Positives and minuses from ChiSox series

[Lou]

6 minutes ago, tdawg87 said:

Just like Adell, Curtis was great in the minors.

[Slegnaac]

1 hour ago, Inside Pitch said:

They were played poorly ..... and the easiest way to remedy that is to give him more reps at 1B. 

AP needs to accept his role as elder statesman and be there to support Walsh, pinch hit, and fill in when needed.  He's reached all the milestones he realistically could -- the Angels have given him every chance.  The best way to finish his career now is to reach the postseason one last time.

They have honored AP and his legacy enough.  Time to honor the present and the future.

Win A Ring For Albert!

[Warfarin]

37 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

You keep pointing towards player development, I don't believe that's been lacking.  The plate discipline thing, sure but that's A veteran skill and he's not dumb, he showed he can make strides there in ST alone.

Defensively IMO Adell just needs to chill out and restrain the desire to do more.  Its a discipline issue.  I trust he can because he's shown the discipline to put in all the work, he just needs to stop trying to do the awesome and work on doing the little things.  I've watched this kid a lot, he's exactly the same way he was in the minors.  

The other reason have to have faith is that he's incredibly smart.  Jo Adell isn't a rock head, it will come together.  FWIW, he seemed to be much more at ease and restrained when playing alongside Marsh.  So much so I've wondered if he hasn't been trying to prove to his MLB teammates that he belongs, or that he's worthy of the hype.  

I shouldn't say that player development has been lacking, but I guess I'm bullish on the system that Minasian and his team is putting in place, such that I think the player development system will be stronger than what it was.  And that's not an indictment of Eppler or his team, but moreso the faith I have in Minasian, Tamin, etc.

I do feel Adell will be a very good MLB player, I just think his timeline is a bit later than perhaps one would have expected when he got promoted last year.

[totdprods]

Has no one really mentioned Rodriguez specifically yet?

[Pancake Bear]

Good to see Walsh showing up when the games started mattering. While I agree Albert needs to be benched most of the time, he had a key rbi in game 1 and a home run (2/4 on base) in game 2, so not a total disaster. 1B has been solid this year on the whole. 

Raisel was not great in 2/3 games he played in. If I'm being glass-half-full, I'd note that game 2 wasn't a save situation, which maybe kept him from getting amped up, and game 4 was his third game in four days and he was being asked to throw a five out save - which he almost did anyway. His biggest screwup was that bizarre airmail to 3B. Game 1 was insane, so I'd say wait it out on him. 

Wish we could figure a way to give Taylor Ward a shot in RF, but I don't see them dumping Fowler, and Lagares' defense merits not dumping him. 

Other random notes: Offense has been good despite Trout and Rendon being something less than incredible. Also, we pulled out 3/4 against a good White Sox team in a tight series that could easily have been 4-0 for either team. Strong play in tight games, guys coming up big when they needed to. 

[Lou]

Positive - 3 wins

Negative - 1 loss 

 

[Don]

Positives:

Ohtani appearing fully healthy and ready to go.

CRod showing legit high level major league stuff.

Walsh looking like he can be an all-star caliber everyday player.

Stassi picking up where he left off last year on offense.

Taking 3/4 from what is likely to be a 90 win team.

 

Negatives:

Defensive issues that I truly believe will be fixed pretty quickly.

That one bullpen meltdown on Friday that took us out of a game we still had a shot at winning late.

[Torridd]

Positive/Negative - Rendon didn't do much and we still won 3 of 4. 

[Inside Pitch]

1 hour ago, Warfarin said:

I shouldn't say that player development has been lacking, but I guess I'm bullish on the system that Minasian and his team is putting in place, such that I think the player development system will be stronger than what it was.  And that's not an indictment of Eppler or his team, but moreso the faith I have in Minasian, Tamin, etc.

I do feel Adell will be a very good MLB player, I just think his timeline is a bit later than perhaps one would have expected when he got promoted last year.

I didnt think you meant it as an indictment of anyone, mostly curious what it is you believe will be vastly altered.  Other than potentially new information or data sets, not sure what you envision will be systematically different. 

Tamin is the guy I'm most excited about but he is mostly a systems guy.  When he was the Dodgers director of minor league ops he didn't so much change how they developed guys as much as he altered/explained what data sets would be used for analysis in hopes of getting players to improve their games.  Much of that was already in place under Eppler --so,  my hope is simply that the coaches they end up putting in place will be better at turning that data into information players can digest than say Doug White did.

I get the feeling Minasian is going to get a lot of credit for stuff that that was already in place from a lot of people here by virtue of being the GM as the team starts reaping the benefits of the work put in over the last 5 years.

[Warfarin]

45 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

I didnt think you meant it as an indictment of anyone, mostly curious what it is you believe will be vastly altered.  Other than potentially new information or data sets, not sure what you envision will be systematically different. 

Tamin is the guy I'm most excited about but he is mostly a systems guy.  When he was the Dodgers director of minor league ops he didn't so much change how they developed guys as much as he altered/explained what data sets would be used for analysis in hopes of getting players to improve their games.  Much of that was already in place under Eppler --so,  my hope is simply that the coaches they end up putting in place will be better at turning that data into information players can digest than say Doug White did.

I get the feeling Minasian is going to get a lot of credit for stuff that that was already in place from a lot of people here by virtue of being the GM as the team starts reaping the benefits of the work put in over the last 5 years.

Unfortunately, I'm not savvy enough to really pinpoint how exactly changes will be brought about.  I guess you could call it blind faith in the infrastructure Minasian appears to be building, as well as my hope that he can be just as good as his previous boss (Anthopolous) and utilize a strong blend of analytics and scouting.  It seems teams like the Dodgers, Braves, etc are the best in baseball in terms of helping influence player development and maximizing outcomes.  I can't really say how they do it exactly, but the results speak for themselves.  Can Minasian do the same here?  I don't really know, but I guess I'm bullish/hopeful that he can.  

You're right about him potentially getting credit for things Eppler did.  I suppose that's how things often are in life, too - the foundation may have been built by someone, and maybe they just weren't around long enough to see that system fully into fruition.

I think Eppler did a pretty decent job on the whole.  He started off in the worst possible position (tons of bloated contracts, an awful farm system, etc).  He couldn't turn it around entirely in 5 years, but he did make a lot of good acquisitions and drafted some very good players.  The credit doesn't really matter to me - I just want to see a good, sustainable team that competes every year, and I'm hopeful we are getting close to that now.

[Inside Pitch]

14 minutes ago, Warfarin said:

You're right about him potentially getting credit for things Eppler did. 

Nature of the beast in MLB.  

15 minutes ago, Warfarin said:

I think Eppler did a pretty decent job on the whole.  He started off in the worst possible position (tons of bloated contracts, an awful farm system, etc).  He couldn't turn it around entirely in 5 years, but he did make a lot of good acquisitions and drafted some very good players. 

Eppler was screwed somewhat in that he replaced an outgoing GM that most of the fanbase thought was great.  Most people here were pretty upset he had left and so Eppler wasn't really welcomed the way most GMs are with hope, I think a lot of them were against him at hello.  He didn't help himself any in the eyes of those people when his first act as GM was basically to trade the only legit front line prospect in the system for a SS that everyone underrated.   For all the excuses people made for JD, they refused to be honest about what Eppler inherited.   He had no money, no farm, black holes at multiple positions and a fan base that was hostile towards it's ownership and manager.  Ultimately his FA failures the last two years cost him his job, but the underlying work was solid and the Angels' immediate future in built on the foundation he put into place.

Go Minasian!

[DCAngelsFan]

15 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

Nature of the beast in MLB.  

Eppler was screwed somewhat in that he replaced an outgoing GM that most of the fanbase thought was great.  Most people here were pretty upset he had left and so Eppler wasn't really welcomed the way most GMs are with hope, I think a lot of them were against him at hello.  He didn't help himself any in the eyes of those people when his first act as GM was basically to trade the only legit front line prospect in the system for a SS that everyone underrated.   For all the excuses people made for JD, they refused to be honest about what Eppler inherited.   He had no money, no farm, black holes at multiple positions and a fan base that was hostile towards it's ownership and manager.  Ultimately his FA failures the last two years cost him his job, but the underlying work was solid and the Angels' immediate future in built on the foundation he put into place.

Go Minasian!

I often think the reason JD found it easy to punch out (mid-season, no less), was he could read the tea leaves as well as/better than we could.

I don't think most fans could look ahead and see what lie ahead for the team and not feel like a bit like a lookout on the Titanic - you could see what was coming - but there wasn't much of anything that could be done about it.  A team in decline with no farm, hamstrung by bloated, unmovable contracts, but with Trout playing, never bad enough to get good draft position - it was a terrible situation for a new GM.

Eppler made some mistakes, sure.

But consider this - if we'd hired, say, Minasian instead of Eppler, pretty good chance we don't have Ohtani.   Eppler leveraged his relationship with Ohtani to get that signing done. 

And a pretty fair chance that whoever was hired would've ultimately been fired, too.  

 

 

[Inside Pitch]

22 minutes ago, DCAngelsFan said:

And a pretty fair chance that whoever was hired would've ultimately been fired, too.  

100% this.   Had it been Minasian hired he'd be gone now too.   Whoever the GM would have been he would have needed to rebuild everything while at the same time hitting on every lottery ticket FA signing for the results to have been different.   It was just a brutal situation to step into.   Eppler's legacy (IMO) is that he left the franchise in much better shape than he found it.  Whether or not people will give him credit for it... doesn't really matter.

[ThisismineScios]

I may be alone in this but I thought ST showed how Adell is closer than Marsh. Marsh had a few awesome hits, but he had 8 Ks in 14 AB. He looked a bit behind at the plate. Adell showed the growth he’s needed  in terms of discipline at the plate, and I’m not concerned about his defense. It’s an unnecessary roadblock but I’ve seen it as him ignoring it and needing reps to fix it. He was a good fielder in the minors. The glove hasn’t been an ongoing problem. I think  a lot of people are ready to move on from Adell and therefore think Marsh is now going to be the first one up. Marsh has only played at AA. He’s the one who likely needs a full season in the minors. I think it’s more likely Adell is up by July in RF and Marsh spends the year at AAA because Upton is playing well. 

[Blarg]

14 at bat's. You are really going to go with 14 at bat's as a reasonable metric? That was 14 at bat's scattered over 12 games and he still managed a .412 on base percentage.