Unbelievably, this is the last Weekend Links of 2025. The years are flying by just like my parents said they would. Turns out, they knew a lot more than teenage me imagined. So let’s look forward to 2026 and take a little stroll down memory lane.
On a personal note, I’ve been offered the position of running Sports Illustrated’s OnSI page dedicated to the Angels starting on New Year’s Day. To say writing for SI and getting a check for covering the Angels is a dream come true would be an understatement. And a huge thanks to the crew here and at HH for giving me my start and being so supportive throughout the years.
In no way does this mean I’m abandoning CtPG. This is my Angels family. You’ll still see me in comments, dropping occasional content, and linking all of my content from SI here. Using that name will get me interviews, press credentials, and access I can’t get on my own and I want to enjoy all of that with you. They don’t do comments, gamethreads, or post games and my contract is non exclusive. So, stay tuned and we’ll figure out how this thing plays out.
But this column isn’t about me. It is about the Angels who pretty much took a Christmas break along with the rest of the league.
Last Friday the team reached an undisclosed settlement with the family of Tyler Skaggs. That pretty much put a lid on 2025 and allowed the team to look forward.
One name consistently mentioned around here is Kazuma Okamoto who would finally solve the club’s third base nightmare. However, many teams are in the mix.
Yes, that’s a Pittsburgh Pirates site pushing to sign the big bat. The Pirates are having a fun offseason and landed two legitimate bats this week. First they traded for Brandon Lowe. Then they landed Ryan O’Hearn for 2 years at a cost of $29 million.
It was a good week for the underdogs as the Chicago White Sox surprisingly added another Japanese slugger, Munetaka Murakami for 2 years and $34 million. Murakami wasted no time before showing some class.
And like the Pirates, the White Sox double dipped on adding talent. They also signed former Angels first rounder Sean Newcomb for a year. Nuke was really solid out of the bullpen for the A’s and Red Sox last season. Much like Detmers, Nuke has reinvented himself as an aggressive reliever and the results are promising. Honestly, I would have liked him back.
Baseball news links are about like department store shelves right now. There’s just not a lot of inventory.
Spring Training is thankfully pretty close. Check out the full schedule starting in February. Intern Landon has already scheduled gamethreads for every Angels Cactus League game. My dad and I just finalized our plans for our annual trip. ‘Tis the season.
I know a lot of folks make New Year’s resolutions. I don’t. I make plans. But if you resolve to get outside, spend more time with family and friends, and just enjoy life a little bit more I can’t recommend a Spring Training trip highly enough. The only problem with going to Spring Training is that once you start you’ll want to come back every year.
So as we wrap up this holiday week. Thanks to everybody for making this a great community in 2025. We kept a closer eye on college ball than normal. Our draft threads were incredible because of it. We had a great site meetup towards the end of the year and will definitely do more in 2026. Can’t say we saw great baseball, but we had our moments like going 6-0 against the Dodgers and sweeping the Roid Sox.
Please enjoy your weekend and link what I missed. I’ll wish you a Happy New Year now and again in comments next week.
