Future of Walsh?

[Dtwncbad]

Do you still believe in Walsh as an everyday player?

“He was an All-Star two years ago!”

”He can also play OF.”

For me, I am fully ready to just move on.  Here is why:

He was a 2.3WAR in his All-Star season, and that is much more solid regular than All-Star.  So really the argument is he was a solid regular once two years ago.

He isn’t 25 or 26, he is 29 now.  That’s not old.  But to me he is in an age group now where it’s a bit harder to just keep having faith that there is more upside to come.

He really can’t hit lefties, so his utility is limited.

He had a major injury and likely won’t be ready for opening Day.  I really don’t like the idea of trying to put a band aid on 1B to open the season with our fingers crossed that Walsh steps in thereafter and is both good and reliable.

Could Walsh come back and have some significant value?  Sure.  Of course he could.

The question is whether it is wise to have a plan that requires him to bounce back to the solid regular he was once.

I would really think it’s more wise to move forward with a plan that doesn’t rely on Walsh at all.

[Stradling]

I think Urshela is the back up plan in case Walsh can’t play.  Urshela is also the platoon for Walsh. Give him this year. 

[Blarg]

I think Walsh is going to be fine and all of these hand wringing posts will look pretty silly. 

[Warfarin]

56 minutes ago, Dtwncbad said:

Do you still believe in Walsh as an everyday player?

“He was an All-Star two years ago!”

”He can also play OF.”

For me, I am fully ready to just move on.  Here is why:

He was a 2.3WAR in his All-Star season, and that is much more solid regular than All-Star.  So really the argument is he was a solid regular once two years ago.

He isn’t 25 or 26, he is 29 now.  That’s not old.  But to me he is in an age group now where it’s a bit harder to just keep having faith that there is more upside to come.

He really can’t hit lefties, so his utility is limited.

He had a major injury and likely won’t be ready for opening Day.  I really don’t like the idea of trying to put a band aid on 1B to open the season with our fingers crossed that Walsh steps in thereafter and is both good and reliable.

Could Walsh come back and have some significant value?  Sure.  Of course he could.

The question is whether it is wise to have a plan that requires him to bounce back to the solid regular he was once.

I would really think it’s more wise to move forward with a plan that doesn’t rely on Walsh at all.

I don't think there's any need to make a change.  Walsh is still cheap, and if he can recapture that 2 fWAR form, that's a solid player.

Walsh will likely be more effective, too, if he is more of a platoon player, sitting against LHP.  

And of course, that said, if he bombs and tanks, the team can always move on from him without much issue, and Urshela is on the bench to potentially take over.

So for now - roll forward with the plan of him starting, and if he struggles mightily, then can easily adjust their plan without much issue.

[Second Base]

Personally, I think Walsh came in scorching hot after an adjustment he made in September 2020, and it continued into the following season for April, May and June. Then word got out, pitchers adjusted and he's been on a downhill slope ever since. 

The ultimate indicator of MLB success is how quickly a player adjusts. Trout adjusts faster than anyone I've ever seen. Ohtani too. Then their natural ability takes over. 

Walsh, doesn't adjust quickly, if at all. I think he's played his hand, became a major leaguer and an all-star, more than anyone thought he'd do. And now I think he is what he is at this point. .250/.310 and 20-25 HR's if he plays a full season. 

[tdawg87]

[Dtwncbad]

1 hour ago, Blarg said:

I think Walsh is going to be fine and all of these hand wringing posts will look pretty silly. 

The Angel offense was legitimately pathetic last year.  Things need to change to fix that problem.

Starting a conversation that considers targeting first base as an opportunity to make progress on improving the offense specifically considering Walsh’s limited success as a major leaguer at age 29, awful last year, and coming off a serious injury is not “hand-wringing” and “silly.”

The Angels must address the offense somewhere, and the last thing I want is for them to just roll along thinking everything “will be fine.”

You again show your hand with the predictable, knee jerk negative reaction to literally anything I post.

We get it.  You are a crabby old Eeyore.  Move along.

 

[Erstad Grit]

Was he injured all year or just sucked? 

[Angel Oracle]

2 hours ago, Stradling said:

I think Urshela is the back up plan in case Walsh can’t play.  Urshela is also the platoon for Walsh. Give him this year. 

Or have Rendon (age 33 in 2023) split time between 3B and 1B?   Let Urshela have much of his focus at 3B and SS to get his bat in the lineup as much as possible, and have Fletcher and Squid split the remaining SS starts.

For sure, Walsh needs to start against all RHPs, and that’s it.

Walsh still had mostly solid stats against RHPs before July this past season.   The injury must have affected him for those 2 months before surgery?

Edited November 19, 2022 by Angel Oracle

[Angelsjunky]

2 hours ago, Dtwncbad said:

Do you still believe in Walsh as an everyday player?

“He was an All-Star two years ago!”

”He can also play OF.”

For me, I am fully ready to just move on.  Here is why:

He was a 2.3WAR in his All-Star season, and that is much more solid regular than All-Star.  So really the argument is he was a solid regular once two years ago.

He isn’t 25 or 26, he is 29 now.  That’s not old.  But to me he is in an age group now where it’s a bit harder to just keep having faith that there is more upside to come.

He really can’t hit lefties, so his utility is limited.

He had a major injury and likely won’t be ready for opening Day.  I really don’t like the idea of trying to put a band aid on 1B to open the season with our fingers crossed that Walsh steps in thereafter and is both good and reliable.

Could Walsh come back and have some significant value?  Sure.  Of course he could.

The question is whether it is wise to have a plan that requires him to bounce back to the solid regular he was once.

I would really think it’s more wise to move forward with a plan that doesn’t rely on Walsh at all.

If you look at his trajectory more granularly, the outlier is actually just half a season - the second half of 2022, when he was truly awful. He was pretty solid through about June, then collapsed. 

Career through 6/21/22: .270/.326/.503, 120 wRC+ in 1046 PA

6/22 - end of season: .144/.207/.213, 14 wRC+ in 188 PA

Walsh was truly awful in the last two months, but it was just two months. 

[AngelsLakersFan]

55 minutes ago, Dtwncbad said:

The Angel offense was legitimately pathetic last year.  Things need to change to fix that problem.

Starting a conversation that considers targeting first base as an opportunity to make progress on improving the offense specifically considering Walsh’s limited success as a major leaguer at age 29, awful last year, and coming off a serious injury is not “hand-wringing” and “silly.”

The Angels must address the offense somewhere, and the last thing I want is for them to just roll along thinking everything “will be fine.”

You again show your hand with the predictable, knee jerk negative reaction to literally anything I post.

We get it.  You are a crabby old Eeyore.  Move along.

 

The team has a lot of issues and limited resources so they are going to have to prioritize. A guy like Walsh could still be a very productive major leaguer, so the team can't really afford to move on from him. Additionally, everything you said about the offense is correct, so they have to do something.

I think Minasian's approach here is the correct one. He's not punting on Walsh, but he has accurately identified that even when he's going good he can't really hit lefties, so he brought in Urshella to get those at bats at first. He's effectively taken the middle ground position. I do think he still needs to bring in one more bat to really cover all the likely outcomes.

[Blarg]

58 minutes ago, Dtwncbad said:

The Angel offense was legitimately pathetic last year.  Things need to change to fix that problem.

Starting a conversation that considers targeting first base as an opportunity to make progress on improving the offense specifically considering Walsh’s limited success as a major leaguer at age 29, awful last year, and coming off a serious injury is not “hand-wringing” and “silly.”

The Angels must address the offense somewhere, and the last thing I want is for them to just roll along thinking everything “will be fine.”

You again show your hand with the predictable, knee jerk negative reaction to literally anything I post.

We get it.  You are a crabby old Eeyore.  Move along.

 

Walsh was injured. He had surgery to repair that. You wouldn't question Trout coming back from injury, you also didn't question if Ward would return to form after injury. So this is just overreaction without substance. 

We get it, you look for the Darkside of every home grown talent the Angels have produced. It's just what you do. I'm not the pessimist you are so the Eyore (which I started calling you years ago) doesn't apply along with your player evaluations. 

[Chuck]

40 minutes ago, Angelsjunky said:

If you look at his trajectory more granularly, the outlier is actually just half a season - the second half of 2022, when he was truly awful. He was pretty solid through about June, then collapsed. 

Career through 6/21/22: .270/.326/.503, 120 wRC+ in 1046 PA

6/22 - end of season: .144/.207/.213, 14 wRC+ in 188 PA

Walsh was truly awful in the last two months, but it was just two months. 

Good point! 

Walsh also said that the injury that ended his season this year where he struggled to make contact and produce any power was a direct result of that injury he sustained. 

[Dtwncbad]

20 minutes ago, Blarg said:

Walsh was injured. He had surgery to repair that. You wouldn't question Trout coming back from injury, you also didn't question if Ward would return to form after injury. So this is just overreaction without substance. 

We get it, you look for the Darkside of every home grown talent the Angels have produced. It's just what you do. I'm not the pessimist you are so the Eyore (which I started calling you years ago) doesn't apply along with your player evaluations. 

Nobody questions Trout returning because he is Mike Trout.  Look up Walsh stats dude.  This isn’t Mike Trout.

I do not look for the downside with every homegrown talent.  I am just not blindly optimistic with every Angel prospect.  I loved Brandon Wood.  I loved McPherson.  I loved lots and lots and lots of prospects.  I still love Adell and believe in him.  I love a whole mess of young arms right now.

What you notice is that I am willing to discuss some players that I don’t believe in. Let me enlighten you a little.  This board is often about what the team can do to get better.  The first step is to identify what could be better.  That means you force yourself to make some judgments and have opinions on what players may not work out.  That’s not “finding the dark side of every home grown talent.”

If you don’t like my “player evaluations” good for you.  And I tagged you with Eeyore  bro.  You then did a “I know you are but what am I” on it.

But you are too old to remember that correctly.

Dude why don’t you go start a website that has a board where there is a rule that everyone must just take turns writing “all home grown talent is going to be fantastic.”

Blarg, have some self-awareness.  You don’t like me.  That’s perfectly fine.  But don’t let that continue to fuel dumb responses.  It’s not a good look.

 

 

Edited November 19, 2022 by Dtwncbad

[Docwaukee]

Defense holds down the very good hitting 1bmen from accumulating a ton of WAR and we know Walsh is a solid defender at 1b.  Only the truly elite 1bmen accumulate a really stellar WAR. 

In the last 5 full seasons there have only been 8 player seasons where players accumulated above 5 WAR.  4 of which came from one guy.  

There have been 89 player season of 2.0 WAR or above which is about 18 per year and that's for all players, not just qualified so there are several platoons in there.  

If you just go by wRC+, Walsh's 126 was 10th in baseball for 1bmen in 2021.  

His injury may have been affecting him longer, but he really started to struggle after the end of june but before that his wRC+ was 113.  If he had kept that pace he'd have been 16th among first basemen for the season.  

But keep in mind something.  He was 10th in wRC+ in 2021 for 1b but 37th among all qualified players that year.  

If he can be in the 115 to 120 range this year then that's very good even if he doesn't accumulate more WAR and you will be hard pressed to find someone with that level of offensive production and you've now got Urshela to back him up.  

So I'm good with leaving 1b alone at this point and I'd much rather focus on LF.  

[Dtwncbad]

23 minutes ago, AngelsLakersFan said:

The team has a lot of issues and limited resources so they are going to have to prioritize. A guy like Walsh could still be a very productive major leaguer, so the team can't really afford to move on from him. Additionally, everything you said about the offense is correct, so they have to do something.

I think Minasian's approach here is the correct one. He's not punting on Walsh, but he has accurately identified that even when he's going good he can't really hit lefties, so he brought in Urshella to get those at bats at first. He's effectively taken the middle ground position. I do think he still needs to bring in one more bat to really cover all the likely outcomes.

I dont disagree as long as the team makes enough improvement in the offense.  I dont have an ax to grind with Walsh specifically.  If they end up getting enough offense and they keep Walsh, that’s great!  If they get enough other offense and they end up keeping Fletcher in a starting role, that’s great!

What I don’t want is to look at all these guys that in sum make up a problem of inadequate offense and cross our fingers that they all will be better next year.

So you gotta pick and choose which guys might lose their jobs.  Walsh to me should be one of the guys the team should strongly consider upgrading.

[Docwaukee]

19 minutes ago, Dtwncbad said:

What I don’t want is to look at all these guys that in sum make up a problem of inadequate offense and cross our fingers that they all will be better next year.

So you gotta pick and choose which guys might lose their jobs.  Walsh to me should be one of the guys the team should strongly consider upgrading.

I would love to upgrade a lot of places.  Problem is that the team isn't in a position to just go out and get a freddy freeman.  Urshela is about as good as we can hope for in terms of risk management at 1b.  

It's hard to completely give up on Walsh because it really could have been the injury that caused his struggles last year and if corrected he's a nice player on the cheap.  Cheaper than a mancini type who probably gets you a league avg bat.  Way cheaper than someone like Abreu who's 36 and likely to cost 20m per.  Way cheaper than making a trade for an upgrade.  And then what do you do with Walsh?  His trade value isn't great until he proves he's healthy. 

I think they've already don't a solid job of covering themselves here.  If you've got limited resources and limited options, I think upgrade LF gives you more bang for your buck.  Especially now that you've got Urshela.   

[Pancake Bear]

Bringing Urshela in is probably the best move that Minasian could have realistically made to shore up concerns over corner infield. Both Rendon and Walsh are coming off injuries and Rendon hasn't played a full season since 2019. It just doesn't make sense with our budget to try to move on from either. If we're going to compete, you have to work from the assumption that Rendon probably needs a minimum of a day a week off and Walsh shouldn't be playing against lefties as a rule. That's the best case scenario. If either of those guys just isn't cutting it or gets injured again (or is nursing a mild injury they might otherwise play through) Urshela steps right in instead of Jack Mayfield or Phil Gosselin. That's a luxury we haven't had in quite some time and it's a really solid floor-raising move. I hope we bring in a shortstop, but won't be shocked if we don't. Where I'll be legit pissed off is if we still do nothing in left field or bring in someone who isn't really any better than Moniak.

[BTH]

I view Walsh as a platoon player who should only start vs. RHP.

Bringing in Urshela allows them to treat him that way, but it comes with a caveat. In order to treat him that way, they need to get a SS and LF that allows Urshela to be used in the desired role and not be needed to help fill those holes.

[Swordsman78]

Nevin seems to be supportive of Walsh, so Walsh will get a chance to prove Nevin is right to give Walsh the "first right of refusal".  There will be formal (front office) and informal (social media) pressure that could make it difficult for Nevin not to have Walsh on a much shorter leash next year.     Most Angel fans would be giddy to see the Walsh of 2021 return.  

[Angel Oracle]

1 hour ago, Dtwncbad said:

I dont disagree as long as the team makes enough improvement in the offense.  I dont have an ax to grind with Walsh specifically.  If they end up getting enough offense and they keep Walsh, that’s great!  If they get enough other offense and they end up keeping Fletcher in a starting role, that’s great!

What I don’t want is to look at all these guys that in sum make up a problem of inadequate offense and cross our fingers that they all will be better next year.

So you gotta pick and choose which guys might lose their jobs.  Walsh to me should be one of the guys the team should strongly consider upgrading.

The only 1B upgrading needed is Urshela and/or Rendon getting all of the at bats vs LHP.

Walsh will be fine against RHP.

Offensive focus now is on a LF for sure, via trade or shorter term FA contract.

[stormngt]

3 hours ago, Second Base said:

Personally, I think Walsh came in scorching hot after an adjustment he made in September 2020, and it continued into the following season for April, May and June. Then word got out, pitchers adjusted and he's been on a downhill slope ever since. 

The ultimate indicator of MLB success is how quickly a player adjusts. Trout adjusts faster than anyone I've ever seen. Ohtani too. Then their natural ability takes over. 

Walsh, doesn't adjust quickly, if at all. I think he's played his hand, became a major leaguer and an all-star, more than anyone thought he'd do. And now I think he is what he is at this point. .250/.310 and 20-25 HR's if he plays a full season. 

What was Walsh stats for the in April? And May?

If not mistaken he gut well until June.

[DMVol]

Walsh couldn’t hit LHP when healthy….Urshela is your platoon 1bman, at the very least…

[ten ocho recon scout]

4 hours ago, tdawg87 said:

Didn't Trout just turn 30?

 

Monaik, Adell and Trout in the OF

 

[Docwaukee]

1 hour ago, stormngt said:

What was Walsh stats for the in April? And May?

If not mistaken he gut well until June.

started slow in april.  good may then started to tail off in june with july being a wreck.  He could certainly benefit from losing a chunk of Ab's to tough lefties.  But to me it's not about whether he was good enough for an everyday spot before injury.  I think he definitely was regardless of his shortcomings.  It's only about how he recovers.  There is a chance he might not be the same.  But it seems like the odds are that he'll be ok.  They were concerned enough to get a quality backup but not so concerned that they went out and got his replacement outright.