Remember when we used to wonder why on Earth anybody would want to be the GM under Arte? Well now that dynamic has full shifted to Houston, where their top GM candidate said “no thanks” and they hired Angels retread Brad Ausmus as their manager. All because owner Jim Crane thinks he and Jeff Bagwell know better than anybody.
Yeah, it felt great to write a piece on what the signings of Flores and Ausmus mean to the Angels this off season and realize the Astros have taken the Angels place. It is almost like Arte handed a baton to Crane. Hopefully the Astros enjoy the same success we did for the last decade.
I do think Randy Flores is a great draft and development guy and if the Astros give him autonomy the Angels could regret not being able to sign him.
But there is so much front office talent out there that outside of Flores, the Angels will get their pick of anybody they want, including Matt Kleine who turned down Houston. Brewers, Rays, Guardians, even the Dodgers front offices can be poached. And the team is looking far and wide for talent.
Yes, the vote on the sale leaves the Angels in limbo to a degree, but not as much as people are making out. The Angels are doing things out in Vegas that don’t involve gambling or call girls.
And we have begun our annual off season series where we pretend to do things. I started it off by tearing the team down to the studs then backfilling using Kroenke’s money. I built a wicked farm system and improved the big league club but I’m not a miracle worker.
I do think the Angels could see an outsized improvement in wins this off season. Consider this, the Angels lost 100 games but only had a run differential of -97. That means dropping a couple of strikeouts here or getting a better 7th inning reliever there and plenty of L’s turn into W’s.
Ahh, hopium.
But trading Reid Detmers for a boatload of minor league talent still makes sense and should be done.
The delayed sale of the team is going to cost them the opportunity to sign the posted NPB and KBO players unless Arte wants to take a risk and OK the deals. That’s kind of OK because I only want one of the posted players, but that one player would be perfect here. I definitely want to avoid another.
We’ve been talking about solving center field a bit on here lately. The Red Sox are openly shopping him hard at the GM meetings this week, hoping to avoid non-tendering him next week. The Angels should wait until they non tender him then sign him.
Getting some talk is the catcher situation. Adding Mo Baller last year was big, but so is he and the Angels really need to add a defensive backstop to help show Mo the ropes.
But in looking at the entire organization, catcher is actually one of the franchise’s strengths from top to bottom.
Of course, the Angels and baseball lost an all time great defensive catcher in Bob Boone this week. I had the pleasure of meeting Bob years ago and he could not have been nicer or more down to earth.
Bo Jackson was far from the only notable name to reach out. Tributes poured in from around baseball for the legendary backstop.
Seems like we are losing that entire era of baseball players right now and it sucks. The guys who played in the 70s and 80s were the last ones to be pretty much normal people. They weren’t yet making gazillions of dollars and they lived more similarly to us normal folks. They were approachable because they were a lot more like us.
In more positive news, longtime friend of the site Victor Rojas is back to doing what he loves after battling prostate cancer this fall. Still not completely out of the woods, but he’s doing well.
So happy for Victor and his family. Many of us have met Victor over the years and he’s as genuine of a guy as you’ll get.
Cancer sucks and has hit my family hard this year. I’ve spent the last couple of months visiting my cousin at City of Hope’s campus in Duarte and if you want to see some incredible people go there and see the staff. Just absolutely incredible people who care about their fellow man more than seems possible. My cousin lost his battle today (Thursday) which hurts horribly. But I will always be thankful for and amazed at the people who treated him during his two stints there.
Also, a huge thanks to you veterans on the site. Wednesday was Veteran’s Day and I hope you all had a great one..
So, link what I missed and enjoy your weekend. I have a Friendsgiving to attend tomorrow and there is an interesting fight card on TBS or TNT to go along with plenty of college football. Normally I’d attend the fights, Carson is by far my favorite fight venue, but I’m being a good friend and husband. Besides, I’m sparring this afternoon (shhhh, don’t tell my wife).
