Have at it MS "Fan Club"

[moccasin]

Scioscia was good when he had Joe Maddon and Bud Black, but he sucks without them.

I thought that was the consensus here. I agree with it by the way.

[stormngt]

I think you said it best....really good pitching and average offense.

i don't know if 5 years equates to cherry picking stats. bochy's overall won/loss record is under .500, but that's directly attributable to his managing some extremely bad padres teams for many years. he did a lot with a little, and won a world series twice with a really good pitching staff and a pretty avg offense.

[Inside Pitch]

i take umbrage at this comment because i've played and coached baseball and been pretty successful at both. granted, i've only coached little league, but my teams have been respectable and the kids definitely improved. i don't mean to take anything away from the other coaches who were, at the least, equally invaluable to those kids, but i know more than a little something about baseball. just because i happen to disagree about mike's culpability in the on field performance doesn't mean "i don't know much about baseball." 

 

i don't believe that any one man is solely responsible for what happens on the field, but i do believe that mike and his coaches have not had the team prepared to play, and i certainly don't entertain the notion that mlb'ers are professionals and don't need the coaches to get them to prepare. they are employees and almost all employees need leadership, end of story.

 

why don't we have team chemistry? team unity? if we do, and maybe we do, but i don't see it.

 

I think some of the "chemistry" or rather the "identity" this team had created for itself has been lost over the years as the reliance on free agents has grown.  

 

People forget that when Stoneman first took over and the team's primary source of talent was it's farm system, the Angels preached  the "Angels way".  A lot was made of the team (under MS's direction), having created a system up and down the farm system patterned after the old Dodgers system.  It was said that the Angels success was in part due to players knowing what to expect when they got to the big league club having already been asked to do the same things at every level.  The loss of coaches, the erosion of the farm, the reliance on FA's and yes -- the shift in organizational philosophy from Stoneman, to he who has no name, and then to Dipoto, all factored into that.   I found that article the other day talking about the Cardinals values to be more than a little comical if for no other reason because I recall quite vividly that the Cardinals organization was once quoted as saying they liked former Angels because of the professionalism and fundamentals they typically exhibited.    That air of confidence and competence has been lost in recent years and it goes beyond the changes in the W/L totals IMO.

 

When a person looked at the Stoneman era Angels and you saw a team that pitched well, took the extra bases, and played defense --  you look at the current team and there isn't a single thing you can point to as it's identity other than possibly a bloated payroll and sloppiness.  Whether or not an "identity" develops this year remains to be seen, but I do believe the infusion of coaches may have been done in part to try to address the lack of Troy Percivals on the team.  It used to be that when you joined the Angels you were met my Troy Percival, John Lackey, Darin Erstad types -- guys who had come up through the system and paid their dues in house, now it's just a bunch of guys getting paid.  I'm not saying that big budget guys are incapable of leading, it's just that by and large they come in with their own ideas of how things should be done based on their own personal experiences.  Sometimes those guys don't buy into the system, and the erosion starts.

 

I find it interesting that Mike Trout has talked up Kole Calhoun and how he carries himself.  He talked up their time in the minors, the things he saw in him over the years etc etc.  Those are the guys that MS, JD and the coaching staff have to win over and invest in -- those are the guys most likely capable of creating the team's new identity -- Albert Pujols' is all about carrying on as not being Stan the Man, and what he meant to StL.   Josh Hamilton is all about being whatever the hell he decides he is or isn't or whatever personal demon he's given up this week.  Those guys may have been great players but they both strike me as guys who believe their way is the best way and their legacies were made elsewhere.   Mike Trout pointing out that Jeter was all about winning and nothing but winning is probably the biggest insight into his psyche a person could ask for.  He's the guy to mine for a team identity and he needs to be surrounded by similar players,.  

 

The one thing I'd have love to see the team do besides add pitching was bring Percival back in some capacity -- it's rare that a RP carried so much weight in a clubhouse but Troy Percival was far and away one of the best examples of the old Stoneman era Angels.  He was old school, bristled at the idea of failure, and was a fierce competitor.  Nobody on the current team comes close to bringing what he did to the team IMO.  It's been said that the biggest impact MS made on the Angels when he got here was that he changed the team's mindset from let's hope we can win, to expecting to win.   Nobody  exemplified that win or GTFO mindset as well as guys like Erstad and Percival did.  Not saying the current group of guys doesn't like winning, they just don't seem to hate losing as much as those guys did -- and that's an area that took another hit when Torii was alowed to leave via FA.

[eligrba]

Nice response, inside pitch. 

 

I enjoyed reading it. 

 

Do you play xbox with MS?

[Inside Pitch]

Nice response, inside pitch. 

 

I enjoyed reading it. 

 

Do you play xbox with MS?

 

 

Don't be silly.  Mike likes to stick to things he knows -- its Atari 2600 or nothing.

[stormngt]

That list is pretty much a cherry picked stat. 

 

I do wonder if people have as many issues with the bottom 30 as they do the top 30.  I also tend to believe that if MS would have ranked in the bottom 30 many would see the list as much more valid.

 

Mostly I think baseball managers have less of an impact than in any of the big three sports.

 

How is it fair to judge one five year period when comparing one's entire coaching career.

 

I don't know how that list came about.  But I could easily argue that Scioscia's struggles the last four years were due to the fact that the Angels personal sucked as well. 

[stormngt]

No I'm saying the players haven't executed. Go ahead and hate, it's what you do.

I am saying outside of 2012 his personal has sucked!

 

In 2010 we a crappy offense.  And losing Morales compounded that.

2011 Bourjos and Trumbo (rookies) were two of our top four hitters.  You remember those two.  One guy people said couldn't hit major league pitching.  The other could hit HRs but would disappear in the second half.

 

2012 we should have had the pieces to win.  That one I say we under achieved.

 

2013 the pitching staff sucked all around

 

And one common denominator....the bullpen has sucked for five years.

[stormngt]

Scioscia was good when he had Joe Maddon and Bud Black, but he sucks without them.

I thought that was the consensus here. I agree with it by the way.

 

yet, he won the division and made it to ALCS without both of them..........

[The Ghost of Bob Starr]

The list I'd like to see is the daily caloric breakdown for MS.  

 

I bet he competes with Phelps, with 1/10th the caloric burn.

[ukyah]

You do understand the vast difference between little league baseball and major league baseball.  Little kids vs. grown men who are the top 1% of players.

 

no, i don't understand. please enlighten me.

 

is this site just made up of people looking for opportunities to belittle?

 

if you think my post above was in any way stressing the similarities between little league and the major leagues, then why would i care what you have to add? because you're either at a low reading comprehension level or you're intentionally trying to misrepresent what i said. and in either case, i'm not interested in partaking.

[Brent Maguire]

Great response IP. 

 

I totally agree.