Danny Espinosa at Moving Day

[Stradling]

I actually think the offense will be better than league average. Last year it was at league average and we've replaced Rafael Ortega/Daniel Nava/Craig Gentry with Maybin, Revere and Valbuena. 

[Hubs]

On January 31, 2017 at 1:56 PM, TroutBaseball said:

I could be wrong but didn't Espinosa have some blow up with the Nationals about a fan event which eventually led to him being traded?  Interesting that he'll be the only active player on Moving Day this Friday. Apparently the Angels met his demands for a fresh set of sharpies and a can of Arizona Iced Tea.

Espinosa lost his starting job, I think the day before, that's why he didn't show up to the Nationals fan event. 

They traded for Eaton for CF, which moved Trea Turner to SS, and Espinosa to the bench. They have Daniel Murphy at 2B. I wouldn't have been happy either, but he could've been better about it. Yet, he gets to play at home now, so I guess it worked out for him.

[AngelsFanSince86]

18 hours ago, WeatherWonk said:

Oh, there are lineups with holes, for sure. Those are usually on losing teams.

Unless those teams have good pitching to overcome it. I am not optimistic the Angels qualify there.

Not true.  Lets take the winners of the AL West for example, the Rangers.  They got a collective OPS of .699 from 1B and .701 from their DH. Two positions that should be some of the best hitters were their worst.  And until they traded for Lucroy, they had a gaping hole in their lineup with their catcher.

Espinosa has a career .690 OPS and Maybin is about the same.  Last year the Angels got a collective OPS of .620 from 2B and .584 from LF.  If you plug those two guys in, the offense gets significantly better.  

Almost every team has a hole or two in their lineup.  The ones that don't often have mediocre at best pitching.  Heck, the Orioles were hardly better than the Angels as far as pitching goes if you go by ERA and they scored only 30 more runs than the Angels despite really not having any holes in their lineup.  That's one extra run every 5 or 6 games.

Angels pitching was below average in a year where they had an insane amount of injuries.  They should be at least average this year.  Their offense was average with 3 huge holes in it.  Now, if they don't sign Weiters, they have one large hole with Maldonado and one minor hole in their lineup.  However, overall they will have greatly improved to an above average offense. If they sign Weiters I think they will have one of the better offenses in the league this year.    Depending on the moves they make the rest of the offseason to add depth they could end up with a slightly above average pitching staff.  

 

Like I said, even contenders have holes.  No matter which way you swing it things have to go right to make it to the playoffs and then succeed in the playoffs.  Last year, even if things went right the Angels wouldn't have made the playoffs.  There are many teams that would not make the playoffs if things went right.  If things go right for the Angels, they will contend.  Espinosa is a big part of that.

 

[Blarg]

The offense was no where's near average. They were 10th in runs scored and 12th in OPS.  

[Stradling]

I think the offense had an OPS+ of 101, so average. 

[Billy_Ball]

[AngelsFanSince86]

18 hours ago, Blarg said:

The offense was no where's near average. They were 10th in runs scored and 12th in OPS.  

 

17th in MLB in runs scored.  10th out of 15 in the AL, but only 7 runs behind the number 8 Astros.  AL average last year was 731 RS, MLB average was 725.  Angels scored 717.  Barely below average without factoring in the pitchers park they play in.  And as already stated, had an OPS+ of 101.  This accounts for the park and states they were average.  And that was with 3 grand canyon sized holes.  Two of those holes have been filled.

[Blarg]

They had Trout. Without him the team OPS+ plummets.  One guy created a falsely inflated number. 10th out of 15 in runs scored means you are the D students of offense. Saying you were just percentage points behind the C- students isn't a good argument. 

[Angel Oracle]

True, but the improvements to LF and 2B still fill in two huge gaping holes from the past 2 seasons.

But as mentioned, it will come down to how many pitchers surface doing at least a decent job.

[ettin]

11 hours ago, Stradling said:

I think the offense had an OPS+ of 101, so average. 

Not to the League which had an OPS+ of 97, so they were well above average compared to the League.

[Blarg]

No,  they weren't. They had Trout,  that is a false flag for total offense,  one guy blowing away the league on the way to MVP.  

10th of 15 in runs scored is really what their offense was. It's Stat denial to say it was all cool because the irrelevant number out weighed the real results 

[Stradling]

The Cubs offense sucked because Bryant and Rizzo falsely made them look good and hid just how bad they were  

 

[Stradling]

They had 7 players with OPS+ over 100.  Of their regular starters Cron, Escobar, Trout, Calhoun, Albert, Marte had better than 100.  Of our regular starters Perez, Simmons, And LF didn't. 

[Blarg]

Never mistake activity for achievement.

[tdawg87]

This argument needs an Obama reference.

 

[ettin]

2 hours ago, Blarg said:

No,  they weren't. They had Trout,  that is a false flag for total offense,  one guy blowing away the league on the way to MVP.  

10th of 15 in runs scored is really what their offense was. It's Stat denial to say it was all cool because the irrelevant number out weighed the real results 

Then take out Miguel Cabrera from the Tigers, Carlos Correa from the Astros, Buster Posey from the Giants, Wil Myers from the Padres, etc, etc, etc.... You don't get to arbitrarily remove players from results, come on Blarg.

[Season Over]

Go Monarchs, fam 

[Angel Oracle]

53 minutes ago, Season Over said:

Go Monarchs, fam 

Go Beach!

[Tank]

On 2/4/2017 at 1:48 PM, tdawg87 said:

This argument needs an Obama reference.

he hired the worst SoS of all time.

how'd i do?

[Blarg]

On 2/4/2017 at 2:30 PM, ettin said:

Then take out Miguel Cabrera from the Tigers, Carlos Correa from the Astros, Buster Posey from the Giants, Wil Myers from the Padres, etc, etc, etc.... You don't get to arbitrarily remove players from results, come on Blarg.

Somehow you just are not getting the point. They didn't score enough runs to be an average offense. The numbers you are clinging to didn't net a positive result. It doesn't matter if you add or subtract anyone,  they as a team didn't score enough runs to be any higher than the bottom third of the AL. That's not good. 

[AngelsFanSince86]

7 hours ago, Blarg said:

Somehow you just are not getting the point. They didn't score enough runs to be an average offense. The numbers you are clinging to didn't net a positive result. It doesn't matter if you add or subtract anyone,  they as a team didn't score enough runs to be any higher than the bottom third of the AL. That's not good. 

Your analogy you used previously is not a very good one.  You are the one missing the point.  The Angels play in a pitchers park.  Thus, they play in an environment not as conducive to scoring runs.  Yet, they were just hardly below average in runs scored.  You would rather hold onto that arbitrary 10th out of 15 in the AL.  White Sox were 11th, only one ranking below the Angels.  Yet, they were 31 runs behind the Angels and 45 runs scored below the AL average.  That is well below average.  The Angels were 14 runs below the average and only 7 runs behind the #8 ranking Astros who by most accounts have a solid offense.  And they play in a hitters park.  The Angels were only 14 runs behind average and that average is largely skewed because of one single team that scored more than 100 runs more than the next team in the AL.  If you put Boston a little closer to the rest of the pack the Angels are just a few runs shy of the average while playing most of their games in pitchers parks.  That is the whole point of a stat like OPS+.  

Do you realize that the Rockies scored the second most runs in all of baseball, but have an OPS+ of 97?  Meaning despite scoring more runs than every team besides the Red Sox, they were actually a below average offense.  How is that possible, you say?  Have you ever watched a Rockies game at Coors field?  Every single game is like 9-13 or 12-10.  Even a bad offense scores a lot of runs in Coors park.  The point is that where you play effects how many runs you will score over the course of the year.  So despite the fact the Angels were slightly below average in terms of runs scored, they were actually a bit above average in terms of actual hitting when you factor other variables out of the equation.

But the real point is that we are really splitting hairs here.  The Angels were about average. A little above or below doesn't make the difference for a team.  What does make a difference was that they were around average last year with several gaping holes.  Those holes have been filled with actual MLB caliber players.  

The Angels problem was largely their pitching, which suffered from an insane amount of injuries.  They should have an above average offense this year and should be at least average from a pitching standpoint.  That is usually a recipe for success.

[disarcina]

174 K's for a guy who plays 2B?

Ouch -- this isn't sounding good.

[ettin]

11 hours ago, Blarg said:

Somehow you just are not getting the point. They didn't score enough runs to be an average offense. The numbers you are clinging to didn't net a positive result. It doesn't matter if you add or subtract anyone,  they as a team didn't score enough runs to be any higher than the bottom third of the AL. That's not good. 

Respectfully Blarg you stated in your original post up above that the Angels were 10th in runs scored and 12th in OPS. There are 30 teams in MLB. By that simple fact alone the Angels are an above average offensive team (15th being the middle ground).

Moving beyond that the Angels posted an OPS+ of 101 which is 4% higher than the League average OPS+ of 97 so they were above average there too when you contextualize for park factors.

You then tried to state that if you pull Trout's numbers out of their offensive totals they would be average or even below average, which may be true but if you are going to start taking out every team's top offensive player you need to do it for the rest of the teams in the League and then recalculate it all which is why I said you have to take Miggy from the Tigers, Correa from the Astros, etc. You can't just arbitrarily remove player performance from a team's totals unless you are doing it for all teams.

Maybe I am missing your point but you definitely haven't made a compelling argument that is getting that point across.

[Angel Oracle]

Blarg was referring to AL only.

Even then though, just another 8 runs total would have put them 8th in AL runs scored (middle of the pack), and just another .013 OPS would have also put them 8th in AL OPS.

They were pretty much middle of the pack, despite substandard production from LF, 2B, and C.