Just curious - what is going right with this org?

[The Ghost of Bob Starr]

I’m this post or one like it, should just live eternally at the top of the forums. 
 

God this organization is garbage.  From ownership and management to players and the announcing team. 
 

just when you think it can’t get any worse… the failos take it down another notch. 

[ukyah]

1 hour ago, The Ghost of Bob Starr said:

I’m this post or one like it, should just live eternally at the top of the forums. 
 

God this organization is garbage.  From ownership and management to players and the announcing team. 
 

just when you think it can’t get any worse… the failos take it down another notch. 

 

i'm not a failo, but i don't really disagree. arte and his upper management have seemed to doom this franchise to an eternity of utter failure. the people who brought in the only bright spots on this team aren't even here anymore. it's pretty hard to even feel remotely positive about anything angel related. many angel fans have no expectations, which is a whole other conversation, but from that perspective they'll be fine just watching and waiting it out. que sera sera.

i think in the absensce of actual angel improvement that i would prefer to see ohtani and trout leave the angels. unselfishly because i'd like to see both of them have success and see how they perform in the playoffs. selfishly because there's a big part of me that really doesn't care about the angels at all anymore and i'd just like to watch mlb as i do the nfl, where i don't care about any single team; i just like to watch the sport and good players/teams.

[Angels 1961]

They have the most talented player to ever play the game. For a few more months. They know not to be buyers at trade deadline. Long Beach still wants them. Mike Trout knows this team is not going to turn this around.

[The Ghost of Bob Starr]

I’m the past years, I’d post this and an army of  people would be fighting mad.  Not even @Stradlinghas gotten out of his rocking chair to grab the Angels pom poms. 

 

The hardest thing for me is as a kid, I was demoralized when the Angels screwed up Nolan Ryan’s time here, and then he walked on them.  He was smart. 
 

Trout looks anguished here.  Ohtani is probably doing his best to survive.  
 

The question is could the organization even do anything with the 20 prospects they’d get for those two guys? 

[Stradling]

1 minute ago, The Ghost of Bob Starr said:

I’m the past years, I’d post this and an army of  people would be fighting mad.  Not even @Stradlinghas gotten out of his rocking chair to grab the Angels pom poms. 

 

The hardest thing for me is as a kid, I was demoralized when the Angels screwed up Nolan Ryan’s time here, and then he walked on them.  He was smart. 
 

Trout looks anguished here.  Ohtani is probably doing his best to survive.  
 

The question is could the organization even do anything with the 20 prospects they’d get for those two guys? 

I realize you are just a troll, reminding us how bad the team is, while you are above it all. “My rocking chair” is cute since we’re approximately the same age. Some of you simply get off being twats.  Enjoy.  Oh and you are welcome for giving you the attention you yearned for when posting today.  

[Angelsjunky]

1 hour ago, Stradling said:

I realize you are just a troll, reminding us how bad the team is, while you are above it all. “My rocking chair” is cute since we’re approximately the same age. Some of you simply get off being twats.  Enjoy.  Oh and you are welcome for giving you the attention you yearned for when posting today.  

[UndertheHalo]

I’m pretty sure Art is still making money.  So, you can’t say that part of it is going wrong.  You did ask about the organization.  So I’ll take that as an encompassing top to bottom thing.  The money.  Pretty real consideration. Again, presumably going well. 

[eligrba]

The Angels will be the team that either wastes or loses two of the most impactful players to ever play baseball. Only incompetence can achieve such a distinction.

[Slegnaac]

4 hours ago, eligrba said:

The Angels will be the team that either wastes or loses two of the most impactful players to ever play baseball. Only incompetence can achieve such a distinction.

You shouldn't write off the Red Sox like that.

[Puget Sound Angel]

The City Connect hat is cool.

[Dtwncbad]

[Angels 1961]

Anaheim stadium still aa nice place to bring family to a game.

[darctoon]

21 hours ago, eligrba said:

The Angels will be the team that either wastes or loses two of the most impactful players to ever play baseball. Only incompetence can achieve such a distinction.

Functionally, I'm not sure what the Angels can actually do right now.  I hate this being my first post here (I was looking for an Angels fan site to comment on and sbn seems dead after Rev was fired).  To be clear, I'm not an Angels fan, but I enjoy following them in this Ohtani-emergence era, because it's damn exciting and damn interesting, and it would be wonderful to see Ohtani on the mound in the playoffs, and Trout in the lineup.

That said, I mean, this organization is in dire straits.  Financially handicapped with the Rendon deal, a dearth of talent in the bigs after the big 2, young talent that hasn't produced consistently, and a a minor league farm system that really hasn't produced well enough over the last decade (and really, outside of Bachman and Jeremiah Jackson, no one is real close to getting to the majors (as possible impact talent) with Bachman and Jackson both more likely in mid-late 2023, if things go well).  The real kicker about this season is that the much maligned rotation has been better, but the lineup is such a horrific mess.  I'm guessing/hoping Minaisian tried to make moves earlier, while waiting/hoping on Walsh and others to step up, but few lineups can survive with 5-6 holes, depending on the day.

Actually, maybe this is the real kicker - I'm not sure there's that much you could get in a firesale, while keeping on a timeline to try and compete with Ohtani and Trout, in terms of close to ready talent (granted, it's not like firesales always work in getting back quality talent thats close ... the Cubs trades last year focused a lot more on upside).  There's Iglesias, Syndegaard, Sandoval, Taylor Ward, and Loup that could be probably get decent talent off the top.  I'm not that sold that Syndegaard will net a huge return because it's a pure rental and he's still somewhat limited.  I think Sandoval could net one, but if you deal him, you are definitely going away from any timeline to win with Ohtani/Trout, and at that point, you might as well just reboot the entire program.  Iglesias and Loup will get you your typical pen arm returns for a closer and a middle reliever.  In Iglesias' case,  maybe it gets you someone in the close to ready and a lottery ticket or two.

Option A, IMO, really has to be every effort to clear as much of the Rendon deal as possible.  It's an albatross in regards to keeping Ohtani (if you went that route) and an albatross in terms of inhibiting other moves.  This might be Mission Impossible, though.  Absent packaging Sandoval with Rendon, and hoping a team will take on half the deal (with the Angels covering the rest), I don't see what combination of talent could get that done, and if you do that, you create another hole.

Just so hard to see how such a big franchise, an owner willing to spend, and multiple GM's could mismanage things to such epic proportions while still having Trout and Ohtani.  I'm really not sure what Minaisian can do.  This feels like a multi-year rebuild job right now.  Even a trade of Ohtani/Trout likely only accelerate the rebuild a little, considerinig the miss rate on prospects. 

Assuming they aren't going on a full rebuild, and leaving aside the Ohtani FA issue for now, I'd trade Iglesias/Loup this deadline, with the focus on getting a ready bat to compete with Walsh and others in the corner IF/LF spots.  Pen arms/closers can be found/developed, even with the Angels recent spotty history.  If someone offers you a monster return on Ward, you take it, but otherwise, since he's still cost-controlled, if you believe in the breakout with his swing changes and that he's found some consistency on it now, you keep him around.  No need to extend him considering his age and arb status.  Any move on Syndegaard should be dependent upon your relationship with him - if Minaisian feels like he might resign, I'm just not convinced it's worth it to deal him, since he might get better with another year under his belt.  All these are really half-measures hoping to score, though.  I can't think of an organization in a worse shape right now overall, and I'm just not sure what they can realistically do, absent moving Ohtani now, which I doubt they will do.

[T.G.]

Welcome @darctoon, hope you'll be a regular here.

[eligrba]

22 minutes ago, darctoon said:

Functionally, I'm not sure what the Angels can actually do right now.  I hate this being my first post here (I was looking for an Angels fan site to comment on and sbn seems dead after Rev was fired).  To be clear, I'm not an Angels fan, but I enjoy following them in this Ohtani-emergence era, because it's damn exciting and damn interesting, and it would be wonderful to see Ohtani on the mound in the playoffs, and Trout in the lineup.

That said, I mean, this organization is in dire straits.  Financially handicapped with the Rendon deal, a dearth of talent in the bigs after the big 2, young talent that hasn't produced consistently, and a a minor league farm system that really hasn't produced well enough over the last decade (and really, outside of Bachman and Jeremiah Jackson, no one is real close to getting to the majors (as possible impact talent) with Bachman and Jackson both more likely in mid-late 2023, if things go well).  The real kicker about this season is that the much maligned rotation has been better, but the lineup is such a horrific mess.  I'm guessing/hoping Minaisian tried to make moves earlier, while waiting/hoping on Walsh and others to step up, but few lineups can survive with 5-6 holes, depending on the day.

Actually, maybe this is the real kicker - I'm not sure there's that much you could get in a firesale, while keeping on a timeline to try and compete with Ohtani and Trout, in terms of close to ready talent (granted, it's not like firesales always work in getting back quality talent thats close ... the Cubs trades last year focused a lot more on upside).  There's Iglesias, Syndegaard, Sandoval, Taylor Ward, and Loup that could be probably get decent talent off the top.  I'm not that sold that Syndegaard will net a huge return because it's a pure rental and he's still somewhat limited.  I think Sandoval could net one, but if you deal him, you are definitely going away from any timeline to win with Ohtani/Trout, and at that point, you might as well just reboot the entire program.  Iglesias and Loup will get you your typical pen arm returns for a closer and a middle reliever.  In Iglesias' case,  maybe it gets you someone in the close to ready and a lottery ticket or two.

Option A, IMO, really has to be every effort to clear as much of the Rendon deal as possible.  It's an albatross in regards to keeping Ohtani (if you went that route) and an albatross in terms of inhibiting other moves.  This might be Mission Impossible, though.  Absent packaging Sandoval with Rendon, and hoping a team will take on half the deal (with the Angels covering the rest), I don't see what combination of talent could get that done, and if you do that, you create another hole.

Just so hard to see how such a big franchise, an owner willing to spend, and multiple GM's could mismanage things to such epic proportions while still having Trout and Ohtani.  I'm really not sure what Minaisian can do.  This feels like a multi-year rebuild job right now.  Even a trade of Ohtani/Trout likely only accelerate the rebuild a little, considerinig the miss rate on prospects. 

Assuming they aren't going on a full rebuild, and leaving aside the Ohtani FA issue for now, I'd trade Iglesias/Loup this deadline, with the focus on getting a ready bat to compete with Walsh and others in the corner IF/LF spots.  Pen arms/closers can be found/developed, even with the Angels recent spotty history.  If someone offers you a monster return on Ward, you take it, but otherwise, since he's still cost-controlled, if you believe in the breakout with his swing changes and that he's found some consistency on it now, you keep him around.  No need to extend him considering his age and arb status.  Any move on Syndegaard should be dependent upon your relationship with him - if Minaisian feels like he might resign, I'm just not convinced it's worth it to deal him, since he might get better with another year under his belt.  All these are really half-measures hoping to score, though.  I can't think of an organization in a worse shape right now overall, and I'm just not sure what they can realistically do, absent moving Ohtani now, which I doubt they will do.

Thanks for the reply. Some of the factors contributing to the loses are probably not obvious. I still have a hard time understanding how an entire team can play so poorly at the same time.  

[Angel Oracle]

22 hours ago, UndertheHalo said:

I’m pretty sure Art is still making money.  So, you can’t say that part of it is going wrong.  You did ask about the organization.  So I’ll take that as an encompassing top to bottom thing.  The money.  Pretty real consideration. Again, presumably going well. 

The paid tickets are going down.

On pace for 2.5 million, but may well sink down to between 2.3 and 2.4 million.

Arte’s lost that auto 3 million attendance.

[darctoon]

21 minutes ago, eligrba said:

Thanks for the reply. Some of the factors contributing to the loses are probably not obvious. I still have a hard time understanding how an entire team can play so poorly at the same time.  

I was more or less emphasizing the incompetence point.  

There's always moves that sound great but don't pan out.  A few years back, they made good, small gambles on arms.  It just so happened almost none panned out.

Problem I see here, from almost an outsider (hey, everyone watches Ohtani clips now ... as a side note, since I probably won't post in that intro thread, my favorite is not a HR one (although that 2nd home run against KC, that was electric.  Favorite is still when he slid home against the Orioles ... boy what a difference a year makes.) is that, and I'm not one to reflexively blame owners (I don't know the intricacies of issues with Arte, but as a Cubs fan, there's a deep run of anti-Ricketts sentiment, which may be fair, but baseball mistakes shouldn't be lumped with the owner unless there's proof he meddled), but it speaks to not enough meaningful changes being done in the org.  All organizations miss on prospects - the Angels seem to miss a lot more, particularly on impact talent (I could be wrong, but scanning Angels prospects list for the last two decades isn't a pretty picture in terms of guys that succeeded).  The article about Ward working with Woodward on his swing suggests the Angels weren't supportive of his efforts and/or they weren't modernizing their departments to look at all possible ways to improve (which is odd, as Eppler was viewed as a fairly modern guy).

You don't need to buy modern analytics to succeed - what you need is a functional organization that has a strong organizational culture and direction, and I think my question is if that is severely lacking in the Angels organization and what can be done about it.  Another way to put it is ... are they plugging the gaps on a leaky ship instead of trying to make a stronger ship?  They bet too heavily on some bats this year - Walsh for one, the youngsters (although to be fair, they had to give one of them some run at some point).  There was a thorough lack of quality depth, with a system they had to know was lacking.  You can try and plug the dikes if you have the money to spend this offseason (and they don't have that much flexibility, they aren't going to spend like the Dodgers, but who knows what happens next year.  Maybe a starter or two will backslide.  Maybe someone else gets hurt.

One very important thing is they need to stop rushing kids up to fill the spots.  Detmers really could've used a bit more time.  I think he'll be fine in time, but with Bachman, don't rush him (and there's already concerning signs) and Silseth really could've used more time.  Long term, getting that pipeline in a strong order is the only way to have continued success.  There's the makings of a strong staff of youngish guys behind Ohtani/Sandoval sooner than later (although I wonder if Bachman might be better in the pen, don't know some weird gut feeling there).

[Lou]

28 minutes ago, Angel Oracle said:

The paid tickets are going down.

On pace for 2.5 million, but may well sink down to between 2.3 and 2.4 million.

Arte’s lost that auto 3 million attendance.

Dodgers and Yankees attendances are down, too. 

It's a sign of the times. 

[Angel Oracle]

14 minutes ago, Lou said:

Dodgers and Yankees attendances are down, too. 

It's a sign of the times. 

I did look at 2022 so far this year vs 2019. 

Yankees - per game is 10% down.

Doyyers - per game is 6% down. 

Halos - per game is 17% down.

Does seem to point out the decrease across MLB.

I would hope that Arte Moreno doesn’t want future attendance to sink too much further.  Winning teams would start to reverse that. 

 

[notherhalo]

Sandoval is pretty good

Pujols contract is over

[cysomeawfulpitcher]

[floplag]

Artes making money, lol 

[Angel Oracle]

They got a SORELY needed day off yesterday to lick their extensive wounds from the 1-8 road trip.

[Jason]

15 hours ago, notherhalo said:

Sandoval is pretty good

Pujols contract is over

This was going to be my post 

[Duren, Duren]

They looked pretty good the first part of the season. Ward was playing at an elite level, Rendon was contributing, Trout was as good as he ever had been. Ohtani picked up where he left off last year. Walsh was showing good power. The rest of the lineup did just enough to not screw things up. 

Noah was on a roll,  the pitching staff seemed to be in sync and the young arms coming into their own.  We even had a no hitter. Maddon seemed to be fully engaged and pushing the right buttons.

Ten games over .500 and it seemed they would at least remain in playoff contention. No one could have imagined the fourteen game losing streak and what would come after 

Was Rendon somehow the glue that held the lineup together? Strange as it seems? Probably coincidental, but things really spiralled down around then.  

But teams on losing streaks often look for all sorts of explanations. For instance, the Jays now have lost nine of ten. Some of the exact same complaints from their media. Not using the whole field when hitting, playing as individuals rather than  together. Lack of concentration. Failures at key times from the pitchers. And so on. 

Maybe the Angels collectively weren't good enough to sustain their early pace. But they shouldn't be this bad for this long either.