A note of gratitude to Eppler

[fan_since79]

10 hours ago, Stradling said:

When the farm can contribute major league ready players and we can use free agency to fill holes not build a roster.

So, 2021 then. I'm patient...can afford to wait, but not getting any younger.

 

[Stradling]

2 minutes ago, fan_since79 said:

So, 2021 then. I'm patient...can afford to wait, but not getting any younger.

 

none of us are.  The beauty of starting with the farm is while it takes a long ass time (in fan years) the ones that don't pan out you can use free agency to fill the whole pretty quickly.  If you use free agency to fill a hole and that free agent is expensive or on a lengthy contract, then it takes forever to fill that hole when you have to build the farm to do it.  Not to mention if you have a budget and you already spent the money on the under-performing free agent, you are screwed (Albert, Hamilton, Wilson, Street).

[T.G.]

Thanks, Billy.  Now, get us some pitching.

[T.G.]

Every losing season feels like a year in dog years (7)...  When they win, it goes by too quickly.

[fan_since79]

I think the jury is still out on Harvey. We may see him settle down and give us a decent year.

Cahill, though, appears less hopeful.

Heaney needs to give us innings and STAY HEALTHY. If he does that he'll be fine.

Canning looks legit, although there will be some rocky outings.

Skaggs is Skaggs. Not great, not bad, but can eat up innings.

Yes, we need two more very good starters to contend. 

[totdprods]

I still maintain 2019 was never about seriously competing. It was a gap year. Ease in the prospects and acquire some vets on one-year deals to try and flip more prospects. If they competed along the way, great. 

In that sense Eppler has done his job. We didn’t lose any prospects, and while our flip property vets haven’t panned out (though there’s still time) I get that there was upside attached to their names which might have worked in our favor. He shot for the moon. We did manage to get Buttrey and Sandoval for Maldonado and Kinsler, neither of whom looked very good 5/15 last year.

Edited May 16, 2019 by totdprods

[Stradling]

flip property to me looks fine, Kole, La Stella, Lucroy and Smith can all be moved and the first two should net us more than what we got for Kinsler or Maldonado.  I know I will catch some flack for this but I would trade Buttrey in a NY minute if he can get you a nice package.  It seems as though bullpen arms are always hot commodities at the deadline and a bullpen arm with 5 years of club control might bring back a really nice haul.  

[Lou]

there is no way in hell i'm trading Buttrey 

[Stradling]

4 minutes ago, Lou said:

there is no way in hell i'm trading Buttrey 

I didn’t expect to have many on my page with it, but I feel if you can fill an everyday spot by trading a really good bullpen guy I would probably do it.  What did Philly get when they traded Giles to Houston?  

[T.G.]

2 minutes ago, Stradling said:

What did Philly get when they traded Giles to Houston?  

December 12, 2015: Traded by the Philadelphia Phillies with Jonathan Arauz (minors) to the Houston Astros for Mark Appel (minors), Harold Arauz (minors), Tom Eshelman (minors), Brett Oberholtzer and Vince Velasquez.

Edited May 16, 2019 by True Grich

[Lou]

28 minutes ago, Stradling said:

I didn’t expect to have many on my page with it, but I feel if you can fill an everyday spot by trading a really good bullpen guy I would probably do it.  What did Philly get when they traded Giles to Houston?  

Giles was already an established reliever, having had several years of success at the major league league level. Buttrey hasn't even reached 40 innings pitched yet.

Also, i just can't see a team in contention trading an established every day player.

Just imagine our bp without Buttrey. 

[Lou]

25 minutes ago, True Grich said:

December 12, 2015: Traded by the Philadelphia Phillies with Jonathan Arauz (minors) to the Houston Astros for Mark Appel (minors), Harold Arauz (minors), Tom Eshelman (minors), Brett Oberholtzer and Vince Velasquez.

a lot of crap 

[Mark PT]

14 hours ago, Stradling said:

Farm, La Stella, Goodwin, Robles, trading Kinsler for Buttrey, trading for Simmons, signing Ohtani, creating something that made Trout want to stay, development of Anderson, Cole, Fletcher, Barria, Walsh.  Drafting Canning, Adell.  Switching Ward from catcher to anywhere else which saw his bat come alive.  

I am sure you know all of these things, but refuse to believe any of it.  Which is why you are getting criticized.  You look at his failures and assume he sucks.  We look at what he has done, and how he hasn’t burdened the team with lousy contracts and understand what he is doing.  So there it has been explained.  

And as you list, rebuilding the farm from the worst in baseball to, what, 5th or 6th from what I saw. This alone gives him credibility. 

[Second Base]

19 hours ago, mymerlincat said:

Hilarious post.  He missed out on all of Grandal, Corbin, Ramos, Robertson, Harrison, Soria, Gonzalez, Moustakas, Happ, Eovaldi, and Britton, despite trying to sign all of them at some point and ended up with Bour (crap, AAA), Harvey (crap), Cahill (crap), Bourjos (crap), Allen (crap), and Lucroy (crap).  He has been around for now his 4th season, and has yet to put together a .500 ball club.  He has added 0 impact starting pitchers despite that being our biggest weakness ever since he took over.  He hired a complete moron of a manager who everyone ridiculed us for.  His biggest free agent (Cozart) has been an absolute disaster.  Eppler is a horrendous GM and I'm not sure how anyone can defend him after the disaster of a team he has put together this year, 4 years into his tenure.  

This is like saying Adolf Hitler was a hero.  As long as you only tell one side of the story, you're absolutely right.  I mean Hitler was a war veteran who rose to lead a party that united Germany and pulled them from the depths of the Great Depression and reparations and lead them to become an economic and military powerhouse.  

So Billy Eppler is a terrible human being who couldn't scout an MLB player to save his life and his entire goal is to destroy the Angels franchise by making very poor free agent decisions. 

So let's ignore the genocide, terrible command decisions, terrible logic and lack of morality in Adolf Hitler, because that's basically what you've done with Billy Eppler.  Ignore the fact that he's largely responsible for Shohei Ohtani, Andrelton Simmons and Mike Trout being an Angel for life.  He's also the man that oversaw the farm go from the worst of all time to one of the best in the game in just three year, without having a single top five draft pick and being under the Baldoquin sanctions.  He's also built one of the best bullpens in baseball without spending money and is responsible for bringing in also rans like JC Ramirez and Felix Pena and turning them into legitimate major league starting pitchers. 

If you like Hansel Robles, Ty Buttrey, Luke Bard, Griffin Canning, Taylor Cole, Luis Madero, Jon Lucroy, Kevan Smith, Tommy La Stella, Luis Rengifo, Andrelton Simmons, Brian Goowin, Justin Upton and Shohei Ohtani....and Mike Trout being here forever.....basically everything that is GOOD about this team, then you have that terrible GM Billy Eppler to thank. 

Edited May 16, 2019 by Second Base

[Stradling]

6 minutes ago, Second Base said:

This is like saying Adolf Hitler was a hero.  As long as you only tell one side of the story, you're absolutely right.  I mean Hitler was a war veteran who rose to lead a party that united Germany and pulled them from the depths of the Great Depression and reparations and lead them to become an economic and military powerhouse.  

So Billy Eppler is a terrible human being who couldn't scout an MLB player to save his life and his entire goal is to destroy the Angels franchise by making very poor free agent decisions. 

So let's ignore the genocide, terrible command decisions, terrible logic and lack of morality in Adolf Hitler, because that's basically what you've done with Billy Eppler.  Ignore the fact that he's largely responsible for Shohei Ohtani, Andrelton Simmons and Mike Trout being an Angel for life.  He's also the man that oversaw the farm go from the worst of all time to one of the best in the game in just three year, without having a single top five draft pick and being under the Baldoquin sanctions.  He's also built one of the best bullpens in baseball without spending money and is responsible for bringing in also rans like JC Ramirez and Felix Pena and turning them into legitimate major league starting pitchers.