OK, Apologists, let's hear it

[Inside Pitch]

Ya, he's not going to keep this level of performance up, but he's already blown away the value the Angels got out of Greinke in his first 80 major league games.

 

Fact of the matter is that if he becomes the 10-15 HR guy with plus speed everyone said he would be he essentially makes a guy like Callaspo and his team friendly contract a loss as well.

 

Still, I don't fault JD for having made that move.  Segura was the only prospect we gave up IMO.   The mistake was not making a greater effort to retain him, particularly when plan B was to chase a RFer with questionable make up.

[Earnest Borgnine of 9]

It's not a personal attack at all. It's calling you out one what you're trying to do. I've noticed it at least a few times. The last time it happened was a couple days ago. I was going to say something about it then, but I decided to let it go that time. It's very obvious this time because you thought you were still using your "Ernie" ID when you replied to that other poster.     

If that's so, then why didn't I delete it? I'm not OC Angels and maybe he'll come here and prove it to you, but frankly, who cares what you think?

Other posters here do agree with me and it doesn't mean I'm also them. Oregon told someone else here to stop being such as "ass" when he attacked me. Am I also Oregon?

By the way, you haven't posted a single contribution to the thread topic, but go ahead and play hall monitor and think up conspiracies.

[bloodbrother]

Fact of the matter is that if he becomes the 10-15 HR guy with plus speed everyone said he would be he essentially makes a guy like Callaspo and his team friendly contract a loss as well.

 

Still, I don't fault JD for having made that move.  Segura was the only prospect we gave up IMO.   The mistake was not making a greater effort to retain him, particularly when plan B was to chase a RFer with questionable make up.

 

Yep

[xboom28x]

These mods belong in the No Fun League.

[OCAngels]

I asked if the code of conduct only applied to newbs like me because there are people here with significant post counts who get away with it all the time and I was told to "settle down" by a mod some time ago.  Angelsandrams --- you and others get away with that crapola all the time and everything is cool.

[ettin]

Take a deep breath -- I was speaking specifically to his pursuing guys with a track record of putting up strong FIP in particular...  FIP is purely theoretical in its nature and it's entire premise is built upon if everything else being even.   To go completely in one direction was a massive risk, I didn't fault him when he did it, but I pointed out it was a very saber-slanted approach and I was very curious to see how it would play out.   In Blanton's case, it's been horrendous.  Hanson and Vargas haven't been bad, but only Hanson has managed even a league average ERA among the SPs.

 

And you can argue at his having looked at the risks -- but, the fact that there were few fall back options in the system it makes it very clear he ignored much of the risk.  Guys like Barry Enright and Michael Roth have started games.   

 

I would disagree with that statement IP. FIP measures the things that a pitcher CAN control which are home runs, walks, and strikeouts. It is not theoretical at all, it measures real world results for each individual pitcher. The 'even' part of the sentence is a bit misleading as each individual pitcher has a talent level that varies some from other pitchers, such as Felix Hernandez vs. Luke Hochevar, for instance.

[ettin]

This is where I do think he deserves blame.  People keep saying it's not his fault the system is awful -- fine.  But he's not really done much to try to compensate for that situation.  We needed three SPs for the MLB rotation going into this year..  he added three, and Blanton was arguably an overpay.  Who was signed as insurance? No MLB ready arms at AAA and this team signed NOBODY as a fall back option -- instead it lost Brad Mills to the Rangers..  lol.   What we didn't need was a 125 million dollar RFer and while everyone and their brother seems content to pin that on Arte, I still believe a GM has to have the balls to say hey -- my plan is different.  Everyone seems all gung ho that he might put Scioscia in his place but apparently nobody seems to care he caves when Arte walks into the room.  That is worrisome to me.  Stoneman inherited an even uglier farm system and a significantly less talented roster and a meddlesome team VP in Tony Tavares, the big difference is he knew how to stand his ground.

 

About two years ago, I read some articles regarding the fact that MLB teams were facing a shortage of good to above average pitchers over the next 5 years (meaning from approximately 2011-2016). A lot of teams had either locked up their ace pitchers and/or had a good group of cost-controlled prospects. There was a shortage of free agent pitchers projected through the next 5 years. Considering the fact that we traded away most of our prospect arms I think Dipoto was faced with a situation that was difficult to manage in the near term. It seems that they wanted Greinke but weren't prepared to break the bank and went with plan B which was to make our offense so good that it would compensate for a lack of good pitching. Obviously that plan has its holes in hindsight but I'm not sure where Dipoto was supposed to find reasonable AAA starting pitchers that he could trade for without losing more prospects from other areas? We don't have a lot of trade pieces that other teams want to get the proper pitching depth that we desire. We can't really buy good pitching depth at the AAA level with money (i.e. it's not free agency)?

 

IMO, Dipoto should have been significantly more aggressive on the international market before the rules changed, we weren't..  Scott Servais is supposed to be this awesome advance scout and yet there haven't really been any Chone Figgins for Kimera Bartee or David Eckstein waiver wire pick ups.   There have been ZERO discard pile additions along the lines of Lou Pote, Brendan Donnelley, Ben Weber, or Al Levine.   Kevin Slowey was signed by the Marlins for less than a mil.  His career WHIP, H/9 BB/9 HR/9 and K/9 aren't that far removed from what Blanton's numbers in fact, most of those rates are better.  Carlos Villanueva was signed for 5 Mil -- look at his stats last year and what he has done for the Cubs to date.  Kevin Correia is another guy that's doing pretty well who was signed for cheap. 

 

Considering that our international system was damaged (lack of scouting, etc.) upon his arrival I'm not sure how the front office was supposed to go out and field the resources in time to evaluate the plethora of international players before that rule change? Servais is only as good as the scouts on the ground and if we don't have any or even a few running around trying to evaluate players the information that the front office needs to base decisions on isn't there? I suspect, moving forward, you will see better results but I think it is difficult to evaluate the front office on this issue. It is hard to invest millions based on word-of-mouth when you don't have professional eyes evaluating talent.

 

Yes the fam system is ugly, but it's not like there aren't replacement level talents that could have been signed on the cheap.  We just didn't really sign enough of them.  Sorry but when you have as much front line talent as the Angels were thought to have, you don't add more to the top and ignore the depth. 

FWIW, I do believe Dipoto was under pressure to win now, my hope is that ownership has figured out that it's okay to take a step back in order to compete over the long haul.  I think getting rid of Dipoto would be a mistake, but to say he's not the architect of this debacle is IMO, going easy on him.

 

Again, I'm not sure how much depth there was to be had in the first place. You also forget that sometimes players don't want to come to your team for various reasons, whether it is preferences to play on the East Coast, family obligations, etc. It is not all cut and dried as we pay them and they will come.

 

I'm not totally disagreeing with you IP but there are shades of grey to a lot of what you said that we are not privy too. I think Dipoto's design for the pitching staff was a reasonable idea in principle since we decided to go the Hamilton route (and lets not forget that the Hamilton signing was also made to weaken the Rangers.... oops?) and create a "powerful" offense. Both have failed unfortunately.

[Docwaukee]

If we signed Greinke, we wouldn't have traded for Vargas and we probably still sign Blanton and trade for Hanson.  We'd have Morales at DH and Trumbo in RF. 

 

We would not have gotten Anibal Sanchez and Greinke.  For the same reason we didn't get Sanchez and Hamilton. 

 

The blanton signing sucked.  Everything else that was done in terms of SP has been fairly reasonable.  Right now, the rotation consists of Jerome Williams replacing your #1 starter and Barry Enright replacing your #4. 

 

CJ, Vargas, and Hanson have been pretty decent.  Not totally pretty by any stretch but still fine. 

 

The collective ERA of guys replacing Weaver and Hanson is 6.80 in 8 starts spanning 43.2ip. 

[Angel Oracle]

 Can the Guerreros get MLB batters out?   Sign them.

 

 

I still say we need to get some mexicans