as a contending team and competent organization
So he’s horrible at actually managing but lets just keep him around! Sounds legit!
He’s a glorified cheerleader. A substitute teacher brought in to watch a class full of flunkies before a turnover
What difference would it make if they brought someone else in?
Would a grittier manager increase our XGRiT by 50%
Maybe Darin Erstad would finally teach Neto how to stand further back in the box and stop striking out every 2 ABs
Ok cool, this hypothetical gritty team loses between 95-100 times regardless
Someone has a burner account
I only lurk occasionally here, what does that mean? lol
Can you name anything good about his managing this year?
Nada, as per my previous email, he’s unqualified and unquestionably unsuited for the job.
Doesn’t change the outcome this year or next. I’m not sure what your point is?
Or do we just need someone to direct all our anger toward now that Arte is gone?
But what we all really want to know is: Where is Roberto Baldoquin?
He’s to good for this team.
Rumor has it he was given a choice to stay with the Angels or return to Havana. So he bought a box of flashlight batteries and went home.
I’m confident that had the Angels been run by Halos Heaven/CTPG we would have done so much better than who the Angels actually had in place. Even when they got Maitan, I went to a game and I could see that he was out of shape and had no baseball sense. I predicted then based on seeing him just one game that he would never even hit in AA. Sure enough…..
Question – when is Suzuki’s 1 year contract technically over? Or is it already over? Either way, unless it’s renewed why can’t Moz say nice things about Suzuki and still not renew him?
I’m gonna giggle till I wet my pants if Stank comes in and re-hires a newly dedicated to the data Mike Scioscia. Christ that mess would be rad.
That would be quite the buttercup.
Jesus Nacy. Just calm down. It’s been 24 hours since the last game ended. Why not try on a friends balls, have a wine spritzer and STFU for a while. Maybe make broad angry declarations if Suzuki is still manager come January? If if you have really pissed your leotard from anger hold out till a week after the WS? Nothing has happened/not happened yet.
That’s when the moves usually take place, but with a new owner coming in January I’m not expecting anything until then.
In a related note from Moz’s press conference he said he’d also recommend to KSE that Anthony Rendon should be resigned too because the injuries weren’t his fault and he should be given another chance as well.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
This is my take on Zuk. Years ago, my marketing director hired a young lady for sales. She was a single parent, charming, excellent at getting in to see people, etc. But in all the months she worked for us, she never made a sale. We have various services and multiple variations on contracts. So, I had to let her go. It was a bad day for her and me and for the next few days I felt terrible.
About 90-120 days went by and I looked up and she came into my office smiling. She wanted to thank me for firing her. She went to work for a young man that swept parking lot with large vacuum trucks. He had to work nights and run his 3-4 truck operation. But she could make calls and talk to clients during the day when he was sleeping. She said all she needed to do was count the parking spaces, multiply by their rate, and get a contract signed if interested.
Suzuki has many talents but he is a misfit, in my opinion, as a manager. I wish him well.
He did reach his whiteboard goals…
I’m sure he does, I’d be interested to know what they are.
I don’t think Mozeliak is the front runner to stick around so whatever he said about The Zuk, it’s just his perspective
I think Moz stays, but as a higher up than GM, which I think he and Molly Jolly choose.
I just feel that both Kurt and Mozeliak will be gone as the new group takes over and I’d be surprised if Josh Kronke and Demoff do not already have a very short list of candidates for PBO/GM. Maybe Mo is on that list.
Got my popcorn ready for the upcoming anti-Moz rage …
Per Bollinger “ Mozeliak said Kurt Suzuki did a great job as manager. He said he held the clubhouse together.”
Is Moz still under contract with the season ending? I’m wondering if he even still has the ability to make changes as of today.
He just answered that question to Rhett.
It was the first line of that post I posted above
“Angels interim GM John Mozeliak said he’s not focused on his contract right now.” [insert Suzuki comment here]
I would think he’s here until the ownership changes officially (MLB owners approval) which I believe is in January? At that time a statement by KSE will confirm or deny Mozeliak’s status. Count on Moz being here til January. He’s still working.
If Zuk is still here they are not really serious and I don’t know if I would even be interested in watching them.
I’m in the 71 camp on this. So far so good but I need to see positive steps forward.
Where’s the 71 campsite?
Its right here!
I will say that I have seen the “compliment the manager before not renewing his contract” trick before.
Many miles to go here. Really the team has only taken about 4 steps in the right direction so far.
But they have been significant, and at least so far, all in the right direction.
You and I agree that “so far so good.” But if Suzuki stays, you can add at least one more year to the rebuild.
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I would say the same thing but probably cave once next season starts.
I would have to seriously question the seriousness of the team though, my goodness.
Agree.
Moz is not going to throw Suzuki under the bus, especially with the roster he was given. But Suzuki won’t be back next year for The Angels.
Can’t make chicken salad outta chicken shit
But can you make chicken shit salad ?
So angry! Why Moz no come out an say manager horrible suck like so many other POBOGMOEIOs that I have so mush respec for!?!?
Not a fan of the job Suzuki did but we be missing the real issue. Why make a move prior to any certainty being reached on if there will be a extended work stoppage?
I think they’ll act faster than that just because they want a manager in place when they start to build for next year. I don’t think they’ll wait till Jan. I think they’ll decide to keep Moz or hire someone else and then start the coaching staff search fairly soon. Why let guys you want get away? And with the sale just about done I bet StanK and friends have the ability to start decorating before they move all the way in.
“Held it together” ? Lol. What would things have looked like if he DIDN’T hold it together ?
Maybe 120 losses ?
Keep:
Trout
Meckler
Grissom
Schanuel
Lowe (sunk cost but under control, might as well try to build him up)
Guzman
Mo
Detmers
Urena
Johnson
GRod
Joyce
Fermin
Natera
Aldegheri
Get Rid Of:
Peraza
Siri
Frazier
Moncada
Heinenen
Kikuchi
Farris
Peralta
Bachman
Anderson
50/50:
Saucedo – good, but age concerns
Paris
Moore – give them both spring training next year and go from there.
Klassen – clock is ticking
Neto – needs to be the right deal.
Teodosio – I’d keep him but he prolly wants to go.
Murphy
Reassign:
D’Arnaud – Catching Coach
Suzuki – Food and Beverage Manager
You think they eat 21 million to let kikuchi walk? He will pitch out his last year next year imo.
The first article I want to read this offseason is that Suzuki was fired. Seattle took care of their problem. Why don’t we take care of ours?
I was thinking the same thing then realized – he was on a one-year contract. They don’t need to “fire” him. Just don’t re-sign him.
He’s no longer the manager of the Halos. Unless they sign him again. So…it’s kinda like the glitch with whats-his-names pay in Office Space. It fixed itself.
I think Moz is trying to figure out where he stands in all of this. I don’t know the details of his “internship,” but the season ended yesterday. Hopefully he’s still under contract but idk.
I believe one of his assignments was to find a permanent GM, so I am assuming he is still employed until he completes that mission.
Milton. The Bob’s famous quote. Nice!
Fired, don’t renew contract. Is there a difference?
Exactly
And at this time we do not know who will be hiring the 2027 manager, so there is no rush to do anything. Just let the contract expire.
Is anything actually going to happen between now and 1 January?
Probably not much, and that goes league wide. Angels need to figure out their management personnel, but roster wise, I don’t think anyone is going to do major given the upcoming lockout.
Yes. It all starts with Molly, IMO. She wants to stay and if she does then the business side of the franchise is handled.
So, either it will be announced that she is still president or Kroenke will bring in a new one.
Which of those two happens will determine the fate of baseball operations.
I’m hoping we get an entirely new management team.
But then I can’t celebrate like an asshole Jeff!
My first piece of Angel literature to read is “Angels sign Skubl”
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Well, looks like you won’t be reading much Angel literature this offseason.
Believe it or not Skubal HAS expressed a possible interest in being here !
My piece on Zuk is getting good traffic. There’s no reason to make any move right now.
Open secret, everybody who knows Kurt at all loves the guy. He’s a great dude. So expect public remarks to always be glowingly positive about his character or something not quantifiable.
The Angels wrapped up the Arte Moreno era with 100 Losses. Now we can look to brighter days ahead under Kroenke.
Good stuff. And to show what little I know, I thought of Meckler as a better bottom of the lineup guy akin to Aybar ‘08-‘09.
finally found a quality leadoff hitter in Wade Meckler.
But times and the game have changed and likely passed me over. What a year by Meckler btw, dude put up 2.4 WAR in 98 games.
I’m tied up with work trying to pull off a Q3 miracle…
With our season over, I want to express how much of a pleasure it is to get another season in the books with everyone here! Life, not baseball but actual life, can be tough and I look towards community to get me through. I know I am not everyone’s cup of tea haha, and it is nice to always feel welcomed and respected by this community. HH/CTPG has been a major part of my life for a long time now. As I’m reviewing how much time I spend online (it’s a scary amount) and determine what’s necessary to keep and what’s not, I know this place is a non-negotiable.
On the field, this year fucking sucked. Looking ahead I cannot wait to see what Kronk has in store for us.
Catch y’all later this week. Go Cleveland! Go Jo !!!!
Your consistent positivity is much appreciated. 90% of what you post are positive updates about the team, the farm, etc. It is much needed around here in a sea of complaints (that are mostly valid and understandable). Glad we get to keep you around for a little bit of balance haha
Love this crew. It was the craziest season we’ve seen as a group.
Enjoy.
Brewers vs. Guardians is my dream World Series.
I’d prefer them beating one of the bigger dogs (NYY or BOS for their first WS). But I’d watch what you’re puttin down!
ESPN is so funny. Attached is a picture of their top stories. MLB playoffs start in 24 hours and their top 9 headlines are:
NBA (wait til they find out LeBron wipes back to front and not front to back!)
NFL
NFL
NFL
NBA
NBA
CFB
WNBA
CFB
These seem like recent headlines from the last 24 hours. Lots of NFL doesn’t surprise me given that it’s Monday.
It does seem like there would be an MLB playoff standings headline and maybe another about Seattle’s coach over some of the less headline-y pieces like the article on Wittingham.
There wasn’t any “win or go home” games yesterday (could say Phillies, but AZ lost)
Playoff games not until tomorrow
NFL is king
Makes sense
Yeah it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Clicks steer that ship. I can go to their MLB section too, but here and mlb.com are better.
Christ. I have Achane on two fantasy teams.
Well, it didn’t take long for the Angels curse to infect the Rams…..
”Thanks Arte”
in the American League, the team with the worst record gets to host the team with the second worst record, for the right to play the team with the third worst record. Doesn’t seem right.
Well, that happened.
I guess not having a 100-loss season maybe/sorta said something about the Angels being relatively immune from organizational mega-suckage over the decades… consistently clearing some sort of low-bar baseline competitiveness standard… or maybe not.
Mostly I’m just bummed to lose the trivia question. It was a nice piece of trivia to share on a bar stool.
Your Los Angeles Angels…. the Harbor Freight of baseball teams.
How could we stand losing that badge?
The players have the Mendoza line – owners can call 100 losses the Moreno line.
This season was just flat out more interesting with the Yuts playing, Trout having an above average season, Detmers picking like he wanted to be out there, and the biggest move of all was addition by subtraction as in losing Arturo and his posse, losing O’Hoppe (I hope he becomes a star somewhere soon), seeing Meckler play, seeing Urena come out of almost nowhere, Grissom showing up, Neto being a Angel, having a new owner with a winning track record, anything I missed? The downside was the injury factor especially to Schanny, catcher being a black hole, Kurt and his “this does not make any sense at all” lineups (Giving him a slight pass on Bullpen management as it was a very bad pen after all) and Trout sitting out the last game. But hey, there is the improved farm system and the improvement in the team seems very likely next season no matter how many games are played to look forward to.
Injuries only had a minor part with how the season unfolded. The key reason is that they were never a good team to begin with and had another terrible offseason, along with bad in game management.
Every single FA bullpen piece was gone by TDL, and most of them were waived before that. The most expensive FA they signed was Kirby Yates at 5M, who was subpar at best and just retired. Romano, was waived at like the end of April, finished 2nd on the team in saves.
The lineup also had 0 power whatsoever. After Trout and Neto, the next highest player was Grissom with 13. Forget about hitting for average because none of them other than Meckler and Schanuel did that. Combine both of those and you get an anemic offense day in and day out.
The pitching was good in the 2nd half, but it took over 100 games and the firing of the pitching coach for that to happen, and that was under the new regime.
Just goes to show this team was destined to fail from game 1 and how absolutely incompetent the former GM was at his job. I’m tired of people giving him a pass just because of Arte. Arte didn’t tell the GM to spend millions of dollars on Pomeranz, Yates, Romano, and Stephenson. Arte didn’t tell the GM to draft only pitchers and have only 2 guys remaining from that entire draft class (and both suck.)
By addition by subtraction alone, they should be slightly better next year, but have a long way to go.
Yates had .8 war this year so that move wasn’t that bad.
Agreed. People were bagging on Yates all year because he was being incorrectly used in high leverage situations. But overall, he was fine. He got traded at the deadline. That typically doesn’t happen if a player is worthless.
Romano was also an adequate signing at his price point. Again, probably shouldn’t have been counted on to close and that’s on Dirt Suzuki. Under a different coaching staff in Colorado he was serviceable, and that is a tough pitching environment.
What are you guys talking about? He was terrible in high leverage. Blown leads, 2nd on the team for blown saves. 0 holds, which is impressive in a sickly way. Nobody cares that he can have a 1-2-3 inning in the 7th inning when the team is down 8-2, that was when his best work occurred.
Don’t try to rewrite history. When he was dealt for box of peanuts, the move was celebrated here.
All the pitching got better after Maddox was removed. Nobody is claiming he was great, but the move wasn’t a bad signing. His whole career has been solid so his numbers in pitt weren’t flukey.
That’s not true either. His last good year was in 2023. -0.3WAR and 6.59ERA in 24, -1.7(!) WAR and 8.23ERA in 2025.
You wanna seriously argue he was an adequate choice to be the closer at the start of the year? Give me a break.
You’re cherry picking specific years when his career as a whole has been solid like I said. Yates wasn’t the closer to start the year and was only the closer when the angels bp was injured and playing worse
I’m not cherry picking anything, I’m going off his stat page lol. If you don’t count his rookie year, he had 4 good years, followed by 3 terrible years, and then this year. You are trying to argue against statistics with your own personal perception.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/romanjo03.shtml
Why are you linking Romano and not yates? The guy I clearly mentioned
Yeah, my point is he shouldn’t have been used in high leverage situations. That was a poor coaching decision. Those couple of blown saves have tainted his overall performance this season in the eyes of many.
If I remember correctly, he was second in our entire bullpen in FIP at the time he was traded. He went on to PIT and had even better numbers there and finished the season with 0.7 WAR across only 42 innings.
In a tenure full of terrible bullpen signings, Yates is not the one I would use as an example of Perry’s incompetence.
TBF, there were no good options at the time.
Romano
Pomeranz
Yates
Suter
Bachman
Not exactly a great bullpen setup by Minasian.
Who cares what he did in Colorado? He was signed to be the closer and was cut 2 months in. Adequate signings usually last longer than April.
I don’t even care about him in the grand scheme because he was a last minute FA signing that cost no assets, and it’s not my money going to his paycheck, but let’s not do mental gymnastics to justify 2 worthless signings.
You’re getting way too bothered over a reliever putting up .8 war 😂
I don’t care about Romano, I care about false narratives that miraculously appear at season’s end.
Games 1-162: “Romano sucks, Yates sucks, Perry sucks.”
Off-season Day 1: “Ahh they weren’t so bad”
Yep, the entire pen was an arson squad this year.
https://www.mlb.com/news/jordan-romano-drew-pomeranz-angels-contracts
He was signed for $2M and Perry was very clear that he was not being added as a closer. Closer contracts are not $2M.
Did somebody tell that to Suzuki? Because he was closer to start the year.
Suzuki is an idiot. I am not defending anything that man did.
He may have not had better options, and that’s on Perry. But your comment was that he “spent millions on Yates, Romano, etc” and all I am trying to say is that they weren’t bad contracts.
I don’t know how you could call any contract that’s $2M or less a bad signing. Those are true lottery tickets that may not even make the opening day roster. Through that lens, the Romano signing was fine. Not signing better options was a failure though, sure.
If a player is virtually cooked and performs badly then his low cost doesn’t make him an ok signing it makes him “inexpensive” but still bad
Was Romano “virtually cooked” though? Still not seeing that.
He went to Coors Field and put up a 3.28 ERA over his first 26 appearances with Colorado – worst team in baseball and worst ballpark to pitch in. His final meaningless game on the last day of the year he gave up three ERs that elevated his final ERA, but between being released and Game 162 of the season, he was arguably one of the Rockies best relievers.
The bet Minasian was making was not that the Angels could resurrect a “cooked” player – it was that he was far enough removed from his recent injuries that the Angels would get >$2M value from Romano at some point in the season when he was back to full health (a bit like the bet with Grayson Rodriguez).
But they ditched him one month in. It was clear to me in April that he was still recovering his command, and not quite there yet.
But seems pretty clear to me that he still had something in the tank – and probably still does going forward. He pitched very well July-Sept for the Rockies.
