Mike Trout is officially on career milestones watch. Kenley Jansen is doing fair to middlin’ in this poll about the best rental reliever available.
The Angels got swept by the Mets this week.
The Rockies just placed German Marquez on the injured list with right biceps tendinitis. Astros third baseman Isaac Paredes has a hamstring injury that will probably keep him sidelined for quite a while. The Rangers just reinstated right-hander Jon Gray from the 60 day injured list.
The Cardinals designated right-hander Erick Fedde for assignment. The Tigers designated outfielder Brewer Hicklen for assignment. The Athletics designated infielder Logan Davidson for assignment. The Royals acquired right-hander Joey Krehbiel from the Rays for cash.
Fangraphs list of the 31 through 40 rank of trade value players contains no Angels. In a recap section it does classify Zach Neto as an industry darling.
Here are the FAQs for Sunday’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony. This article ranks the Hall of Fame classes.
The Athletes Unlimited Softball League wrapped up their regular season yesterday and their award recipients have been named.
Take me out to the ballgame. (RIP Ozzy)
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
Trout batting second and shanny third in the order
Quijada is back, Stephenson to the 60 day IL.
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/07/angels-select-jose-quijada.html
That Stephenson contract is aging like milk on a Las Vegas summer day.
Arte should invest in some sort of hospice/club where Stephenson and Rendon can hang around sipping umbrella drinks with straw hats and Hawaiian shirts.
Rendon and Stephenson are combining to make $49 million this season. Just imagine being able to spend that money to supplement this young core.
Clearly Stephenson enjoys surgery more than playing baseball too. What a dick.
The angels may want to be sellers and teams know that. they will be offered prospects that aren’t worth it in return and very few deals will be made.
RIP Huck, great entertainer for 40 years.
You must mean Hulk Hogan rather than Chuck Mangione, who entertained for over 50 years. Everybody is dying this week.
Also George Kooymans, guitarist/singer for Golden Earring, just died of ALS at 77. Rough week.
Tommy McLain
Are you referring to the racist wrestler?
Yes. Hard R Hogan died at 71. Considering all the roids and blow his heart had to be about 182.
He did grant over 200 Make A Wish Foundation wishes, though, so like all humans he was both bad and good in some ways.
200 million outweighs some words.
Lots of minorities liked him so he couldn’t of been that big of a racist
I put this on the other post by Jeff, but here….
Just in case anyone wants to know the total value of the guys we’ve said we’d be willing to trade…. this gets really sad really fast without Ward and without a bunch of hemming and hawing about the secret rainbow value that Jansen or Anderson has. Not on this list cause the site has a limit:
Newman’s value is -1.1
Hendricks value is + 2.1
6-for-1 package for Skenes? Get er done Perry.
I think there’s a legitimate case that Jansen has more value than the sim projects.
In 39 appearances, he has given up 1+ ER only 6 times. He has pitched a clean inning 85% of the time. By comparison, Hader is at 79% (34/43) and Clase is at 80% (37/46)
He is 17/18 in save opportunities and the only blown save was due to an un-earned run coming across.
Anderson on the other hand, probably no trade value.
Anderson is a perfectly viable option for a team that scores runs and needs a starter while they wait for an injured pitcher to return or to replace a bad 5th starter. He’s a league average pitcher which is better than people who are worse and he doesn’t cost a lot.
Both Jansen and Anderson have more value than the sim projects. The sim really values years of control and I get that, but teams hoping for October glory will overpay a bit for a title run.
Yep. But that “a bit” isn’t gonna be the “viable #4 starter” or “MLB ready 3B prospect” or what ever the hell some people think they will get for 2025 Jansen.
That “a bit” is a guy in AA with a killer fastball who isn’t working out as a starter and probably needs to move to the bullpen to make the show.
Like I said. We can squeeze on the “I think this guy may be more valuable” poop all we want. But if it is true, and we get with an FO that believes it, he’s not getting a huge return.
Brutal.
https://x.com/MLBONFOX/status/1948115552234250667
happy this has made it to the national discussion
Erich Bacchus is the biggest chump in sports today
Eric bacchus needs to be fired
Keep in mind that Angel Hernandez was in the league for 33 years…..
I know and that’s a disgrace. Bad umpires are bad for the sport period.
For every bad call, a good one comes our way
Where do you find the ump score
Umpscorecards.com does a good job, at least appears so to me.
The league should punish these clown umps
As for trading aways Jose Soriano & Kikuchi, I fail to see the wisdom. Particularly Soriano. Not only do we need pitchers for next season & beyond, we need young pitchers with upside. Soriano checks all of these boxes.
Kikuchi makes a bit more sense since he’s holder and he might fetch a decent return but, even then, he’s a really good starter and there is no one in the farm that is ready to fill those shoes.
Detmers? Maaaybe.
Trading Kikuchi and Soriano has not been mentioned before, has it? Detmers would depend on the return I believe. With one more year on Rendone to go, then 2026 off season will possibly be good for the team.
Kenny Rosenthal brought those two up in his column yesterday.
He gets paid to do that.
As always, it all depends on the return. I highly, highly doubt the return for either would justify jettisoning them.
Now had Dana, Klassen, or any other AAA guy been pushing to replace them the calculus is different.
I know. I know. “DURR TRAY SIMPLATER NAH GOO REAL NO GUTZ BLAH HERR!” and stuff. accept that most trades that happen actually match up pretty good with the Sim.
That being the case. Koochi has a -2.3 trade value. Make of that what you will, but since the Sim uses a lot of the same modeling that POBOs we drool for use we should probably be aware that this is how FOs think and that guys who are getting paid (Kooch) and guys who are close to getting paid (Ward) bleed off a lot of value unless they are Juan Soto.
Another example. Adolis Garcia is a “dangle” of the Rangers. He’s close to contract time. He has 0.7 value. He is basically the same value as Ward as far as WAR.
So there is a cost to just holding onto a player. Some team that really wants Garcia will likely cough up more value than that, but it’s not gonna be a serious prospect.
The same is true of a guy like Detmers or Soriano now.
It’s bleak AF. But if we are gonna “stand pat” for a couple years we may as well trade them while they are high value and get several position player prospects and a couple AA pitchers. They will just bleed value, even if they are good, if we hold onto them through arb.
Not saying we should do this. But there is an argument for it. The team as a whole is still VERY FAR from good. You make up that ground by picking up a lot of 50 grade prospects. This is why prospects with a 50 grade or higher are always valued at LEAST over 10 and usually higher while can’t miss guys are in the 40s and 50s.
But as soon as you get into those 45 grades you can get a lot of guys around a 4 or 5 value. Because 2/3 of them will amount to nothing.
You get 50 grade guys by trading Soriano while he’s in his best season with years of control left. Like if he puts it all together next year.
While I think the Angels should trade players whose contract is ending or nearing an end, it’s no panacea.
I might be missing some trades but if you go back to the trade deadlines where the Angels sold, we traded Maldonado (2018), Heaney (2021), Estevez (2024), and Garcia (2024).
In return we received P Patrick Sandoval, P Janson Junk, and Elvis Peguero, RHP George Klassen and LHP Samuel Aldegheri.SS Matthew Lugo, 1B Niko Kavadas, RHP Ryan Zeferjahn and RHP Yeferson Vargas.
Out of all of that, Sandoval gave us some decent starts but is now gone, Zeferjan might be a serviceable reliever and it is unclear whether Klassen or Aldegheri will contribute as their minor numbers are not good this year. Lugo might be a utility guy but that is unclear. Vargas’s numbers in the minors are not that great.
So while the Angels should sell, there is no guarantee that the players we get in return will really contribute even to our depth. Who knows what we would have gotten for Ohtani in 2022 or at least 2023, we should have traded him but even that would have been no guarantee.
The problem is that if they don’t sell, they are guaranteed to not get any better and very possibly worse. And, most of the players they would be selling will be gone after this year and need to be replaced anyway. There are a couple of players like Ward who are still under contract through next year and then they’ll be gone. We talked about this before the season. What’s the likelihood the Angels are good this year or next? The team needs to be looking towards 2027 as the earliest they have a chance to compete. Without significant changes, It is highly likely that the team does not do as well next year as they did this year because they won’t be as lucky and there will be some regression. Turk did an excellent job of describing their current situation yesterday and how they don’t have help coming from the minor leagues anytime soon. I said before the season that we’re basically treading water until 2027 when we have some money to spend but it won’t be enough to address all our needs. We have a long way to go.
Turk has helped me understand the lack of depth in the organization. We send our fifth starter down and then have two bullpen games because we don’t have a 5th starter ready to go in the minors. So I agree with you but I was just saying that it is not a guarantee that selling will build the org depth that we need.
You are correct
We traded meh players and got back meh prospects. Ohtani would’ve netted blue chippers.
That said even meh prospects are better than nothing and a few will work out.
I agree with this.
Even if we are just talking about finding an OK LF, 3B and 5th starter along with some pen arms, we will likely need to churn through about 40 meh prospects to get that. So the “we don’t know what we’ll get” argument for not trading is true, in a sense, accept we need to look at it as “we are amassing a pile of 50 guys in order to produce 4 long term roster pieces.” That’s how trading players of the caliber of Jansen and Moncada works.
No guarantees to be sure but, trading away players that don’t figure into the future on expiring contracts for a few lottery tickets seems logical regardless.
Beyond that, IF (I’m saying IF) Ward is moved, I’d prefer a league average starter with a few years of team control. Ditto for Tyler Anderson & Kenley Jansen if they can find takers.
A combination of some league average players & minor league lottery tickets to go with our current core would be my ideal scenario.
And I think this makes sense.
We’d have to luck out to get that.
Jury is still out on some of these guys especially Klassen and Aldegheri. If either develops into a reliable piece of the puzzle, that trade will go down as a great one.
I agree, they just have seemed to regress this year in the minors.
Yes. We won’t really get anywhere only trading the crap we don’t want. I can also pretty much guarantee that, if you like where your team is right now, just don’t trade any of the players you have that have actual value. They will stay here and entertain you for a few years while the team finishes in basically the same place every season. Even a good farm will basically only turn out good players fast enough to replace guys as they leave via FA. Good times.
Just got swept, several games below .500, well behind in the wild card race, and fans will come to the games for Trout milestone watch.
Hopefully, that’s enough to convince Perry and Arte this is a sell season.
I will be walking into the Baseball Hall of Fame with my family within the hour. I have already got my eye on some pretty nice items from some local souvenir/collectibles shops. There are more autographed items and baseball cards here than at most collectibles shows.
Awesome to hear about the trip.
(Jealous)
I hope you report to the authorities while there that the “T” cap on Nolan Ryan is a historical farce.
It’s still true, Rex. You can take the boy out of Texas, but you can’t take the Texas out of the boy.
Enjoy your Hall of Fame trip, send your souvenirs and collectable home by UPS as it is a good way not to have to worry about taken them home. Enjoy your family time there.
There was only one Ozzy.
If there is only one Kenley Jansen we should take advantage of that.
Sharon got every last dime out of Ozzy. Had she known, she would have sold pay-per-view live stream for his passing.
This is true.
$200 mil to charities.
Let’s change Kenley’s walk in song to, Crazy Train