Wake up, Eppler

[Second Base]

On 12/25/2018 at 11:00 AM, Second Base said:

Literally everything about team building has made building a farm the only way to win long term. If there was any other way, you wouldn't see so many teams tanking. It's the ONLY way to win. Even a team like the Red Sox, that has Chris Sale, Craig Kimbrel, David Price, JD Martinez, Nathan Eolvaldi....clearly they bought at least part of their championship. Some of it was financial might (Martinez, Price) and the other part was using their farm system to purchase these players (Sale, Kimbrel, Eovaldi). And even then, they still developed Benintendi, Betts, Bogaerts and Devers internally. 

Looking at the Angels....Trout and Calhoun were developed internally and then nothing on the position player side that stuck for 5 years. That crippled the system. And after 5 years, it isn't like they developed stars. They developed Fletcher, Ward and Hermosillo, and none of those three look like they're starting caliber yet. To compensate, the Angels flexed their financial might, they just invested it terribly in Pujols, Hamilton and Cozart. 

And the irony here, is that the Angels will finally have developed the necessary players internally with Adell, Marsh, Jones, Thaiss, Rengifo etc.....and the best thing their financiers will be able to do is secure the homegrown players longer. But that's why I believe 2020-2030 will be the golden age of Angels baseball. All those home grown players, plus additional waves involving Canning, Suarez, Hernandez, Soriano, Rodriguez on the mound (Ohtani too) and other homegrown bats like Jordyn Adams, Jeremiah Jackson, Kevin Maitan, D'Shawn Knowles, Trent Deveaux, Alex Ramirez...Its just an incredible wave of talent that will coincide with funds becoming available from Pujols and Cozart's expiring contracts and in four years, Upton's too, but not before he delivers another solid three 30 HR seasons. 

In 2020 and beyond, the Angels will have the homegrown talent, and the financial clout to either extend their good players, or bring in others via free agency. I just really hope Trout is around to experience it. He gave the first decade of his career to a losing team, the best way they can reward him is to make the second decade of his career rich with yearly playoff appearances, maybe even a couple world championships if they're lucky. 

Past Scott - You're so wise. Like a miniature Buddha, covered in fur....except that one spot at the top of your head that's getting bigger and freaking you out. But no worries, you have more than enough coming out of your nose and ears to make up for anything you lose up top. Yes, very wise. And suddenly old.

[Chuck]

3 hours ago, tdawg87 said:

Wake up, Sheepler.

Eppler has done some good things,  but he's also made some very big mistakes.

So far he's been decent, but I won't give a GM grade until after the 2020 season.

[UndertheHalo]

I think that in the end, the Angels were just in extremely bad shape when Eppler took over.  He’s done good things.  He’s also had misses.  Like all GM’s.  I honestly think he’d have had to hit on every move he’s made to get the team into serious contention.  They’ll be alright this year.  And probably a little better next year.  But we’re probably further away from legit being good  then we all want to accept right now.  That time frame can move up with some luck, especially the prospect area.  But I think most of us know better then to bet on good luck.  Hopefully Ohtani comes back and rips up the league.  That’ll help a lot. 

Anyway, it was always going to be a long road back for the team regardless of the GM.  I still have faith that Eppler is a guy that can engineer a champion.  We’re just going to have to wait. 

Edited May 6, 2019 by UndertheHalo

[GrittyVeterans]

I don’t like the fact that some of the signings are so bad that we’re discussing the need to DFA guys making 8-12 million (Cozart, Valbuena, Harvey, Cahill). 

overall, he’s a solid GM but some stuff needs to change. Paying for mediocrity at best isn’t going to work

[arch stanton]

I don't think he missed on the market. I think these are guys he wanted. What missed is whatever his organization is using to decide that these two were the ones that would respond to their coaching and philosophy and bounce back. Same with Allen. I believe that they all thought they'd have better results this year without Sosh and with their new coaches and methods. That's what we should be concerned with. This is a full blown science project being conducted during a major league season and it obviously needs tweaks. Twice through the order with the different pitch sequences isn't what they thought it would be so I hope they're moving on to the next phase

[Glen]

5 hours ago, GrittyVeterans said:

I don’t like the fact that some of the signings are so bad that we’re discussing the need to DFA guys making 8-12 million (Cozart, Valbuena, Harvey, Cahill). 

overall, he’s a solid GM but some stuff needs to change. Paying for mediocrity at best isn’t going to work

Speaking of Cozart, he will be back soon. It will be depressing to see how many AB he gets to prove he still sucks.

[Jeff Fletcher]

I am flying from Monterrey and can’t sleep even though I got 3 hours sleep, so I’m going to write this once again...

You can’t build a team by getting major leaguers from other teams. You just can’t. Anyone who thinks you can is delusional. 

Why?

It’s simple. Guys who are available in trades often have something wrong with them, which is why they’re available. Either it’s their performance or their contract. If nothing is wrong with them, then the cost in terms of prospects is exorbitant. 

Then there are free agents. The system is created so you can’t get them until they are 28-30ish, so they are pretty much always going to be getting overpaid at a time when they’re declining. 

So the only way to build a sustainable winning team is by first building most of it using your own farm system, which obviously doesn’t happen overnight. 

Once you’ve done that, it’s a lot easier to get better results from the other 2 avenues. You have more prospect capital to use to trade for the better players. You have more cheap players that you developed so you have more money to go after the premium free agents. Also, if you need fewer free agents you can invest more money in fewer of them instead of having to spread it around to plug a bunch of holes. (One $20M pitcher instead of two $10M pitchers.)

Also, when you do get the point of overpaying (in prospects or money) for players you bring in from outside, you want it to be when those extra wins really mean something. It would be dumb to pay $30 million for a 6-win player who takes you from 75 to 81 wins. When he can take you from 87 to 93, then do it. But you need to have an 87-win core first.

This is all really common sense and I’m sure you all already knew it, but I’m bored so I wrote it again. 

[Blarg]

The 2007 Red Sox only had six players from their own system. Varitek, Youkilis, Elsbury, Lester, Papelbon, Bucholtz. Clay wasn't part of the post season roster.

The 2004 roster had Youkilis, Trot Nixon and Varitek, they traded away Garciapara mid season. 

[Stradling]

16 minutes ago, Blarg said:

The 2007 Red Sox only had six players from their own system. Varitek, Youkilis, Elsbury, Lester, Papelbon, Bucholtz. Clay wasn't part of the post season roster.

The 2004 roster had Youkilis, Trot Nixon and Varitek, they traded away Garciapara mid season. 

Were the rest free agents or did they use the farm to trade for them?  They also had Ortiz but he was a waiver claim, so he wasn’t really some free agent they spent money on.  

[arch stanton]

29 minutes ago, Blarg said:

The 2007 Red Sox only had six players from their own system. Varitek, Youkilis, Elsbury, Lester, Papelbon, Bucholtz. Clay wasn't part of the post season roster.

The 2004 roster had Youkilis, Trot Nixon and Varitek, they traded away Garciapara mid season. 

That was a generation ago and steroid-aided. The 2018 team had Betts, Bradley, Benintendi,  Boegarts, Devers,  and Sale was acquired by parting with the #1 prospect in baseball. Then they supplemented in free agancy by blowing through the CBT threshold for Price and Martinez after dumping Hanley and Panda

[T.G.]

34 minutes ago, Blarg said:

The 2007 Red Sox only had six players from their own system. Varitek, Youkilis, Elsbury, Lester, Papelbon, Bucholtz. Clay wasn't part of the post season roster.

The 2004 roster had Youkilis, Trot Nixon and Varitek, they traded away Garciapara mid season. 

There are always exceptions, but most championship teams have a home grown core. You can dispute that all you want - but the Angels recognize this and are building their team accordingly. 

There are many more examples of teams who tried to build championship teams through free agency and failed.

[arch stanton]

After making those earlier posts here it occurs to me that the biggest difference between the Angels and the current world champs and the two time defending NL champs is the willingness to eat contracts. The Dodgers and Red Sox each shot way over the CBT and a lot of that was for players who weren't part of their best teams. Maybe when the Angels are a little closer then Billy can convince Arte to dump expensive dead weight but I'm not holding my breath. We're going to have to live with every mistake for the duration so it's probably best that they stick to one year contracts

[Blarg]

37 minutes ago, Stradling said:

Were the rest free agents or did they use the farm to trade for them?  They also had Ortiz but he was a waiver claim, so he wasn’t really some free agent they spent money on.  

2004 is the year they blew the budget on free agency becoming the 2nd highest payroll and then continued on in later years. Manny Ramirez was the highest paid player in baseball that year.

[Blarg]

21 minutes ago, True Grich said:

There are always exceptions, but most championship teams have a home grown core. You can dispute that all you want - but the Angels recognize this and are building their team accordingly. 

There are many more examples of teams who tried to build championship teams through free agency and failed.

You can look at the Yankees in that same time period and only find a couple home grow which continued on for over a decade. 

In 2004 the Yankees had Posada, Williams and Jeter. Their pitching staff had Mariano Rivera. 

[arch stanton]

11 minutes ago, Blarg said:

You can look at the Yankees in that same time period and only find a couple home grow which continued on for over a decade. 

In 2004 the Yankees had Posada, Williams and Jeter. Their pitching staff had Mariano Rivera. 

To the teams that went to the WS you can add Pettitte and his 200 innings a season and Soriano. That's 2 HoFers and several all stars from the homegrown crop

[Jeff Fletcher]

1 hour ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

You can’t build a team by getting major leaguers from other teams. You just can’t. Anyone who thinks you can is delusional. 

I want to make sure people don’t overlook this detail. 

You can dump your major leaguers and get a ton of prospects from other teams, thus speeding up the improvement of your farm system with prospects that you didn’t draft. However, that involves a level of tanking the Angels aren’t willing to do. Whether they should is another topic.

Their philosophy has been that they’d rather try to stay semi-competitive with Cahills and Harvey’s and Espinosa’s while waiting for their own prospects than to trade away the few valuable pieces they have to get someone else’s prospects. 

And honestly they haven’t had that many guys they could have even done this with. 

What they have done is cut bait each year that the playoffs became unattainable, turning Kinsler into Buttrey, Maldonado into Sandoval, Joe Smith into Jesus Castillo, David Hernandez into Luis Madero. 

Edited May 6, 2019 by Jeff Fletcher

[Blarg]

11 minutes ago, arch stanton said:

To the teams that went to the WS you can add Pettitte and his 200 innings a season and Soriano. That's 2 HoFers and several all stars from the homegrown crop

Arch, the Yankees found their success in mercenaries. Having only 1/5th of any roster from your minor leagues is not building from within. No matter how good those guys were, they weren't going anywhere without the $180 million dollars worth of free agents supporting them. 

[Jeff Fletcher]

32 minutes ago, Blarg said:

2004 is the year they blew the budget on free agency becoming the 2nd highest payroll and then continued on in later years. Manny Ramirez was the highest paid player in baseball that year.

It’s sort of a get rich quick thing. 

You can buy a bunch of high volatility stocks and if you hit on a bunch of them double your money really quickly. But it’s a lot more risky than just growing your money gradually with safer bets.

For the most part, the way to have a good team consistently is to have a lot of players who became good while wearing your uniform, either because you developed them or traded for them before they blew up. 

[Blarg]

Last season the only Red Sox farm hand on the pitching rotation no one would probably remember his name. The bullpen was better with three main guys.  They had five of their regular position players from Pawtucket. That was the most Red Sox team in a very long while.

[totdprods]

1 hour ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

What they have done is cut bait each year that the playoffs became unattainable, turning Kinsler into Buttrey, Maldonado into Sandoval, Joe Smith into Jesus Castillo, David Hernandez into Luis Madero. 

And I think this right here is why Eppler signed guys like Harvey and Cahill instead of Miley, Buchholz, and Gio...

Eppler speaks a lot about probability, and I believe he thought it was far more probable that Harvey or Cahill would go on and deliver a #2-#3 type-performance - thus garnering a better trade return - than what Gio, Miley, or Buchholz would fetch in July. 

Also, as a GM, he's a little more aware on demand - Gio, Miley, and Buchholz didn't sign until very, very late in the offseason, Spring Training even. That alone should tell you what teams thought those guys were worth. Cahill and Harvey were getting buzz early. 

Cahill and Harvey were overpays, yes, but its what kept them to one-year deals, which also makes them more attractive in July. Anibal Sanchez (5.15 ERA, 1.66 WHIP) and Lance Lynn (5.75 ERA, 1.57 WHIP) were arguably tiered similarly and now the Nationals and Rangers have those two locked in for multiple years.

 

[T.G.]

12 minutes ago, totdprods said:

Cahill and Harvey were overpays, yes, but its what kept them to one-year deals, which also makes them more attractive in July. Anibal Sanchez (5.15 ERA, 1.66 WHIP) and Lance Lynn (5.75 ERA, 1.57 WHIP) were arguably tiered similarly and now the Nationals and Rangers have those two locked in for multiple years.

^^^^^^

[Jeff Fletcher]

4 hours ago, totdprods said:

And I think this right here is why Eppler signed guys like Harvey and Cahill instead of Miley, Buchholz, and Gio...

Eppler speaks a lot about probability, and I believe he thought it was far more probable that Harvey or Cahill would go on and deliver a #2-#3 type-performance - thus garnering a better trade return - than what Gio, Miley, or Buchholz would fetch in July. 

Also, as a GM, he's a little more aware on demand - Gio, Miley, and Buchholz didn't sign until very, very late in the offseason, Spring Training even. That alone should tell you what teams thought those guys were worth. Cahill and Harvey were getting buzz early. 

Cahill and Harvey were overpays, yes, but its what kept them to one-year deals, which also makes them more attractive in July. Anibal Sanchez (5.15 ERA, 1.66 WHIP) and Lance Lynn (5.75 ERA, 1.57 WHIP) were arguably tiered similarly and now the Nationals and Rangers have those two locked in for multiple years.

 

I seem to remember a lot of Joe Kelly fans on here too. 

[Docwaukee]

5 hours ago, totdprods said:

And I think this right here is why Eppler signed guys like Harvey and Cahill instead of Miley, Buchholz, and Gio...

Eppler speaks a lot about probability, and I believe he thought it was far more probable that Harvey or Cahill would go on and deliver a #2-#3 type-performance - thus garnering a better trade return - than what Gio, Miley, or Buchholz would fetch in July. 

Also, as a GM, he's a little more aware on demand - Gio, Miley, and Buchholz didn't sign until very, very late in the offseason, Spring Training even. That alone should tell you what teams thought those guys were worth. Cahill and Harvey were getting buzz early. 

Cahill and Harvey were overpays, yes, but its what kept them to one-year deals, which also makes them more attractive in July. Anibal Sanchez (5.15 ERA, 1.66 WHIP) and Lance Lynn (5.75 ERA, 1.57 WHIP) were arguably tiered similarly and now the Nationals and Rangers have those two locked in for multiple years.

 

replace Cahill and Harvey with two guys that are just decent and we're still likely a game or two below .500.  So I get trying to go with players who had more upside.  But it's not just the general upside that they were going for. They obviously had a plan in place for both of these guys.  In other words, part of bringing them in was that they saw something in their ability that could couple with the things they are doing to make these players better.  Whatever that plan was is not just failing, but failing miserably right now.  

So it's not only that the players aren't doing well that concerns me.  It's the concept behind what they thought was going to work actually being a complete bust.  

This very well could be on the player's inability to execute the plan properly.  But the player has to be put into a position to execute based on their skill set.  

[Angel Oracle]

I am wondering about Doug White now.

Does it take time for pitchers to adapt to a new pitching coach?

[Docwaukee]

9 hours ago, Angel Oracle said:

I am wondering about Doug White now.

Does it take time for pitchers to adapt to a new pitching coach?

I was in the camp of expecting some sort of magic from him but that was totally unrealistic.  As if he were going to Charlie Mortonize everyone.  He's gonna click with some guys and not so much with others.  At the end of the day, most of it boils down to the talent of the players he has to work with.  

The answer to your question is probably yes.