This f'n season

[Dick B Back]

Curse of Scioscia and the Indian burial ground.

[John Taylor]

For me as a fan it's definitely one of the most frustrating seasons I've ever dealt with. I actually came across a Facebook post of mine counting down the days until Spring Training. That feels like it was 10 years ago at this point. As someone who lives in an area where we get summer for about 5 weeks a year, each Baseball season represents the end of a long cold winter, and is one of the few things that still gives me the same feeling I had as a kid. With that being said this season died for me when Skaggs died. At that point I just wanted to skip to next season because I honestly feel like a lot of the players on the team just wanted to get this shitshow of a season over. I don't remember feeling the same when Adenhart died, but this season has been different, it's hard to explain.

Next year the cycle will begin again, and at the end of January I'll be counting down the days until Spring Training, and I'll be full of the same optimism and feel the same way about Baseball that I do ever Spring, but until then...

151 days until pitchers and Catchers report.

[Lou]

I wasn't very invested in this season for some reason. 

[ten ocho recon scout]

5 hours ago, Dochalo said:

that 16 inning loss to baltimore set off a cascade of negativity for this team.  

they entered that series at 54-49 trying to hold a season together amidst the death of a teammate and they were playing on pure emotion to that point when it was clear they lacked the talent to make a true run.  That one game deflated the entire balloon.  

The emotional windfall caught up with them all at once and in a stretch of 27 games where they were slated to play against a lot of bad teams they went 9-18.  

I think people are discounting the impact that Tyler's death has had on this team.  To top it off, there is an imminent lawsuit, potential involvement of an Angel employee and drugs that Tyler took which indicate something that could be more systemic.  

To say that any of this might be a distraction is a massive understatement.  What they've been dealing with in that clubhouse this year is so far from normal it's crazy.  At best, it's only on their minds half the time.  Once it was clear that the team wasn't going anywhere, there was a collective exhale and essentially a concession that they didn't need to try to hold things together anymore.  

Hence the 13-32 record over the last 45 games when they were actually 12-6 immediately following Tyler's death.  

So this has sucked for us as fans, but I'm cutting these guys a little slack.  Upton, Ohtani and Trout would all be playing right now if the season were still in question.  

Luis Rengifo, David Fletcher, Shohei Ohtani, Matt Thaiss, Jared Walsh, Mike Hermosillo, Griffin Canning, Jose Suarez, Jaime Barria, Ty Buttrey, Patrick Sandoval, and Keynan Middleton have an average age of 23.5.  That's about half the 2020 roster who next year will have an avg age of 24.5 and 3 of them have more than a partial season of mlb under their belt.  They're not all stars or even avg players going forward, but there's a fair amount of talent there.  It bodes well that half of your roster is likely to get a fair amount better just by sheer experience.  

If this were a team comprised primarily of aging vets on the verge a rebuild then I would likely share a fair amount of pessimism but what I mostly see is just one bad season and that's it.  Maybe it doesn't all come together in 2020 but I still see a ton of reasons to be optimistic or at least hopeful for the future.  To me that  means a lot of this can go away pretty quickly.  

Beat me to it.

The team did surprisingly well the first half. No pitching, and missing simmons, ohtani and upton for the first several weeks, etc. But they hung in there.

Skaggs happens, and the team somewhat rallies. During that stretch, they lose la stella, who had a huge role in the first half. The baltimore weekend comes along and the wheels fall off.

Like you said, nobody in this chatroom has any clue about whats going on behind the scenes. We have no idea what the impact of the Skaggs situation is. How many guys in that clubhouse maybe knew, could have gotten him help, etc? 

Couple that with, again, no pitching, and a MASH ward for a lineup, and the results dont surprise.

[fan_since79]

It would also be nice to have a manager who doesn't just sit there half asleep all the time.

Hit-and-run and steals no longer allowed in baseball? 

[tdawg87]

55 minutes ago, Lou said:

I wasn't very invested in this season for some reason. 

Probably because everything sucked

[W.E. Baxter Author]

Nothing has gone right for this franchise at least since I moved from The OC to Colorado Springs nine years ago. The Anaheim Ducks have only missed two NHL Post Seasons since they won the Stanley Cup in 2007. I think maybe The L.A. Angels need to make that move to Downtown Long Beach.