Dipoto had a choice between Liriano and Blanton last offseason

[FireThemAll]

Liriano: 2.53 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 126 strikeouts in 121 innings

 

Blanton: 6.03 ERA, 1.59 WHIP, 104 strikeouts in 128.1 innings

 

Liriano signed for 1 year/1 million with an 8 million dollar TEAM option for 2014.

 

Blanton signed for 2 year/15 million with a 2015 team option for 8 million or a 1 million dollar buyout.

 

Wow.

 

Granted, Liriano would not be this good with the Angels because Butcher, but still. Inept decision making by this organization.

[Glen]

Before the season started were you clamoring to sign Liriano? 

[Corona]

Liriano was injury prone garbage from 2009-2012, so you can't really blame him for not signing him. Although Liriano had some potential to be good again, I don't think Blanton's ceiling is anything higher than a #5 starter. 

[FireThemAll]

Before the season started were you clamoring to sign Liriano? 

 

It's not my job to be evaluating talent, but if you held a gun to my head before the season started and said I have to choose one of Blanton or Liriano, I would have absolutely chosen LIriano. The point is, Dipoto misses the boat far too often. Go ahead and use the "hindsight is 20/20" argument, but good GM's moves usually look good in hindsight...I haven't seen a move that looks good in hindsight as the Angels GM yet...been waiting patiently, now it's starting to piss me off that we have a GM who can't get anything right.

[mancini79]

These "hindsight" threads have hit an all time low. Amazingly ridiculous.

[AngelsAndRamsFan]

Liriano's numbers seem too good to be legit. 

[FireThemAll]

Dipoto could have signed Liriano to a 1 year 2 million dollar deal with a 8 million dollar club option, and even if Liriano sucked, we could just cut him loose. But no, we're stuck paying Blanton big bucks next year.

[Tyler]

Lame thread considering Liriano threw like Blanton in '12.

[mancini79]

Dipoto could have signed Liriano to a 1 year 2 million dollar deal with a 8 million dollar club option, and even if Liriano sucked, we could just cut him loose. But no, we're stuck paying Blanton big bucks next year.

 

"We"?

 

Does Arte know about this?

[bloodbrother]

Can't really fault him on this one. Liriano was awful last year and has injury issues. I wasn't even looking at him as an arm I wanted the Halos to get, so I won't get mad over them passing on him

 

Still shouldn't have signed blanton though. Majority of us called that out immediately for being a dumb deal

[Docwaukee]

the signing of Blanton was dumb.

 

JD not taking a chance on Liriano is in no way related.  He was trying to get reasonably priced innings and took a chance that the Halos defensive abilities would help Joe perform better than his career averages.  It was a reasonable proposition that failed miserably in that there was very little upside with Blanton and a big time downside which was fully realized. 

 

In fact, it's quite impressive that the absolute worst case scenario of just about every move he has made has been blown past to a new unexpected low. 

[Glen]

It's not my job to be evaluating talent, but if you held a gun to my head before the season started and said I have to choose one of Blanton or Liriano, I would have absolutely chosen LIriano.

 

 

Yeah, right.

[FireThemAll]

Yeah, right.

 LOL OK don't believe me. You're clearly tryng to start something here...

[Agalloch]

I can't blame him for not signing Liriano. I for one did NOT want him signing Liriano at the time as well as many others here. Then again, signing Blanton seemed just as bad at the time but it turns out Liriano was actually worth it unlike we all thought and Blanton was garbage like we all thought.

[ELEVEN]

Considering that no other team was in on Blanton, Dipoto had a chance to sign him to a 1 year, $500,000 minor league contract. Instead he signed him to a 3 year, $16M deal.  Liriano aside, this guy has some SERIOUS logical reasoning disabilities.

2 words.

Carlos

Marmol

[Angel Oracle]

Liriano had been good at one time. Blanton has never, eeeever been any good.

[Brandon]

Blanton was a good back end pitcher for the A's and Phillies. I didn't mind the signing as a stop gap if they thought Richards wasn't ready. Like a lot of the guys on the team this year, he hasn't been remotely close to his averages.

[Scott34]

I was fine with Blanton on a 1/1 type of deal.

No idea how Dipoto thought 15M was a good class.

[gotbeer]

You don't even have to have an understanding of advanced statistics to see the fault in this hindsight thread.

[Blarg]

You don't even have to have an understanding of advanced statistics to see the fault in this hindsight thread.

Didn't you hear what he said, "It's not my job to be evaluating talent..."

 

He knows his limitations.

[The God of Runs]

You don't need advanced statistics to know that Blanton was a terrible signing.  Just look at his face. 

[HaloMilliVanilli]

I actually stated in an offseason thread last November/December that Liriano was someone that we might want to take a cheap flyer on to have competition for the #5 spot in the rotation.  I, also, was not overly fond of the decision to sign Blanton.  However, as a true Angels fan, I put on my optimism goggles and hoped for the best.  Things didn't pan out as hoped, but that is life.  Incidentally, hindsight is a learning tool but is 100% lame if one is using it for blame.

[Angel Oracle]

I hope Dipoto learned enough these past two off-seasons to last his entire career!
 

[James]

Saying Blanton has never been good is absolutely inaccurate. Whats worse than an injury prone position player? A pitcher who is injury prone. Liriano was this type of pitcher and hadn't been good for awhile. Pittsburgh had pitching options to where they could take a flyer and see if they struck gold. The Halos had serious holes to fill in the rotation which meant they weren't really in a place to make such a move. Blanton was looked at as an inning eater which was an issue last season with Haren and Santana. Don't see how you could realistically see Liriano being able to provide that role.

 

Not trying to support the Blanton deal at all, hated it at the time.  

[ELEVEN]

You have serious holes to fill if you are filling them with toxic waste