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Billy Eppler: In Retrospect


Taylor

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12 minutes ago, Trendon said:

From what I recall, Eppler's the main people Eppler brought in to work with him when he was hired were Jonathan Strangio, Steve Martone, and Eric Chavez.

For whatever it's worth, I don't believe that any of those 3 are currently employed by a major league baseball team.

When they were brought in, Martone never had experience working above Director of Pro Scouting, Strangio never had experience working above Manager, Major League Operations, and Chavez was only a couple years removed from playing and had very little front office experience.

 

Tamin, Watson, and Montgomery have all worked in high-level roles with other organizations that Strangio, Martone, and Chavez never did.

Makes sense. 

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37 minutes ago, Trendon said:

From what I recall, Eppler's the main people Eppler brought in to work with him when he was hired were Jonathan Strangio, Steve Martone, and Eric Chavez.

For whatever it's worth, I don't believe that any of those 3 are currently employed by a major league baseball team.

When they were brought in, Martone never had experience working above Director of Pro Scouting, Strangio never had experience working above Manager, Major League Operations, and Chavez was only a couple years removed from playing and had very little front office experience.

 

Tamin, Watson, and Montgomery have all worked in high-level roles with other organizations that Strangio, Martone, and Chavez never did.

I think since Eppler has taken over, we have seen a recent tendencies for front offices to grow, too.  When Eppler was initially hired, we didn't see quite as many big front offices.  Since then, though, we have seen a number of teams expand their FO personnel.  I think perhaps Eppler wasn't as deeply connected as Minasian and likewise didn't really adapt along with the rest of the league in that sense.

Minasian worked under Anthopolous, who worked under Friedman, so I am guessing he is rather familiar with the value that comes with having a significantly sized FO with talented people who come from different teams.

To me, that is what I see with Minasian - he seems to be rather connected, as he has reached out to and poached high-level guys from a number of teams.  It'd be one thing if he mainly plucked from his ATL and TOR backgrounds (and he certainly has taken guys from those teams, such as Tamin), but he also seems to be hiring guys from other teams (MIL, KC, etc).

In some ways, it appears he is trying to assimilate the "best practices" that various teams have, and that seems to be a solid approach to me.

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1 minute ago, Warfarin said:

To me, that is what I see with Minasian - he seems to be rather connected, as he has reached out to and poached high-level guys from a number of teams.

Yeah. That especially seemed to be a factor in getting Tamin and Watson to join the Angels. I'd also imagine it was a factor in getting the guys he previously worked with, whether it was Haynes, Parker, etc.

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1 hour ago, Taylor said:

I know it's early in the season, and we aren't too far removed from a fifth straight losing season that resulted in Billy Eppler being handed his walking papers. And I'm pleased with the job Perry Minasian did in the off-season, so this isn't a knock on him.

But does anyone else feel like Eppler was made a scapegoat when he actually made some really great moves as GM? 

Let's recap:

  • He traded for Simmons, who turned out to be one of the team's top players for several years.
  • He signed Ohtani, even though the Angels weren't considered frontrunners.
  • He got the extension done with Trout.
  • He traded for Bundy.
  • He signed Rendon.
  • After the Ausmus experiment failed, he brought in Joe Maddon.
  • Draft wise, he brought in Jo Adell, Brandon Marsh, Griffin Canning, and Chris Rodriguez, and some others I'm leaving out who are likely or at least have a chance to have successful MLB careers. And this was after he inherited a Dipto-decimated farm system.

His biggest blunders were his 1-year SP deals, all of which flopped. But it seems likely that Arte gave him a limited budget with which he could pursue the big-name free agents, so he had to find lower-risk solutions.

It honestly shocked me that Eppler was given the can after last year's pandemic-tarnished season. Much of what we're exciting about going into this season are a direct result of moves Eppler made.

What say you?

Yes I believe he was made a scapegoat.  The combine payroll limitations along with bad farm gave him limited options.  However, this is a business where the manager or GM often are made scapegoats 

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1 hour ago, mmc said:

No, you don’t get to have 5 straight losing seasons with the leagues best player and an owner willing to spend, and keep your job

Are was not willing to spend under Eppler.  However I do agree 5 years of losing seasons does not justify keeping ones job.

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2 hours ago, tdawg87 said:

Not trying to be contrarian but how do you know this? Serious question. Do these guys have a page on FanGraphs?

GM stat -Trades In The Season

Or "TITS"

"Minasian had better TITS than Eppler"

"His TITS were kind of bad"

"He fucked us with his TITS that summer"

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Eppler played a weak hand fairly well, and maybe his narrative changes if he had 6 years rather than 5. By year's end we could see Marsh, maybe Adell, C.Rod and maybe Detmers added to Ohtani, Fletch, Walsh, Ward, Rengifo and he could claim the team had a very Eppler look. Maybe that's enough for Arte to give him another contract, maybe not.

His biggest failing in my view was creating or allowing (or even just being oblivious to), a corporate culture that led to employees supplying sticky substances to help opposing pitchers beat the Angels, and allowed the terrible chain of events to occur in the Skaggs tragedy. I have absolutely no idea of Eppler's knowledge of either incident but as the GM at the time he must shoulder a degree of the blame for it happening on his watch.

As for the TITS - Minasian's do look good at first glance, but may prove to sag over time.

 

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3 minutes ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

teix... grienke....

Sosh had a pair of huge TITS in his time here....

The Teix comp pick got us trout.... think about that for a minute.... probably Sosh's best TITS. Sosh's TITS got us Trout!

Those TITS made the team deep and dangerous... some real double D TITS. Glory days is right.

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