Speculate on this organizations dysfunction.

[REDneck]

This organization is not elite or even very good presently, ok we're not the Doyers, Skanks or the Sox.

I can accept that, although I don't see why we can't be on that same level.

We're in a big market.

Ok,the market for the Angels is a notch less than above mentioned teams.

There is franchises thriving in the same market as the Angels.

The Atlanta Braves won the WS last year, the SF Giants have been very successful in the last decade, the St.Louis Cardinals have historically been a great franchise.

The Toronto Blue Jays may be turning a corner.

And then you have franchises like the Tampa Bay Rays and the Oakland A's who considering their small markets have had a good degree of success over the years.

The Houston Astros have been a juggernaut in the the past 5 years and the San Diego Padres  have been very competitive recently...I will not even include these franchises since they have been historically bad and some will reference all the high draft picks.

So what's the problem with the Halos?

Nice run in the 2000s, but horrible since and honestly not very good historically.

What say you?

 

[Stradling]

I’m pretty sure it can be directly tied to me buying a City Connect jersey 

[AngelsMetsWS]

Angels are west coast Wilpon era Mets. 

[REDneck]

6 minutes ago, Stradling said:

I’m pretty sure it can be directly tied to me buying a City Connect jersey 

That's the kind of insight I was looking for!

[Angels 1961]

Angels went south this year when Grich put me on ignore. Until he takes me off no playoffs for halos

[cysomeawfulpitcher]

4 minutes ago, Angels 1961 said:

Angels went south this year when Grich put me on ignore. Until he takes me off no playoffs for halos

Maybe I should ignore him to end this team torture.  He's on thin ice with me lately with his edgelord bullshit.  I'm no saint but he goes too far.

[Second Base]

I'm pretty sure we speculate on this organization's dysfunction in EVERY POST. 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Second Base

[Angelsjunky]

Where have you been? We've been talking about this for several years - its a running thread throughout the year.

There's a long version and a short version. The short version is that slippage from 2009 to 2010 led to a series of bad mistakes that snowballed. And here we are, seventh losing season in a row.

The longer version...well, I've gone over it many times before and don't quite have the energy to go through it again, at least in great detail. But I'll pin-point what I feel like are the key elements.

Basically it started when they didn't rebuild in 2010, after losing the core of their contending team over the previous year plus (first Francisco Rodriguez, and then Lackey, Figgins, and Vlad). After they fell from 97 to 80 wins, Arte Moreno wasn't ready to go through a few down years and pushed Tony Reagins and then Jerry Dipoto to acquire a series of albatrosses: Vernon Wells, Albert Pujols, and Josh Hamilton, all within a span of less than two years. Couple that with disappointing contracts for CJ Wilson and Jered Weaver, and the Angels burned up a lot of cash for mediocre returns. Something like $600M for, I don't know, 20-25 WAR?

These albatross contracts crippled the franchise for years to come. They were actually decent for a few years more, winning 86, 89, 98, and 85 games in 2012-15, largely due to the arrival of the great Mike Trout. But even 2014's playoff season had a negative impact in that it let the Angels think they were better than they were.

In 2015 and more so in 2016, the team imploded - epitomized by the mid-season quitting of GM Jerry Dipoto in 2015. But on the field, a promising young rotation (Garret Richards, Matt Shoemaker, Tyler Skaggs, Andrew Heaney, Nick Tropeano, and Alex Meyer) all went down with major injuries, some (most?) requiring TJS.

The Angels didn't learn their lesson, though, and refused to buckle down and rebuild. Part of it was because they wanted to build around the best player in the game, and not lose him to free agency (due in the 2019 season). So new GM Billy Eppler did a yearly patch job that never held, and even doubled-down on the albatross model, first with Justin Upton and then with Anthony Rendon. 

But they did win the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes and extend Trout through 2030, but this further reinforced the idea that they didn't need to rebuild, and were always "a year away."

But it never happened, or hasn't happened yet. Albatross contracts, and an utterly atrocious record of free agent signings of all shapes and sizes not panning out (and some bouncing back a year later, after leaving the Angels), and the farm system not quite bearing the fruits that we hoped for...and here we are, seventh losing season in a row.

2022 was perhaps the most "Angelic" season of all Angels seasons. It started promising, both with the talent on the field in spring training, and the dreams of the trio of Trout, Ohtani, and Rendon, all in their primes and healthy at the same time. And for the first month and a half, things looked great - the team peaked at around 24-13, and actually had a fourth emergent superstar in Taylor Ward. Seemingly. But Rendon never got going and then went down with injury, Ohtani's hitting regressed, Trout struggled through the worst slump of his career, Fletcher didn't improve and then got hurt, Ward got hurt and never fully recovered (seemingly), the "dynamic duo" of Joe Adell and Brandon Marsh were both terrible disappointments, and on and on. A perfect storm of crappy things.

That's it in a nutshell, I think, though I glossed over a lot of details.

TLDR: Perhaps the most key element is a refusal to rebuild. First in 2010ish, then in 2015ish, then again in 2020ish...and the resulting poor acquisitions that continue to clog payroll. Oh, and a farm system that just doesn't seem to get better ("But there's a lot of talent in the low minors" has been the refrain for like four years now). Basically, the bottom line is that the team is poorly run, from top to bottom. 

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Angelsjunky

[Stradling]

44 minutes ago, cysomeawfulpitcher said:

Maybe I should ignore him to end this team torture.  He's on thin ice with me lately with his edgelord bullshit.  I'm no saint but he goes too far.

This is so cute. 

[Taylor]

A few of us have already speculated about this very subject in this thread.

[Jeff Fletcher]

The Angels farm system became terrible at the same time as Trout became generational at the same time as Josh Hamilton’s contract blew up. 
 

They couldnt trade prospects to improve the big league team (they didn’t have enough) and they couldn’t trade major leaguers to improve the farm system (Tanking with Trout) and they were unwilling to give out more big FA deals. 
 

Simple 

[Ron Mexico]

2 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

The Angels farm system became terrible at the same time as Trout became generational at the same time as Josh Hamilton’s contract blew up. 
 

They couldnt trade prospects to improve the big league team (they didn’t have enough) and they couldn’t trade major leaguers to improve the farm system (Tanking with Trout) and they were unwilling to give out more big FA deals. 
 

Simple 

What does that have to do with drafting and developing players ?

[Jeff Fletcher]

5 minutes ago, Ron Mexico said:

What does that have to do with drafting and developing players ?

They haven’t done that well either. 

[bruin5]

6 minutes ago, Ron Mexico said:

What does that have to do with drafting and developing players ?

Didn’t the total tear down of our Dominican system lead to a lot of these issues? 

[BTH]

17 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

The Angels farm system became terrible at the same time as Trout became generational at the same time as Josh Hamilton’s contract blew up. 
 

They couldnt trade prospects to improve the big league team (they didn’t have enough) and they couldn’t trade major leaguers to improve the farm system (Tanking with Trout) and they were unwilling to give out more big FA deals. 
 

Simple 

That's the "simple" surface answer, but I feel like you need to dig deeper below the surface:

*Why* did the farm system become terrible?

*Why* did Josh Hamilton's contract blow up?

*Why* were they unwilling to give out more big FA deals?

 

To me, the answer to those questions is Arte Moreno.

- Arte didn't invest into the farm system and player development like other organizations (TB, NYY, LAD) have.

- Arte pushed to sign high-profile free agents while disregarding the GMs.

- Arte got gun shy and didn't want to pay free agents after mistakes HE made, not mistakes that the GMs made.

[79CAAman]

1 hour ago, Angelsjunky said:

Where have you been? We've been talking about this for several years - its a running thread throughout the year.

There's a long version and a short version. The short version is that slippage from 2009 to 2010 led to a series of bad mistakes that snowballed. And here we are, seventh losing season in a row.

The longer version...well, I've gone over it many times before and don't quite have the energy to go through it again, at least in great detail. But I'll pin-point what I feel like are the key elements.

Basically it started when they didn't rebuild in 2010, after losing the core of their contending team over the previous year plus (first Francisco Rodriguez, and then Lackey, Figgins, and Vlad). After they fell from 97 to 80 wins, Arte Moreno wasn't ready to go through a few down years and pushed Tony Reagins and then Jerry Dipoto to acquire a series of albatrosses: Vernon Wells, Albert Pujols, and Josh Hamilton, all within a span of less than two years. Couple that with disappointing contracts for CJ Wilson and Jered Weaver, and the Angels burned up a lot of cash for mediocre returns. Something like $600M for, I don't know, 20-25 WAR?

These albatross contracts crippled the franchise for years to come. They were actually decent for a few years more, winning 86, 89, 98, and 85 games in 2012-15, largely due to the arrival of the great Mike Trout. But even 2014's playoff season had a negative impact in that it let the Angels think they were better than they were.

In 2015 and more so in 2016, the team imploded - epitomized by the mid-season quitting of GM Jerry Dipoto in 2015. But on the field, a promising young rotation (Garret Richards, Matt Shoemaker, Tyler Skaggs, Andrew Heaney, Nick Tropeano, and Alex Meyer) all went down with major injuries, some (most?) requiring TJS.

The Angels didn't learn their lesson, though, and refused to buckle down and rebuild. Part of it was because they wanted to build around the best player in the game, and not lose him to free agency (due in the 2019 season). So new GM Billy Eppler did a yearly patch job that never held, and even doubled-down on the albatross model, first with Justin Upton and then with Anthony Rendon. 

But they did win the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes and extend Trout through 2030, but this further reinforced the idea that they didn't need to rebuild, and were always "a year away."

But it never happened, or hasn't happened yet. Albatross contracts, and an utterly atrocious record of free agent signings of all shapes and sizes not panning out (and some bouncing back a year later, after leaving the Angels), and the farm system not quite bearing the fruits that we hoped for...and here we are, seventh losing season in a row.

2022 was perhaps the most "Angelic" season of all Angels seasons. It started promising, both with the talent on the field in spring training, and the dreams of the trio of Trout, Ohtani, and Rendon, all in their primes and healthy at the same time. And for the first month and a half, things looked great - the team peaked at around 24-13, and actually had a fourth emergent superstar in Taylor Ward. Seemingly. But Rendon never got going and then went down with injury, Ohtani's hitting regressed, Trout struggled through the worst slump of his career, Fletcher didn't improve and then got hurt, Ward got hurt and never fully recovered (seemingly), the "dynamic duo" of Joe Adell and Brandon Marsh were both terrible disappointments, and on and on. A perfect storm of crappy things.

That's it in a nutshell, I think, though I glossed over a lot of details.

TLDR: Perhaps the most key element is a refusal to rebuild. First in 2010ish, then in 2015ish, then again in 2020ish...and the resulting poor acquisitions that continue to clog payroll. Oh, and a farm system that just doesn't seem to get better ("But there's a lot of talent in the low minors" has been the refrain for like four years now). Basically, the bottom line is that the team is poorly run, from top to bottom. 

 

To summarize; not an organization with good ‘baseball’ minds and a non-existent, long term game plan. Starts at the very top. 
The top minor league prospects… Marsh and Adell. Really?

[Jeff Fletcher]

4 minutes ago, Trendon said:

That's the "simple" surface answer, but I feel like you need to dig deeper below the surface:

*Why* did the farm system become terrible?

*Why* did Josh Hamilton's contract blow up?

*Why* were they unwilling to give out more big FA deals?

 

To me, the answer to those questions is Arte Moreno.

- Arte didn't invest into the farm system and player development like other organizations (TB, NYY, LAD) have.

- Arte pushed to sign high-profile free agents while disregarding the GMs.

- Arte got gun shy and didn't want to pay free agents after mistakes HE made, not mistakes that the GMs made.

I think it’s easy for people to say the farm system stunk because of Arte, but that’s just speculation. It could be just bad drafts and bad development, not necessarily a lack of funding. 
 

As for the other two, you can’t have it both ways and say it was Arte’s fault for spending big on free agents and then also his fault for not spending big on free agents. 

[HanfordGuy]

Dysfunction Junction 

what’s your function???

[Erstad Grit]

Plus two players died

[REDneck]

Considering some responses my premise may be dated,  but still very valid.

 

[REDneck]

1 hour ago, Angelsjunky said:

Where have you been? We've been talking about this for several years - its a running thread throughout the year.

There's a long version and a short version. The short version is that slippage from 2009 to 2010 led to a series of bad mistakes that snowballed. And here we are, seventh losing season in a row.

The longer version...well, I've gone over it many times before and don't quite have the energy to go through it again, at least in great detail. But I'll pin-point what I feel like are the key elements.

Basically it started when they didn't rebuild in 2010, after losing the core of their contending team over the previous year plus (first Francisco Rodriguez, and then Lackey, Figgins, and Vlad). After they fell from 97 to 80 wins, Arte Moreno wasn't ready to go through a few down years and pushed Tony Reagins and then Jerry Dipoto to acquire a series of albatrosses: Vernon Wells, Albert Pujols, and Josh Hamilton, all within a span of less than two years. Couple that with disappointing contracts for CJ Wilson and Jered Weaver, and the Angels burned up a lot of cash for mediocre returns. Something like $600M for, I don't know, 20-25 WAR?

These albatross contracts crippled the franchise for years to come. They were actually decent for a few years more, winning 86, 89, 98, and 85 games in 2012-15, largely due to the arrival of the great Mike Trout. But even 2014's playoff season had a negative impact in that it let the Angels think they were better than they were.

In 2015 and more so in 2016, the team imploded - epitomized by the mid-season quitting of GM Jerry Dipoto in 2015. But on the field, a promising young rotation (Garret Richards, Matt Shoemaker, Tyler Skaggs, Andrew Heaney, Nick Tropeano, and Alex Meyer) all went down with major injuries, some (most?) requiring TJS.

The Angels didn't learn their lesson, though, and refused to buckle down and rebuild. Part of it was because they wanted to build around the best player in the game, and not lose him to free agency (due in the 2019 season). So new GM Billy Eppler did a yearly patch job that never held, and even doubled-down on the albatross model, first with Justin Upton and then with Anthony Rendon. 

But they did win the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes and extend Trout through 2030, but this further reinforced the idea that they didn't need to rebuild, and were always "a year away."

But it never happened, or hasn't happened yet. Albatross contracts, and an utterly atrocious record of free agent signings of all shapes and sizes not panning out (and some bouncing back a year later, after leaving the Angels), and the farm system not quite bearing the fruits that we hoped for...and here we are, seventh losing season in a row.

2022 was perhaps the most "Angelic" season of all Angels seasons. It started promising, both with the talent on the field in spring training, and the dreams of the trio of Trout, Ohtani, and Rendon, all in their primes and healthy at the same time. And for the first month and a half, things looked great - the team peaked at around 24-13, and actually had a fourth emergent superstar in Taylor Ward. Seemingly. But Rendon never got going and then went down with injury, Ohtani's hitting regressed, Trout struggled through the worst slump of his career, Fletcher didn't improve and then got hurt, Ward got hurt and never fully recovered (seemingly), the "dynamic duo" of Joe Adell and Brandon Marsh were both terrible disappointments, and on and on. A perfect storm of crappy things.

That's it in a nutshell, I think, though I glossed over a lot of details.

TLDR: Perhaps the most key element is a refusal to rebuild. First in 2010ish, then in 2015ish, then again in 2020ish...and the resulting poor acquisitions that continue to clog payroll. Oh, and a farm system that just doesn't seem to get better ("But there's a lot of talent in the low minors" has been the refrain for like four years now). Basically, the bottom line is that the team is poorly run, from top to bottom. 

 

Always well thought out and insightful!

[BTH]

12 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

I think it’s easy for people to say the farm system stunk because of Arte, but that’s just speculation. It could be just bad drafts and bad development, not necessarily a lack of funding. 

Yeah, a lot of it is speculation, but some of it isn't. It's undeniable that Arte hasn't treated the farm system with proper care.

Whether it was releasing a bunch of minor leaguers during 2020, furloughing player development/front office employees during 2020, not paying minor leaguers during extended ST, providing inadequate housing to minor leaguers during the season, failing to provide meals for minor leaguers, etc.

These are all documented issues that fall at Arte Moreno's feet and correlate with a lack of funding.

12 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

As for the other two, you can’t have it both ways and say it was Arte’s fault for spending big on free agents and then also his fault for not spending big on free agents. 

I can say it's Arte's fault for steamrolling his GM's and signing who he wants to sign instead of letting the Baseball Ops people do their job and decide how the money should be best spent.

[Brandon]

I’ll pick up some slack. With the Angels being trash, I haven’t been that into baseball. I actually got that feeling again and as I was following, I even went as far as to buy the new MLB: The Show game. As soon as I did that they fell apart.

[Jeff Fletcher]

1 hour ago, Trendon said:

Yeah, a lot of it is speculation, but some of it isn't. It's undeniable that Arte hasn't treated the farm system with proper care.

Whether it was releasing a bunch of minor leaguers during 2020, furloughing player development/front office employees during 2020, not paying minor leaguers during extended ST, providing inadequate housing to minor leaguers during the season, failing to provide meals for minor leaguers, etc.

These are all documented issues that fall at Arte Moreno's feet and correlate with a lack of funding.

Most of those are issues that a lot of other teams had, too. Including teams with good farm systems.
 

Also, all of that stuff happened after the farm system was already crap. None of that has anything to with Jo Adell, Brandon Marsh, Jordyn Adams, Matt Thaiss, Griffin Canning, etc having failed to succeed for any extended periods in the majors. 
 

It’s like blaming the chefs who skimped on the food for the Titanic sinking. 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Jeff Fletcher

[ten ocho recon scout]

Started simple enough... when a newly signed Albert Pujols ran into a certain aw.com member in Tempe.... and shook hands...

 

Much like when the white man brought small pox to the new world.