Two basic near-certainties that frame the future

[Docwaukee]

3 hours ago, Angelsjunky said:

No offense taken, @Docwaukee, but wasn't their good reason to be more optimistic about this year? 

Was there any reason to think that Raisel would start blowing saves left and right, and all three of Loup, Tepera and Bradley would be significantly worse than last year?

Was there any reason to think that both Adell and Marsh would be this bad? Or that Rendon couldn't stay healthy for at least most of the year? Or that Fletcher would be out most of the year? Or that Walsh and Stassi would regress this badly?

It was reasonable to assume that the Angels were a legit 85-win team that could win 90+ games if more went right then wrong. I think that's what Minasian hope for.

So it was reasonable for Minasian to build the team he did--at least in terms of the lineup, rotation and bullpen--and for us to hope for more. Where the error came - which you pointed out before the year started - is that Minasian didn't build any depth beyond the regulars. Part of that is simply the problem of a weak farm system, but he could have anticipated the problems and done a better job with the bench he assembled. 

My point being, I don't think Minasian erred in thinking the frontline players would be pretty good - and they were for the first 40 games. Where he erred is that the talent of the team was paper-thin, sort of like the Old West town in Blazing Saddles. 

And props to you for pointing this out before the season even started. 

 

I'll take some credit for pointing it out buy there's no way I saw it being this bad.  But I think that's clouding the fact that even if Walsh, Stassi, and Marsh were better, or fletcher were healthy, the team still wouldn't be that good.  At least in my opinion.  Now to real nut punch is the performance of Tepera, Loup and Iglesias.  Which I will take some credit for insinuating pretty early.   

I guess my frustration mostly comes from the abject failure of pretty much every player acquired for a really long time.  

[Docwaukee]

13 minutes ago, Angels 1961 said:

I understand they need a rebuild 

please make an effort to contribute something besides rainman like repetition.  

[Angelsjunky]

36 minutes ago, Docwaukee said:

I'll take some credit for pointing it out buy there's no way I saw it being this bad.  But I think that's clouding the fact that even if Walsh, Stassi, and Marsh were better, or fletcher were healthy, the team still wouldn't be that good.  At least in my opinion.  Now to real nut punch is the performance of Tepera, Loup and Iglesias.  Which I will take some credit for insinuating pretty early.   

I guess my frustration mostly comes from the abject failure of pretty much every player acquired for a really long time.  

Certainly they were playing over their heads a bit for the first 40ish games. But they also played that well - that was real.

But yeah, I share your frustration. I've often said that if I were a major league owner, I'd be very hesitant to dole out ANY big contracts, and instead just pour that money into scouting and development, and only offer big contracts to homegrown stars. The Angels have been particularly bad at signing big free agents, but the league-wide average is well below 50%, and I think more like 20% - in terms of big money players earning their contracts. Yet they just keep doing it, again and again. I honestly don't understand why, especially when there are examples of smartly run franchises that win spending far less.

And you don't have to be the Athletics or Rays. The Cardinals and Braves are almost always contending, and spend far less than the Dodgers, Yankees, and Red Sox. 

 

[Docwaukee]

36 minutes ago, Angelsjunky said:

And you don't have to be the Athletics or Rays. The Cardinals and Braves are almost always contending, and spend far less than the Dodgers, Yankees, and Red Sox.

Yeah.  Mentioned that above although I forgot to include the braves.  

And it not just about the big money guys.  I can at least reconcile that in my own head knowing those are just typically bad deals.  It's everything else.  Almost everyone else they've acquired.  Whether via trade or as a low budge or mid budget signing.  

Over the last 7 years who's been decent?  Yunel Escobar?  Tommy La Stella?  A few pen arms from the scrap heap?  The occasional Jefry Marte or Brian Goodwin?  Felix Pena?  Cobb was good but we let him go or maybe he wanted to leave or whatever.  

Simmons and Ohtani of course.  Among a sea of the guys I mentioned plus Iglesias, Eric young jr, Cesar Puello, Mayfield, Geovany Soto, Ben Revere, Monte Harrison, Zack Cozart, Juan Lagares, Danny Espinosa, Drew Butera, Jabari Blash (sorry @ettin), Kean Wong, Adam Eaton, Tyler Wade, Lucroy, Bour, Nick Buss, Luis Valbuena (RIP), Ortega, Kevan Smith, Jarrett Parker, Brandon Phillips, Wifredo Tovar, Chris Young, Francisco Arcia, Phil Gosselin, Andrew Velazquez, Gregorio Petit, Shane Robinson, Johnny G, Jose Fernandez, Cliff Pennington, Anthony Bemboom, Matt Duffy, Rene Rivera.  

Do you know that of all the guys on that bottom list, only one of them accumulated more than 1.0 WAR the entire time they were with the halos.  

Cameron Maybin at 1.2 WAR.  He's the one.  The Neo among the 77 other players on the last from the 7 years.  

Oh shit wait.  I forgot to include a lot of pitchers.  Teheran, Lincecum, Cahill, Allen Deck Mcguire, Luis Garcia...aw f it.  there's just too many.  In fact it 107 guys with a WAR of 1.0 or below.  

Felix Pena actually wins the prize for best pitching acquisition for the last 7 years with 2.6 WAR (aside from Shohei of course).  

Most accumulated pitching WAR after Ohtani from the last seven years?  Heaney and Skaggs rank 2 and 3.  Then Shoemaker.  Cam Bedrosian ranks 6th.  

What in the blue F**K has this franchise been doing?  

[Angels 1961]

59 minutes ago, Docwaukee said:

Yeah.  Mentioned that above although I forgot to include the braves.  

And it not just about the big money guys.  I can at least reconcile that in my own head knowing those are just typically bad deals.  It's everything else.  Almost everyone else they've acquired.  Whether via trade or as a low budge or mid budget signing.  

Over the last 7 years who's been decent?  Yunel Escobar?  Tommy La Stella?  A few pen arms from the scrap heap?  The occasional Jefry Marte or Brian Goodwin?  Felix Pena?  Cobb was good but we let him go or maybe he wanted to leave or whatever.  

Simmons and Ohtani of course.  Among a sea of the guys I mentioned plus Iglesias, Eric young jr, Cesar Puello, Mayfield, Geovany Soto, Ben Revere, Monte Harrison, Zack Cozart, Juan Lagares, Danny Espinosa, Drew Butera, Jabari Blash (sorry @ettin), Kean Wong, Adam Eaton, Tyler Wade, Lucroy, Bour, Nick Buss, Luis Valbuena (RIP), Ortega, Kevan Smith, Jarrett Parker, Brandon Phillips, Wifredo Tovar, Chris Young, Francisco Arcia, Phil Gosselin, Andrew Velazquez, Gregorio Petit, Shane Robinson, Johnny G, Jose Fernandez, Cliff Pennington, Anthony Bemboom, Matt Duffy, Rene Rivera.  

Do you know that of all the guys on that bottom list, only one of them accumulated more than 1.0 WAR the entire time they were with the halos.  

Cameron Maybin at 1.2 WAR.  He's the one.  The Neo among the 77 other players on the last from the 7 years.  

Oh shit wait.  I forgot to include a lot of pitchers.  Teheran, Lincecum, Cahill, Allen Deck Mcguire, Luis Garcia...aw f it.  there's just too many.  In fact it 107 guys with a WAR of 1.0 or below.  

Felix Pena actually wins the prize for best pitching acquisition for the last 7 years with 2.6 WAR (aside from Shohei of course).  

Most accumulated pitching WAR after Ohtani from the last seven years?  Heaney and Skaggs rank 2 and 3.  Then Shoemaker.  Cam Bedrosian ranks 6th.  

What in the blue F**K has this franchise been doing?  

We all know the names of players. Many added this year and same will happen this off season. Halo motto the more things change the more they remain the same. So how do Angels change things around?

[AngelsLakersFan]

2 hours ago, Docwaukee said:

Yeah.  Mentioned that above although I forgot to include the braves.  

And it not just about the big money guys.  I can at least reconcile that in my own head knowing those are just typically bad deals.  It's everything else.  Almost everyone else they've acquired.  Whether via trade or as a low budge or mid budget signing.  

Over the last 7 years who's been decent?  Yunel Escobar?  Tommy La Stella?  A few pen arms from the scrap heap?  The occasional Jefry Marte or Brian Goodwin?  Felix Pena?  Cobb was good but we let him go or maybe he wanted to leave or whatever.  

Simmons and Ohtani of course.  Among a sea of the guys I mentioned plus Iglesias, Eric young jr, Cesar Puello, Mayfield, Geovany Soto, Ben Revere, Monte Harrison, Zack Cozart, Juan Lagares, Danny Espinosa, Drew Butera, Jabari Blash (sorry @ettin), Kean Wong, Adam Eaton, Tyler Wade, Lucroy, Bour, Nick Buss, Luis Valbuena (RIP), Ortega, Kevan Smith, Jarrett Parker, Brandon Phillips, Wifredo Tovar, Chris Young, Francisco Arcia, Phil Gosselin, Andrew Velazquez, Gregorio Petit, Shane Robinson, Johnny G, Jose Fernandez, Cliff Pennington, Anthony Bemboom, Matt Duffy, Rene Rivera.  

Do you know that of all the guys on that bottom list, only one of them accumulated more than 1.0 WAR the entire time they were with the halos.  

Cameron Maybin at 1.2 WAR.  He's the one.  The Neo among the 77 other players on the last from the 7 years.  

Oh shit wait.  I forgot to include a lot of pitchers.  Teheran, Lincecum, Cahill, Allen Deck Mcguire, Luis Garcia...aw f it.  there's just too many.  In fact it 107 guys with a WAR of 1.0 or below.  

Felix Pena actually wins the prize for best pitching acquisition for the last 7 years with 2.6 WAR (aside from Shohei of course).  

Most accumulated pitching WAR after Ohtani from the last seven years?  Heaney and Skaggs rank 2 and 3.  Then Shoemaker.  Cam Bedrosian ranks 6th.  

What in the blue F**K has this franchise been doing?  

This is why I said I don’t care who they sign or what they spend as long as the players they get are productive.

So obviously I was disappointed, again.

 

[Angelsjunky]

4 hours ago, Docwaukee said:

Yeah.  Mentioned that above although I forgot to include the braves.  

And it not just about the big money guys.  I can at least reconcile that in my own head knowing those are just typically bad deals.  It's everything else.  Almost everyone else they've acquired.  Whether via trade or as a low budge or mid budget signing.  

Over the last 7 years who's been decent?  Yunel Escobar?  Tommy La Stella?  A few pen arms from the scrap heap?  The occasional Jefry Marte or Brian Goodwin?  Felix Pena?  Cobb was good but we let him go or maybe he wanted to leave or whatever.  

Simmons and Ohtani of course.  Among a sea of the guys I mentioned plus Iglesias, Eric young jr, Cesar Puello, Mayfield, Geovany Soto, Ben Revere, Monte Harrison, Zack Cozart, Juan Lagares, Danny Espinosa, Drew Butera, Jabari Blash (sorry @ettin), Kean Wong, Adam Eaton, Tyler Wade, Lucroy, Bour, Nick Buss, Luis Valbuena (RIP), Ortega, Kevan Smith, Jarrett Parker, Brandon Phillips, Wifredo Tovar, Chris Young, Francisco Arcia, Phil Gosselin, Andrew Velazquez, Gregorio Petit, Shane Robinson, Johnny G, Jose Fernandez, Cliff Pennington, Anthony Bemboom, Matt Duffy, Rene Rivera.  

Do you know that of all the guys on that bottom list, only one of them accumulated more than 1.0 WAR the entire time they were with the halos.  

Cameron Maybin at 1.2 WAR.  He's the one.  The Neo among the 77 other players on the last from the 7 years.  

Oh shit wait.  I forgot to include a lot of pitchers.  Teheran, Lincecum, Cahill, Allen Deck Mcguire, Luis Garcia...aw f it.  there's just too many.  In fact it 107 guys with a WAR of 1.0 or below.  

Felix Pena actually wins the prize for best pitching acquisition for the last 7 years with 2.6 WAR (aside from Shohei of course).  

Most accumulated pitching WAR after Ohtani from the last seven years?  Heaney and Skaggs rank 2 and 3.  Then Shoemaker.  Cam Bedrosian ranks 6th.  

What in the blue F**K has this franchise been doing?  

Haha, that's quite a list of mediocrities. 

Clearly the Angels front office sucks, and consistently has for years. They get lucky every once in awhile, but that's a bad track record. What is strange is that I'm pretty certain the cast of doofuses has changed with the GMs, but I wonder who has stayed. John Carpino, but I don't think he has anything to do with actual player acquisitions. Arte? We always blame him, but he's not making all the small moves.

Maybe the Angels have some behind the scenes guru, like that guy in the show Silicon Valley.

[Docwaukee]

39 minutes ago, Angelsjunky said:

Haha, that's quite a list of mediocrities. 

Clearly the Angels front office sucks, and consistently has for years. They get lucky every once in awhile, but that's a bad track record. What is strange is that I'm pretty certain the cast of doofuses has changed with the GMs, but I wonder who has stayed. John Carpino, but I don't think he has anything to do with actual player acquisitions. Arte? We always blame him, but he's not making all the small moves.

Maybe the Angels have some behind the scenes guru, like that guy in the show Silicon Valley.

who hires the GM under the pretense that they will do what is necessary to keep the team competitive on a yearly basis?  

four GM's have been hired by the current ownership group and their minions.  They've all consistently made a lot of poor decisions and been generally unable to improve or sustain a farm system above the bottom third in the league outside of when it was influenced by the likes of Trout and Ohtani or essentially after the 2009 draft.  Two of our former GM's are having more success with other teams.  

And none of them were stupid.  Each of them took somewhat different approaches to try and satisfy whatever the criteria has been presented to them.  Yet no one can seem to get it to work and create a sustainable model for success.  I wonder why that is.  

[robblin17]

45 minutes ago, Docwaukee said:

who hires the GM under the pretense that they will do what is necessary to keep the team competitive on a yearly basis?  

four GM's have been hired by the current ownership group and their minions.  They've all consistently made a lot of poor decisions and been generally unable to improve or sustain a farm system above the bottom third in the league outside of when it was influenced by the likes of Trout and Ohtani or essentially after the 2009 draft.  Two of our former GM's are having more success with other teams.  

And none of them were stupid.  Each of them took somewhat different approaches to try and satisfy whatever the criteria has been presented to them.  Yet no one can seem to get it to work and create a sustainable model for success.  I wonder why that is.  

I wonder!?