Dylan Bundy

[Docwaukee]

3 minutes ago, Blarg said:

He is getting the shitty defense and lack of offense of his Baltimore years. Hard to pitch when you can't trust the catcher or the fielders behind you. 

then continue to let it be there fault and keep the ball in the yard.  

[Docwaukee]

13 minutes ago, Angelsjunky said:

This was like a "best of" mash-up of @Dochalo and @Angel Oracle. Very entertaining (and most of which I agree with).

I'm feeling spicy lately.  

[Blarg]

3 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

then continue to let it be there fault and keep the ball in the yard.  

Come on, you know most home runs are simply lucky guesses. But consistently botching routine plays isn't bad luck. Consistently not blocking a pitch in the dirt is not bad luck. Not having a single arm in the outfield that can make an assist isn't bad luck. This team is terrible at fielding. 

So pitching with a manager that pulls you at 65 pitches if it isn't a 1,2,3 inning after the fourth doesn't give any of these guys any chance any game to chalk up a win. Even a hollow 6-5 win, they all get pulled and the bullpen finishes off the game giving up a 5 spot when they only needed one out. 

I don't see any pitcher worth his salt wanting to come to the Angels with the kind of roster that takes the field right now. 

[Revad]

Cut down on tacos and pd Thai.  I’m not a doctor buttt

[Revad]

24 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

I'm feeling spicy lately.  

Cut down on tacos and pad Thai.  I’m not a doctor buttt

[Angelsjunky]

To riff off you, @Dochalo, it all goes back to Brian Specht. Actually, it goes back further to Mike Colangelo. Oh yeah, and some Howie Kendrick and a dash of Casey Kotchman mixed in. Let me explain...

For the young 'uns, or those that don't follow the minor leagues, Mike Colangelo was a guy who hit .350/.437/.481 in 54 AA/AAA games in 1999 at age 22, a year after hitting .342/.422/.570 in 58 A/A+ games. He only played a single game with the Angels in 1999, although made good of it by going 1-2 with a single and walk. I don't remember exactly what happened, but he ended up missing 2000 (injury, presumably) and was claimed by the Padres on waivers, playing mostly for their AAA team but hitting .242/.310/.407 in 100 PA with the Padres big league club. He then ended up on the Athletics and only had 26 PA for them, and spent the rest of his career (through 2006) floating around AAA. He hit pretty well, but never got another shot at the majors.

Brian Specht was a few years younger than Colangelo, a 9th round draft pick in 1999. He held his own as he gradually worked his way up the minors but didn't wow until his second year in Salt Lake in 2005, when he hit .308/.372/.506 in 73 games at age 24. For a brief moment, he was a darling among some Angels fans. Specht didn't ever make it to the majors, playing only 28 games in Salt Lake in 2006 (.269/.346/.419), then vanished, retiring from baseball at age 25. Not sure what happened; maybe a floor manager position opened up at Home Depot, or maybe he changed his name to Stradling and got a job with In N Out.

A few years after Specht was drafted, the Angels drafted a young second baseman in the 10th round of the 2002 draft. 10th rounder? Who cares? Well, that 10th rounder began to go Hornsby on the minor leagues, hitting .318 as an 18-year old in Rookie ball, then .363 as a 19-year old, and pretty much hitting .360ish all the way up, including .369/.408/.631 in 69 games in AAA at age 22. At the time, he was my favorite prospect, and definitely a future batting champion (I've always had a weakness for second basemen, the ugly stepchild of middle infielders, especially those with high averages and lots of doubles and triples...I think it goes back to Rod Carew, probably my first favorite Angel).

This kid's name was Howie Kendrick and had a pretty good major league career, hitting .294/.337/.430 with 31 fWAR over 1621 games. Meaning, the typical Howie Kendrick season was "above average" (3.1 WAR); sometimes just average, sometimes a borderline star. But the batting championship never materialized, so there was a subtle sense of disappointment during his Angels career that he was never quite the player he promised to be while in the minors (but boy did we miss him when he was gone).

Anyhow, while I have followed baseball since around 1980, I didn't really get serious about it until 1987, when my early teenage brain took to reading baseball magazines and the joy of statistics. A few years later, I discovered Bill James, the Godfather of Stat Nerds, and one of his disciples, Rob Neyer. I've always enjoyed sabermetrics (Nerdspeak for advanced statistics), and used to buy Baseball Prospectus each year (although haven't in a few, for whatever reason).

Before Colangelo, Specht, and Kendrick, I used to (naively) focus almost entirely on minor league statistics in terms of projection. If a guy hits .360 in AAA, he should hit .330 in the majors, right? Wrong. I could sprinkle in a dash of Casey Kotchman here, who I thought would be our version of Todd Helton; then I re-adjusted to Mark Grace, then...well, we got what we got, and at least it got us a couple months of Mark Teixeira, which in turn yielded the draft slot that got us Trout.

Anyhow, my long-winded point is this: I still have a penchant to become enamored with minor league stats, though I try to leaven it with scouting reports and eyewitness accounts from smart fans like some of those who post here. I have found that, in the end, no matter what the minor league stats are, you don't know how they'll translate to the majors. And it isn't just the toolsy guys, as there have been plenty of "saber-darlings" with tons of walks that didn't translate well to the majors. 

Sometimes you have a hunch about a guy, and sometimes that hunch is correct. I had a hunch about Kole Calhoun from the moment I saw his name: He sounded like an Old West cowboy, and I liked his red-headed swagger. He was part of a high-powered Orem offense that included collegiate mashers like Brandon Decker, Drew Heid, and Travis Weatherspoon. Never heard of these guys? Well, they all flamed out in the gauntlet of the mid-minors, where dreamed of major league careers go to die.

In the end, predicting who will succeed and who won't is a tricky business, with an "X-factor" that is impossible to analyze. Stats are important, but so is scouting, as well as age relative to level, make-up, and other factors. Who knew that Mookie Betts, Josh Donaldson and Jacob deGrom would be so good; meanwhile, Delmon Young and Corey Patterson weren't the mega-stars that Baseball America predicted--they weren't even all that good--and the promising Jeremy Hermida hit .296/.369/.501 at age 23 and was out of baseball by age 28.

But that's also part of the fun of it. Without the X-factor we'd have just another algorithm, and we have too many of those these days. There is no algorithm that accurately predicts the human soul, therefore there is no algorithm that can consistently predict what sort of career a player will have. So we watch and wait, and hope.

Edited June 1, 2021 by Angelsjunky

[Revad]

Ok.  But spect?

[Angelsjunky]

Just now, Revad said:

Ok.  But spect?

Yeah. For a short bit, a bunch of us were excited about him - it wasn't just me. But it was just a short bit.

[Revad]

No I remember, that’s the problem

[Mark PT]

10 hours ago, Angelsjunky said:

That's probably true, but probably not enough to explain his utter plummet. Maybe he got a boner about his increased velo, then that dropped back to norm and he kept throwing the meatballs.

This is what he is. In a good year he is a .400 - .500 ERA guy. In a COVID-shortend season he posted a .329. Outside of this he has a below average fastball and suspect control of all pitches.

[Inside Pitch]

1 hour ago, nate said:

Yeah but at least he is pitching in a neutral park and not the bandbox he pitched in in Baltimore

You my want to look at the recent park data...

Angel Stadium

Park Factors: (Over 100 favors batters, under 100 favors pitchers.)
    Multi-year: Batting - 106, Pitching - 107
    One-year: Batting - 108, Pitching - 110

Camden

Park Factors: (Over 100 favors batters, under 100 favors pitchers.)
    Multi-year: Batting - 102, Pitching - 103
    One-year: Batting - 113, Pitching - 115

Angel Stadium has been playing like a hitter's park for a while now..

[Angel Oracle]

11 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

You my want to look at the recent park data...

Angel Stadium

Park Factors: (Over 100 favors batters, under 100 favors pitchers.)
    Multi-year: Batting - 106, Pitching - 107
    One-year: Batting - 108, Pitching - 110

Camden

Park Factors: (Over 100 favors batters, under 100 favors pitchers.)
    Multi-year: Batting - 102, Pitching - 103
    One-year: Batting - 113, Pitching - 115

Angel Stadium has been playing like a hitter's park for a while now..

At least when the marine layer doesn’t exist, just like when the warm winds blow from the south at Wrigley Field and balls fly out.

[Angels in 2030]

I'd like to say he's been the biggest disappointment this year.  Unfortunately, that's a crowded list for the Angels this year and Bundy is just one of the guys in that long line.  He's a contender, but there more several more deserving Angels for that honor this year. 

[Inside Pitch]

29 minutes ago, Angelsjunky said:

To riff off you, @Dochalo, it all goes back to Brian Specht. Actually, it goes back further to Mike Colangelo. Oh yeah, and some Howie Kendrick and a dash of Casey Kotchman mixed in. Let me explain...

For the young 'uns, or those that don't follow the minor leagues, Mike Colangelo was a guy who hit .350/.437/.481 in 54 AA/AAA games in 1999 at age 22, a year after hitting .342/.422/.570 in 58 A/A+ games. He only played a single game with the Angels in 1999, although made good of it by going 1-2 with a single and walk. I don't remember exactly what happened, but he ended up missing 2000 (injury, presumably) and was claimed by the Padres on waivers, playing mostly for their AAA team but hitting .242/.310/.407 in 100 PA with the Padres big league club. He then ended up on the Athletics and only had 26 PA for them, and spent the rest of his career (through 2006) floating around AAA. He hit pretty well, but never got another shot at the majors

What happened was we had a complete idiot for a manager.  

Garret Anderson was in the middle of his only season as a full time CF (he was the Sabermetric GG by one of the biggest margins ever), and had a day off three days previously but on this glorious day Collins decided to put career minor leaguer and a guy who had not started a game in CF at the MLB level that season center next to a guy making his MLB debut.  Fly ball to LF..  Colangelo settles under it, he was a complete stop and flat footed.  Williams never called him off, didn't say shit, but ran THROUGH Colangelo at full speed snapping his knee backwards.

Dude was out of commission for a year and half after tearing all three ligaments in his knee.   He never really recovered from it.   

[Angelsjunky]

3 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

What happened was we had a complete idiot for a manager.  

Garret Anderson was in the middle of his only season as a full time CF (he was the Sabermetric GG by one of the biggest margins ever), and had a day off three days previously but on this glorious day Collins decided to put career minor leaguer and a guy who had not started a game in CF at the MLB level that season center next to a guy making his MLB debut.  Fly ball to LF..  Colangelo settles under it, he was a complete stop and flat footed.  Williams never called him off, didn't say shit, but ran THROUGH Colangelo at full speed snapping his knee backwards.

Dude was out of commission for a year and half after tearing all three ligaments in his knee.   He never really recovered from it.   

That's a bummer - thanks for that. What sort of player do you think Colangelo might have been without that injury? 

[Angelsjunky]

43 minutes ago, Mark PT said:

This is what he is. In a good year he is a .400 - .500 ERA guy. In a COVID-shortend season he posted a .329. Outside of this he has a below average fastball and suspect control of all pitches.

Right, but he exhibited greatly improved command and control last year, thus the hope that he was taking a step forward. My concern last year was that it seemed he had paper-thin margins; meaning, as long as he had full command of his pitches and could throw them where he wanted to, he'd be really good. But I was worried that it was unsustainable and, so far at least, this season bears that out.

[Inside Pitch]

16 minutes ago, Angelsjunky said:

That's a bummer - thanks for that. What sort of player do you think Colangelo might have been without that injury? 

He lacked the power that was commonplace in those juiced up days but he had stupid good bat to ball skills, torqued balls and knew how to work a walk.   I think he was a pretty safe bet for a .275+/.375-400/.420-440 -- those numbers sound high today but in those days, an .800 OPS was almost league average.  I think he would have been a doubles machine.  Dude wasn't a base-stealer but he ran really well, and he had tremendous hands/wrists, his swing looked like someone had driven a spike through his spine with how well he turned while keeping his torso lined up, really really great hands. 

Unfortunately he went from a line drive machine to a GB machine after he lost a leg, he also started to try to compensate by turning his hips early which he had never done, it was awful to watch.  He finally seemed to be getting it back a few years later but by then he was 27-28 and team just weren't going to wait for a guy unless he was showing 30+ HR power and he was more of a 15-20 guy.

 

[JustATroutFan]

Angels Stadium is a hitters ballpark now? No, the Angels pitchers can't pitch and they have this guy named Trout, who has a .333/.486/.685 slash line at home in the 2021 regular season so far and can make any pitchers ballpark look like a bandbox. Those two reasons have inflated the ballpark factor of Angel Stadium. 

[Stradling]

This should be fun. 

[Mark PT]

1 hour ago, Angelsjunky said:

Right, but he exhibited greatly improved command and control last year, thus the hope that he was taking a step forward. My concern last year was that it seemed he had paper-thin margins; meaning, as long as he had full command of his pitches and could throw them where he wanted to, he'd be really good. But I was worried that it was unsustainable and, so far at least, this season bears that out.

Ya, command is everything for this guy because none of his pitches are beyond average at best. HIs deception becomes useless without command. I personally would not bring him back as there is no room for error, as you mentioned.

[Inside Pitch]

18 minutes ago, Stradling said:

This should be fun. 

 

[Angel Oracle]

53 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

He lacked the power that was commonplace in those juiced up days but he had stupid good bat to ball skills, torqued balls and knew how to work a walk.   I think he was a pretty safe bet for a .275+/.375-400/.420-440 -- those numbers sound high today but in those days, an .800 OPS was almost league average.  I think he would have been a doubles machine.  Dude wasn't a base-stealer but he ran really well, and he had tremendous hands/wrists, his swing looked like someone had driven a spike through his spine with how well he turned while keeping his torso lined up, really really great hands. 

Unfortunately he went from a line drive machine to a GB machine after he lost a leg, he also started to try to compensate by turning his hips early which he had never done, it was awful to watch.  He finally seemed to be getting it back a few years later but by then he was 27-28 and team just weren't going to wait for a guy unless he was showing 30+ HR power and he was more of a 15-20 guy.

 

F Terry the Tirade Collins!

[Inside Pitch]

39 minutes ago, Angel Oracle said:

F Terry the Tirade Collins!

He was really awful.  Biggest chickenshit to ever wear an Angels uniform.  Hid behind Bowa, Disar, and Hollins while they did his dirty work.

[T.G.]

7 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

He was really awful.  Biggest chickenshit to ever wear an Angels uniform.  Hid behind Bowa, Disar, and Hollins while they did his dirty work.

 

[totdprods]

3 hours ago, Angelsjunky said:

Anyhow, my long-winded point is this: I still have a penchant to become enamored with minor league stats, though I try to leaven it with scouting reports and eyewitness accounts from smart fans like some of those who post here. I have found that, in the end, no matter what the minor league stats are, you don't know how they'll translate to the majors. And it isn't just the toolsy guys, as there have been plenty of "saber-darlings" with tons of walks that didn't translate well to the majors. 

This is part of why I started slicing minor league stats into two-week periods, and digging in to those small samples to simply look at who is performing. They have no real bearing on MLB success, but sometimes they reveal - especially when a name sticks for a couple 'editions' - when someone might have turned a corner in their performance. 

Minor leagues can be weird, almost the reverse of MLB stats, in that looking at a full set of data over the course of a year can be misleading. These are players who are developing - someone with a subpar season's worth of stats might have had a turnaround moment in BB/K or another indicator that doesn't show up if you look at the big picture, or a pitcher who gets hammered early and then goes on a nice run for a couple weeks. That's the nature of minor league ball and what makes the small slices more interesting, and often gives me the hunch on who to look into further.