Should the Angels be better or...

[Torridd]

...does the roster equal the record? I didn't envision this year like this. 

[Blarg]

No, they should have lost at least 15 more games with the players as they have performed individually. 

[Angel Oracle]

Eppler's poor record with bringing in stop gap fixes, plus the injuries, doomed this team.

Bright side is the future with a much stronger farm.   However, Billy needs to improve at finding stop gaps, if that is to continue to be a part of his MO.

[stormngt]

3 minutes ago, Torridd said:

...does the roster equal the record? I didn't envision this year like this. 

Injuries

[zenmaster]

We should have been competing for the 2nd wildcard slot and we had all our injuries. Based on the number of injuries I think are record is impressive overall. We should be 15 games under .500 and in last place.

[Tank]

3 minutes ago, stormngt said:

Injuries

Speaking of, when is Cozart due back? It's been so long I do t even remember why he's out.

[Torridd]

2 minutes ago, stormngt said:

Injuries

I thought about that, but that mostly affected our pitching and I thought the replacements did a pretty good job. I think our offense was hurt a bit with Ohtani's injury, but not enough to say it made a big difference in our record. Simmons wasn't gone that long. It's almost like our season was divided into different problems: the bullpen, followed by the offense.

[Docwaukee]

we needed a lot to go right for us to have a shot.  not only has very little gone right, a shit ton has gone very wrong 

I think we are what our record says we are.  

[Jeff Fletcher]

For what it’s worth, in spring training I was telling anyone who asked that I thought the Angels were an 84- to 87-win team. 

Now I’m going to guess they end up winning 79 to 83.

[UndertheHalo]

14 minutes ago, Tank said:

Speaking of, when is Cozart due back? It's been so long I do t even remember why he's out.

Out for the season. 

[UndertheHalo]

1 hour ago, zenmaster said:

We should have been competing for the 2nd wildcard slot and we had all our injuries. Based on the number of injuries I think are record is impressive overall. We should be 15 games under .500 and in last place.

We’d be better off 15 games under .500

nothing is worse then being mediocre.  Which, the Angels very much are.  Seriously, they should tank.  It’s the smart thing to do in situations like this.  There’s absolutely no point in trying to get the best record you can when you’re out of it. 

Edited July 24, 2018 by UndertheHalo

[Docwaukee]

what we needed to be a 90+ win team

- Richards, Heaney, Skaggs, Ohtani, Shoe, Trop, JC Ramirez for a whole season.  2 of 7 so far.  5 of 7 are either out or have hardly pitched.

- no major pen injuries and step up performances from Key, Cam, Johnson and a few others with a couple of surprise performances.  3 of 9 with Parker, Anderson and Alvarez being solid.  

- Valbuena to be what he was last year.  nope

- Cozart to be somewhere between last year and his career.  nope and now he's out

- Kole to be Kole.  nope

-Albert to be the 2016 version.  nope

-Trout to be Trout.  yep

- Kinsler to better than last year.  If you include his defense then yep.  

- Simmons to be Simmons. yep 

-Maldo to hit better with the same defense but also get more breaks from backups.  one no, and one yes.  

- Upton to be Upton.  yep but his performance with RISP has hurt the team very badly.  

- Bench providing a boost.  nope 

- positive contributions from some of the young call ups.  I'll give this a yep considering Anderson and Fletcher.  

About 80% of that needed to happen.  

I would say that we got about 30% of it but the other 70% has not only been worse than needed, but way way worse.   

[Docwaukee]

7 minutes ago, UndertheHalo said:

We’d be better off 15 games under .500

nothing is worse then being mediocre.  Which, the Angels very much are.  Seriously, they should tank.  It’s the smart thing to do in situations like this.  There’s absolutely no point in trying to get the best record your can when you’re out of it. 

I would rather bring up a bunch of young guys and have them perform well where we go on a run because of it and end up 10 games over.  

If they come up and struggle which leads to tanking for the rest of the year then at least they've gotten valuable experience and we have a better idea of who's who and what they do.  

[mulwin444]

Offense has been crap  and the starters have rarely been able to get past the 6th inning which means a very average, but not bad, relief group is put in a lot of high leverage situations (1 or 2 run leads) early in the game and giving up the lead.  Like last night, Robles got the blown save as soon as he could not protect a 1-run lead with 2 runners on and no outs.    

Despite all the press about the Angels pitching injuries, they have a top 5 pitching staff in the AL and top 10 in the MLB (in ERA, Quality Starts) but they are limited and that gap between the time when the starter leaves to the 9th inning really showed their flaws early.  The BP has recovered a bit with the acquisitions of Robles and McGuire and the promotion of Cole but there is no Kimbrel in that group...no Shields/Donnelly/Weber/KRod/Percival...they are all just solid middle relievers with decent stuff put into situations where elite stuff is needed.

Going back to the offense, we gave a lot of at bats to players that we were hoping would come around but never did - 

Valbuena - .202 .250 .589 OPS -0.7 WAR

Cozart - .219 .296 .658 OPS 0.1 WAR

Kole Calhoun  - .190 .246 .578 OPS -0.4 WAR

Chris Young - .168 .252 .615 OPS -0.7 WAR

Jefry Marte - .233 .282 .690 OPS -0.1 WAR

Jabari Blash - .091 .192 .283 OPS -0.7 WAR

Michael Hermosillo - .154 .214 .419 OPS -0.4 WAR

Not to mention the struggling starters:

Albert Pujols - .251 .290 .721 OPS 0.8 WAR

Martin Maldonado - .225 .287 .623 OPS 0.4 WAR

Justin Upton - .253 .349 .796 OPS 2.5 WAR (compared to .273 .361 .901 OPS 5.7 WAR last season)

Only Trout and Simmons are hitting or outperforming their expectations.

That's a lot of negative WAR, underachieving, and offensive dead weight.

Trout, Simmons, and Upton are still a solid core but Eppler is going to have to be creative to account for offensive issues at 1B, 2B, 3B, and RF

 

[Angel Oracle]

24 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

For what it’s worth, in spring training I was telling anyone who asked that I thought the Angels were an 84- to 87-win team. 

Now I’m going to guess they end up winning 79 to 83.

If they are lucky.    I'm guessing 75-78 wins, based on the 37-48 record over the past 85 games (albeit no Skanks or Red Sux to play anymore). 

[Blarg]

You left out Kinsler. 

[Taylor]

26 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

For what it’s worth, in spring training I was telling anyone who asked that I thought the Angels were an 84- to 87-win team. 

Now I’m going to guess they end up winning 79 to 83.

Which is pretty commendable for the Angels, considering their entire rotation has been on the DL, Kinsler and Cozart have been busts, and several other players have underperformed.

[floplag]

Should be better.  
I thought we would be a 85-90 win team, maybe a little better with luck, and we wont end up close to that at this pace. 

[Dick B Back]

Based on the player performances and injuries, we are lucky to have Sosh keeping these dudes around .500.

 

[Angel Oracle]

True, but I still want to see a managerial change after the season to coincide with the wave of young talent soon coming up or already here, and to keep up with the changing game since 2000.

[Inside Pitch]

12 minutes ago, Taylor said:

Which is pretty commendable for the Angels, considering their entire rotation has been on the DL, Kinsler and Cozart have been busts, and several other players have underperformed.

Kinsler is on pace for a 3 or almost 4 Win season depending on if you prefer fWAR or bWAR.   He's hit less than what people were hoping for but hardly a bust.  Valbuena on the other hand has been a total disaster.

[Angel Oracle]

4 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

Kinsler is on pace for a 3 or almost 4 Win season depending on if you prefer fWAR or bWAR.   He's hit less than what people were hoping for but hardly a bust.  Valbuena on the other hand has been a total disaster.

Kinsler = hitting bust to go with solid fielding results.   Outside of June, Kinsler has been really bad at the plate.

[Vlad27Trout27]

I'm still trying to figure out by we are 10 games behind Seattle. 

Our offense is ranked 6th in the Al while Seattle's is 10th

pitching 

Overall we are ranked 5th with an Era of 3.83 while Seattle is ranked 7th with Era of 4. 

So we should be fighting with Seattle for the second wild card but we are not.

[Dick B Back]

1 minute ago, Vlad27Trout27 said:

I'm still trying to figure out by we are 10 games behind Seattle. 

Our offense is ranked 6th in the Al while Seattle's is 10th

pitching 

Overall we are ranked 5th with an Era of 3.83 while Seattle is ranked 7th with Era of 4. 

So we should be fighting with Seattle for the second wild card but we are not.

Cause Upton’s not in their lineup?

[floplag]

3 minutes ago, Vlad27Trout27 said:

I'm still trying to figure out by we are 10 games behind Seattle. 

Our offense is ranked 6th in the Al while Seattle's is 10th

pitching 

Overall we are ranked 5th with an Era of 3.83 while Seattle is ranked 7th with Era of 4. 

So we should be fighting with Seattle for the second wild card but we are not.

check blown saves and save percentage