Gerrit Cole seems to be a must signing.

[Inside Pitch]

4 hours ago, Troll Daddy said:

He had a 51-35 win record with a ERA well under 4.00 

He was injured his last season (2016).  I’m guessing insurance paid off most of his contract. Grouping him with the other bad contacts is wrong. CJ was the last descent pitcher the Angels signed. 

His ERA as an Angel was 3.87.   His ERA+ was 96. 

He was a below league average pitcher as an Angel using your stated criteria.

[Mark68]

On ‎8‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 2:30 PM, Angel Oracle said:

What about Cole's teammate, who is also a FA?   He's 5th in AL ERA.   Solid pitcher, but the lesser number of Ks might keep the contract numbers down some.   Cole and Miley, and call it an off-season.

I believe this was mentioned in another thread...a while ago...

[TroutField]

10 hours ago, DCAngelsFan said:

Since 2010, the only pitchers we've drafted with a career bWAR of > 1.00:

A.J Schugel - 1.2 (PIT)
Mike Clevinger - 10.3 (CLE) (traded for Vinnie Pestano)
Kenyan Middleton - 1.4 
Sean Newcomb - 3.4 - traded for Simmons

End of list.

What makes that worse -- in that same period of time, our position player picks over bWAR of 1.0 have been:

CJ Cron (5.9)
Kole Calhoun (15.5)
 David Fletcher (4.3)
End of list.  

Our drafting was terrible - we lacked trade currency to trade for high-end pitchers, and we couldn't draft them, either.  And we dropped out of the international market.  

If we're to ever compete in Mike Trout's career span, we need to add quality starting pitching and fast.  Cole plus one of Wheeler, Hamels, Ryu - would do the trick.  Add in a foreign player, like Senga from the NPB, and we're there.  

But against that backdrop, we really, really, really need to be better at drafting.  So far, Eppler looks "better" - but better than "crap" doesn't mean much.

 

 

F*ck I knew it was bad but I didn’t realize it was that bad... my god that is pathetic. 

[DCAngelsFan]

8 hours ago, TroutField said:

F*ck I knew it was bad but I didn’t realize it was that bad... my god that is pathetic. 

I think it's partly due to losing comp picks - after the middle of the first round, "hit rates" decline quickly.  In '12 and '13, didn't have 1st round picks.  

And of course, it takes time - can't really expect much yet from a high schooler drafted in, say, 2017.

But 2010 was a disastrous draft - we had 6 picks in the top 100 - and our best result?  We got Cam and Kaleb.  It was a pretty weak draft overall - but still - we could've drafted Yelich, Snydergaard, Aaron Sanchez, Andrelton Simmons, and Nick Castellanos.  Think that might've changed our fortunes?  

What we should have been doing - rather than handing out money to GMJ, Wells, and Hamilton - that money should've been plowed into making our scouting and development programs (both domestic and international) the best in baseball.  

Hard to tell from the outside what the investment truly is - but from this distance, feels like those were shoestring operations, at least in those days.