Angels trade Jett bandy to Brewers (Source)

[Docwaukee]

3 hours ago, Hubs said:

I'd much rather my starter gave me a complete game, than have to go to a pen in the 6th. Because with very few exceptions, your best pitchers are more likely to be your starters. Now Richards, Shoemaker, and Nolasco averaging 6-7 quality innings per start, is better than letting Scioscia pick and choose relievers for the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th innings. Skaggs I expect to go closer to 6 innings per start, and Chavez around the same. Meyer, Pounders, Campos, Smith, Banuelos, etc. will likely get starts as well. Yet, spending money on Ivan Nova or another mid-tier starter is not going to be as effective as adding a high-end reliever, I'll give you that. 

However, I think we have three guys that would be a part of any bullpen, maybe not in their same roles, but are no doubt quality guys (Bedrosian, Alvarez, Street) and three more solid ones (Bailey, Morin, Guerra).  Having 7 outstanding relievers would be great, but I don't see that happening. 

Also, a pen is very fluid. And I think we should add one guy maybe two.

My pen right now is likely Street, Bedrosian, Alvarez, Bailey, Guerra, Ramirez, Morin. Is it the best pen? No, but they'll likely use at least 10 pitchers in the pen, probably more.

the bolded statement is not even close to true in the current baseball environment.  Maybe 40 years ago.  But a any starter facing a batter for the third or 4th time is less likely to succeed by a mile relative to a decent pen arm.  It's why you have 60 relievers with a sub 3 era yet only 5 starters in all of baseball.  Yet we are treating our bullpen with your mentality.  

We are trying to do what we can to protect the bullpen instead of using it as an asset whereas every other really good team in baseball is doing the opposite.  Shorten games.  Limit exposure to your starters by bringing in someone with a mid 90's fastball and swing and miss slider.  We were ahead of our time when we had percy, krod and shields.  Look at how successful that was.  

If you are expecting that sort of length out of the starters, then I hope you are ok with them making about 20-25 starts and giving way to our ample farm system to provide coverage in august and september.  

I'll give you the best example I can.  

In 2014, we had the best bullpen in baseball the second half of the season.  They threw 262.1ip.  20 innings more than the next closest team.  Our starters threw 368.2 ip in the second half of that year.  Last in the majors.  Averaging ....wait for it.....5.41ip per start.  Starter WAR was 4.7 placing them 18th in the league.  Reliever war was 3.9.  Placing them #1 in baseball.  Our offense had 7.3 WAR during that same time.  12th in baseball.  

The team went 41-27.

[Lou]

My thought on the trade:

i can't believe I just read 8 pages about a Jett Bandy trade. 

[JAHV76]

1 hour ago, Lou said:

My thought on the trade:

i can't believe I just read 8 pages about a Jett Bandy trade. 

It's not like he is Jeff Mathis 

[Mark68]

On 12/13/2016 at 10:36 PM, SigBaby said:

Brewer fans?

They have two, I think.

 

One of them's Uecker.

[eligrba]

2 hours ago, Lou said:

My thought on the trade:

i can't believe I just read 8 pages about a Jett Bandy trade. 

Let me help......

http://www.findmeahobby.com/

[Mark68]

On 12/13/2016 at 10:51 PM, Troll Daddy said:

I wonder who the Brewers starting catcher is going to be ... will Bandy be the next Jonathan Lucroy?

It'll most likely be Andrew Susac, whom they picked up from the Giants last year. Nothing like a catching prospect being in the same organization as some guy named Buster Posey.

[Ohtaniland]

15 hours ago, Dochalo said:

the bolded statement is not even close to true in the current baseball environment.  Maybe 40 years ago.  But a any starter facing a batter for the third or 4th time is less likely to succeed by a mile relative to a decent pen arm.  It's why you have 60 relievers with a sub 3 era yet only 5 starters in all of baseball.  Yet we are treating our bullpen with your mentality.  

We are trying to do what we can to protect the bullpen instead of using it as an asset whereas every other really good team in baseball is doing the opposite.  Shorten games.  Limit exposure to your starters by bringing in someone with a mid 90's fastball and swing and miss slider.  We were ahead of our time when we had percy, krod and shields.  Look at how successful that was.  

If you are expecting that sort of length out of the starters, then I hope you are ok with them making about 20-25 starts and giving way to our ample farm system to provide coverage in august and september.  

I'll give you the best example I can.  

In 2014, we had the best bullpen in baseball the second half of the season.  They threw 262.1ip.  20 innings more than the next closest team.  Our starters threw 368.2 ip in the second half of that year.  Last in the majors.  Averaging ....wait for it.....5.41ip per start.  Starter WAR was 4.7 placing them 18th in the league.  Reliever war was 3.9.  Placing them #1 in baseball.  Our offense had 7.3 WAR during that same time.  12th in baseball.  

The team went 41-27.

Today's pitchers have been pussified. The days Koufax and Ryan are gone forever. The game has changed so much that it's very rare that you see starters go nine innings anymore. What's really surprising is all the TJ surgeries that are happening to pitchers that rarely throw around 100 pitches per game.  Iron Mike Marshall a relief pitcher for the Dodgers once pitched 206 innings of relief in one season and posted a 2.42 ERA. He complained about not getting enough work.

[Stradling]

You couldn't have picked two more opposite pitchers.  One makes your argument while the other is the exact opposite of the point you want to make.  Ryan pitched 26 years until he was 46 years old and was healthy to the end. Koufax had to retire at 30 because he was over worked.  

[mulwin444]

4 hours ago, CALZONE said:

Today's pitchers have been pussified. The days Koufax and Ryan are gone forever. The game has changed so much that it's very rare that you see starters go nine innings anymore. What's really surprising is all the TJ surgeries that are happening to pitchers that rarely throw around 100 pitches per game.  Iron Mike Marshall a relief pitcher for the Dodgers once pitched 206 innings of relief in one season and posted a 2.42 ERA. He complained about not getting enough work.

Koufax's and Marshall's careers were shortened due to arm injuries...pussies

[Ohtaniland]

41 minutes ago, mulwin444 said:

Koufax's and Marshall's careers were shortened due to arm injuries...pussies

They were great pitchers.

[Stradling]

Yes that could have been great longer if they weren't over used. 

[tdawg87]

Maybe Pujols was overused in St. Louis. 

Thankfully Arte learned his lesson on that one. 

[tdawg87]

9 minutes ago, CALZONE said:

They were great pitchers.

Mike Napoli was a terrible catcher.

[Ohtaniland]

42 minutes ago, Stradling said:

Yes that could have been great longer if they weren't over used. 

Koufax pitched more innings than Jered Weaver and had more wins plus a lower career ERA. Koufax had a full 12 year career. The guy that's going to end up with a pussified career is Skaggs. 

It's getting to the point where we just have a bunch of glorified "get em through 5 guys" and no real knockout type Ace that can go the distance with any consistency. 

[Stradling]

52 minutes ago, CALZONE said:

Koufax pitched more innings than Jered Weaver and had more wins plus a lower career ERA. Koufax had a full 12 year career. The guy that's going to end up with a pussified career is Skaggs. 

It's getting to the point where we just have a bunch of glorified "get em through 5 guys" and no real knockout type Ace that can go the distance with any consistency. 

Well when you start comparing pitchers to Koufax and Ryan yea it's tough to find guys that match them.  You literally picked two of the all time greats as a starting point.  The funny part is you picked one guy that was a freak of nature and one guy that was out of the game by 30.  I could easily use the guy you picked to make the counter argument of not abusing pitchers,  the exact position you were crusading against. 

[Hubs]

22 hours ago, Dochalo said:

the bolded statement is not even close to true in the current baseball environment.  Maybe 40 years ago.  But a any starter facing a batter for the third or 4th time is less likely to succeed by a mile relative to a decent pen arm.  It's why you have 60 relievers with a sub 3 era yet only 5 starters in all of baseball.  Yet we are treating our bullpen with your mentality.  

We are trying to do what we can to protect the bullpen instead of using it as an asset whereas every other really good team in baseball is doing the opposite.  Shorten games.  Limit exposure to your starters by bringing in someone with a mid 90's fastball and swing and miss slider.  We were ahead of our time when we had percy, krod and shields.  Look at how successful that was.  

If you are expecting that sort of length out of the starters, then I hope you are ok with them making about 20-25 starts and giving way to our ample farm system to provide coverage in august and september.  

I'll give you the best example I can.  

In 2014, we had the best bullpen in baseball the second half of the season.  They threw 262.1ip.  20 innings more than the next closest team.  Our starters threw 368.2 ip in the second half of that year.  Last in the majors.  Averaging ....wait for it.....5.41ip per start.  Starter WAR was 4.7 placing them 18th in the league.  Reliever war was 3.9.  Placing them #1 in baseball.  Our offense had 7.3 WAR during that same time.  12th in baseball.  

The team went 41-27.

First off, the reason the pen threw so many innings that year was because for the last 6 weeks, after Richards was injured, they threw bullpen games with Cory Rasmus getting some starts and throwing three innings. That's why the number dipped as far as innings per start. We averaged about the same this year, since we threw out so many junk starters due to injuries and we won 74 games.  We also drastically outperformed our pythagorean expectation in the second half of that year, and while we underperformed this year, a large part of that is due to blowouts.

You may have a point regarding changing bullpen usage, but I think you are treating the starters as equals across the board. I want 7+ innings per start from Garret Richards. He is our best pitcher, if he's healthy. Better than everyone else on the staff. He has pitched 6 2/3 ish IP when healthy. Shoemaker is pretty close, to the total number of innings, if he's on. Those two guys are more important than everyone on the team not named Mike Trout. They, along with Nolasco, will likely account for over 40% of our innings pitched. Add in the fourth guy, Skaggs, and you are hoping to push that number to 52-54% of the total.  Add in the 5th and 6th starters and you will be at 67% of the total innings. A great, outstanding, killer awesome reliever, will account for 5% of the innings pitched (70-80 IP) They may be important innings, but that's less than 10% of the overall contribution of the top 4 starters. 

Relievers then pitch a total of 30-35% of a teams innings, split among 12-14 guys. We never go through a season where 7 guys are the pen for the entire year. But even then, the top three guys usually pitch around 60 IP for Mike's teams. That's a little less than half. I have confidence in Street, Bedrosian, and Alvarez to be those three guys. Two more pitch around 50 IP (Bailey, Ramirez), and two more under 50 but more than 35 (Morin, Guerra). The remaining 100 innings go to the bottom of the barrel guys. Bringing in one more super solid 60-70 IP guy is what I think this team needs to do.  That pushes everyone down and drastically helps our bullpen. 

Spending $60-80 Million over 5 seasons on a guy who accounts for less than 5% of your innings is a poor use of resources. Also, even if you push that guy to throwing 100 innings a year, that kind of usage out of the pen typically doesn't treat relievers well. Finding a guy that can do that, well, that's not easy, and then keeping a guy healthy who does that? Not good either. But that's elite closer money.

Let's look at high mid-level money. Spending $6M-8M per season on a guy like that is much more likely to be worth it. That's pretty close to 5th starter money, but they will make 60-70 appearances as opposed to 25-30, so they are more likely to make an impact on more games. But if you can get highly similar production for $500k? And have his insurance also ready to go at AAA for the same salary? I'd take the young guys, because relievers often have up and down seasons. Finding the ones who really are great and consistent, and dependable is pretty hard to do. 

Yet, I do think, as they pitch 30-35% of the overall innings, that the bullpen should be paid about that much of the overall pitching budget, and it is pretty close to that right now.  Richards makes $7M, Shoemaker will make $4M, and Nolasco will make $8 (Minnesota is paying $4M of his $12M), Chavez makes close to $6 and Skaggs is still under team control at around $600k. The other starter candidates like Meyer, Smith, Pounders also will make league minimum or close. That's only 26 or 27M. Which is really, really low. The Red Sox will pay their starters over $80M dollars. Their total staff is well north of $100M.

Our bullpen currently will make about half of what our starters make, meaning our total staff is going to be currently around $40M. Which will be 20-25% of their estimated payroll. That for a team who has no farm system and no young guys, is pretty impressive, or pretty stupid depending on how you look at it.

We should have a dominant offense for $120-160M but we don't. Shows you how much that the Hamilton contract hurts. (And less so, the Pujols contract). 

 

[Guest]

On 12/14/2016 at 1:30 AM, ten ocho recon scout said:

Except that sosh helped raise bandy...

sarcasm, my dude.

[Billy_Ball]

[Jobu]

Thrilling! 

[Mark68]

16 hours ago, tdawg87 said:

Mike Napoli was a terrible catcher.

The sky is blue.

[Angel Oracle]

The irony, Maldonado throwing out Espinosa there.

[Jig Stew]

1 hour ago, Angel Oracle said:

The irony, Maldonado throwing out Espinosa there.

Like Black on Black Crimes

 

Angel Lives Matter

[WeatherWonk]

11 hours ago, Mark68 said:

The sky is blue.

 

On 12/15/2016 at 3:56 PM, tdawg87 said:

Mike Napoli was a terrible catcher.

Well, that's about all we've had since, who, Bengie? Why not finally have one who could at least hit? Napoli is the only catcher to hit over .252 since Bengie. He hit .272 in 2009 which, maybe not coincidentally, was the last time we won a playoff game. We've only been in the playoffs once, since. Iannetta hit .252 ONE YEAR. Which happened to be the other year we went to the playoffs. Aside from that, it's been a lot of years with catchers hitting in the low .200s. 

But consider this. Napoli was already playing 1st base, instead of catching, in 2010, where he hit 24 doubles and 26 HRs. If we had accepted him being our first baseman, then we might have avoided the albatross contracts of Wells and Albert. If his career proceeded as it has, he'd probably still be our first baseman.

It's all water under the bridge, of course. But one could field a pretty good team from the current players, who are still playing, that we let go. 

My God, Napoli is probably going to hit at least 300 HRs in his career. He's at 238 in the regular season and another 8 in the post season. I never would have guessed..........and neither did the Angels, apparently.

If the Orioles dont resign Alvarez or Trumbo, they should sign Naps as a DH. He would tear Camden Yard apart. Probably hit 40 HRs. Way cheaper than Trumbo.

[ELEVEN]

^^^ In before 50 pages

[Troll Daddy]