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OC Register: How did the Angels — with Mike Trout — get here?


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Once again, the team with the best player in the major leagues is going to miss the postseason.

Barring a miracle, the Angels and Mike Trout will be at home in October, even with an expanded playoff field that will include more than half the teams in the majors.

Frustrated Angels fans — and even baseball fans who want to see Trout in the playoffs — are again wondering what’s gone wrong with this franchise?

The Angels are 10-22, with a 4.6 percent chance to make the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. It’s the Angels’ worst record ever after 32 games. They are likely on the way to their fifth straight losing season.

“Certainly, we expected to be in a better position than we are at this moment,” Angels general manager Billy Eppler said Wednesday. “I believe the team that we have is much better than our 10-22 record. But at the end of the day, those are wins and losses that are on the board.”

Eppler, who is in the final year of a contract that has not included a single winning season, is trying to make the best of the current situation by working the phones ahead of next week’s trade deadline.

Although he wouldn’t give specifics on his plans, he conceded that the Angels will continue to try to be as good as possible each season, as opposed to taking an intentional step back to rebuild.

He believes the organization still has a core that is good enough to win, because of what he hears on the phone.

“The litmus test a lot is the conversations I have with other GM’s and what they tell me they were thinking about our club and the players in it,” Eppler said. “That’s the litmus test. It’s not what I think. It’s not what you think. What does the market tell you? The other teams trying to acquire talent? It’s what are they telling you by their actions and their words.”

Despite the talent Eppler believes is on the Angels roster, the players have not performed up to expectations, specifically the pitchers.

The Angels’ 5.41 ERA ranks 28th in the majors. Their starters have a 6.34 ERA, which is 29th.

The Angels have already had 12 games in which the starter has pitched four innings or less and allowed four runs or more. No other team has more than seven.

Aside from Dylan Bundy, whose 2.58 ERA appears to qualify him as a success story for the Angels, none of the starters have lived up to expectations.

Shohei Ohtani hurt his arm after pitching just two games, costing the Angels the pitcher with the greatest upside. Julio Teheran, who came to the Angels with a nine-year track record of consistency, contracted the coronavirus in June and essentially started pitching this season with no spring training.

Other starters, like Griffin Canning, Patrick Sandoval and Jose Suarez, are simply too early in their careers to evaluate, Eppler said.

“From an innings standpoint, you’d love to see a guy be able to get 700ish innings in the minor leagues on the way up,” Eppler said. “That isn’t always the case when you have some injuries on the varsity team that’s had us go the next guy up, or the third guy up. That’s put these guys in situations to be really challenged.”

Canning, 24, has pitched 118 big league innings after throwing 129 in the minors. Sandoval, 23, has pitched 62 innings in the majors and 330-1/3 in the minors. Suarez, 22, has thrown 83-1/3 in the majors and 335-1/3 in the minors.

“If you look at guys like that, and look at what they were doing in the (minor) leagues they were at, relative to their age, they were standing out,” Eppler said. “That gives you the kind of footing to trust that they are going to figure this out. They will get there.”

In the meantime, the Angels and their fans are stuck in a frustrating waiting game, in part because of decisions made at the highest level of the organization.

Eppler has said repeatedly that the Angels’ philosophy has been to try to rebuild what was the worst farm system in baseball, without sacrificing the short-term chance of success at the major league level.

That is a difficult needle to thread.

Over the years the Angels have had successful major leaguers with years of control left — like Garrett Richards, Kole Calhoun, Matt Shoemaker, Tyler Skaggs and Andrew Heaney — but they haven’t traded them.

“Those are the decisions we made at the time, to continue to build an organization and give teams an opportunity to push into the playoffs,” Eppler said.

Instead, the Angels have essentially traded only players on expiring contracts after they were out of the race: like Martin Maldonado and Ian Kinsler. Those deals netted Sandoval, Ty Buttrey and Williams Jerez.

This year, the players who fit that mold are Andrelton Simmons, Tommy La Stella, Jason Castro and Teheran.

Simmons was acquired in Eppler’s first trade, in November 2015. Eppler shipped out the top two pitching prospects in a bad farm system to make that deal, because Simmons had five years of control. Since then, though, Eppler has not moved the Angels’ premium prospects, in part because there weren’t enough of them and he wanted to give the system time to regenerate.

So the Angels were unwilling to trade established major leaguers for premium prospects, and unwilling to trade premium prospects for established major leaguers.

Again, that’s a tightrope walk to improvement.

They have been waiting for their own prospects to matriculate, which takes time. They’ve made smaller trades, waiver pickups and one-year free agent signings. Many of those — La Stella, Hansel Robles, Blake Parker, etc. — have been clear wins for the Angels.

Among higher-risk moves, the only free agents Eppler has signed to multiyear deals were Zack Cozart and Anthony Rendon. Eppler extended Justin Upton in order to get him to waive his opt-out.

No pitchers in that group.

The premium starting pitchers don’t come on the market often, and the Angels have gravitated mostly toward the younger ones. They took shots at Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg, Zack Wheeler, Nathan Eovaldi and Patrick Corbin.

All turned them down.

Rather than risking multiyear deals on the second tier of pitchers — an older group that includes the likes of Dallas Keuchel, Madison Bumgarner, Hyun-Jin Ryu or Jake Arrieta — the Angels instead took relatively low risk one-year fliers on Trevor Cahill, Matt Harvey and Teheran.

Add Bundy into that group and — at the moment — that looks like a 1 for 4 for Eppler on acquiring established starters without any long-term risk.

If the Angels are going to get over this hump and have a good pitching staff, they are going to need to improve their success rate everywhere: in luring the top-tier pitchers, in hitting on the second-tier pitchers and in developing their own.

The latter seems like the most likely route to sustainable success. They need some combination of Ohtani, Canning, Sandoval, Suarez and Jaime Barria to blossom perhaps along with a prospect like Chris Rodriguez or Reid Detmers.

Eppler still believes they will.

“Players get better, especially young ones,” Eppler said. “We’ve seen it all the time. Throughout history, there’s tons and tons of examples of guys that turn corners. Happens all the time.”

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Although he wouldn’t give specifics on his plans, he conceded that the Angels will continue to try to be as good as possible each season, as opposed to taking an intentional step back to rebuild.

 

 

We don’t rebuild, we just reload.

Edited by RendZone
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34 minutes ago, RendZone said:


Although he wouldn’t give specifics on his plans, he conceded that the Angels will continue to try to be as good as possible each season, as opposed to taking an intentional step back to rebuild.

 

 

We don’t rebuild, we just reload.

What do you expect Eppler to say?

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13 hours ago, AngelsWin.com said:

So the Angels were unwilling to trade established major leaguers for premium prospects, and unwilling to trade premium prospects for established major leaguers.

This is a key factor in Eppler's failure, in addition to his inability to make a deal with even one first or second tier free agent starting pitcher. 

The single feature that stands out over the last 5 years of Epplerball is waiting for the rotation to finally come together under the power of (mostly) homegrown talent: Garret Richards, Matt Shoemaker, Tyler Skaggs, Andrew Heaney, Nick Tropeano, Nick Maronde, Alex Meyer, etc, and now the new wave of Patrick Sandoval, Griffin Canning, Shohei Ohtani, Jose Suarez, Jaime Barria. Eppler has augmented this group with clean peanuts, of which only one has turned out well (Dylan Bundy). It is like an ever-churning treadmill of disappointments and mediocrities.

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1 hour ago, Angelsjunky said:

This is a key factor in Eppler's failure, in addition to his inability to make a deal with even one first or second tier free agent starting pitcher. 

The single feature that stands out over the last 5 years of Epplerball is waiting for the rotation to finally come together under the power of (mostly) homegrown talent: Garret Richards, Matt Shoemaker, Tyler Skaggs, Andrew Heaney, Nick Tropeano, Nick Maronde, Alex Meyer, etc, and now the new wave of Patrick Sandoval, Griffin Canning, Shohei Ohtani, Jose Suarez, Jaime Barria. Eppler has augmented this group with clean peanuts, of which only one has turned out well (Dylan Bundy). It is like an ever-churning treadmill of disappointments and mediocrities.

Disconnect with scouting pitching?   That's far too many issues on that list.

GRich does have a violent delivery.   Shoe relies a lot on the splitter, which can affect an arm's health.  

Heaney looks like a #2-3 some innings, and a #6 others; what the heck is that all about?   It's all or nothing with him.

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1 hour ago, Angel Oracle said:

Disconnect with scouting pitching?   That's far too many issues on that list.

GRich does have a violent delivery.   Shoe relies a lot on the splitter, which can affect an arm's health.  

Heaney looks like a #2-3 some innings, and a #6 others; what the heck is that all about?   It's all or nothing with him.

The Angels legitimately had some bad luck in 2015-16ish, with their entire pitching staff going down. Maybe that has something to do with scouting or training, but it could just be bad luck.

After that, well, we just haven't seen anyone pan out as expected. Some of that is unrealistic expectations - no one should have ever expected Canning to be a #1-2, for instance, and there were injury concerns with Ohtani before the Angels signed him. But I do think most of the young guys will improve. I think there's still a #3-4 starter in Canning and Sandoval; Barria seems to be putting it together as similar, or at least a solid #4. Suarez seems lost but still has decent stuff. I'm more hopeful about Chris Rodriguez, Detmers, maybe Soriano and others -- all Eppler guys, I think.

Heaney is what he is: a #4. 

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2 hours ago, Angelsjunky said:

This is a key factor in Eppler's failure, in addition to his inability to make a deal with even one first or second tier free agent starting pitcher. 

The single feature that stands out over the last 5 years of Epplerball is waiting for the rotation to finally come together under the power of (mostly) homegrown talent: Garret Richards, Matt Shoemaker, Tyler Skaggs, Andrew Heaney, Nick Tropeano, Nick Maronde, Alex Meyer, etc, and now the new wave of Patrick Sandoval, Griffin Canning, Shohei Ohtani, Jose Suarez, Jaime Barria. Eppler has augmented this group with clean peanuts, of which only one has turned out well (Dylan Bundy). It is like an ever-churning treadmill of disappointments and mediocrities.

Keep in mind that Dylan Bundy should be considered a small sample size.

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None of the pitchers should be presumed able to deliver anything.  It’s that bad.  Out of Ohtani, Canning, Suarez, Barria, and Sandoval we’ll be lucky to get even 1 of them to be a reliable  major league starter.  Nothing has worked out.  
 

I’m not big on the bash Billy Eppler thing.  He came into a very tough situation.  But the reality is that just about all of his plays have not worked out.  He has not done well in free agency.  It’s tough to see much of what he’s planned turning around.  This is a weird year and I’m not sure how harshly he should be judged at this point or how much more time he should be given.  But i am indifferent to whether they keep him around or not. 

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