Sufficient improvement? The Angels off-season on the eve of the Winter Meetings

[Scott34]

I think Steamer's projection for him next year is pretty spot on. 

 

173 IP 4.44 ERA 4.00 FIP 6.15 K/9 3.51 BB/9

 

It was nice to see all his numbers trend upwards last year though. 

 

That seems really accurate to me.

[tdawg87]

I'd be fine with those numbers from the 5th starter, so long as Weaver and Wilson do their thing.

[Hubs]

1)I don't think Arroyo puts up those numbers here. Making a move to the AL will most likely hurt his numbers.

2)Which 5th starter are you looking at that can put up those numbers? I think Colon is the closest guy to do that and he's not going to be cheap.

 

 

1) Arroyo had a 3.6 ERA in the 2nd most homer friendly park in the league before his last start. He lasted only 4.2 innings, gave up six home runs. The Reds were out of the race, and I'm not saying he threw junk up there, but if you had $20 million dollars riding on the fact that you didn't blow out your arm that day, don't you think you'd basically pitch batting practice? 

 

He should be able to pitch to a 4.00 ERA in the AL, in a better park. 

 

2) I think Richards can be that starter, then you just need to get a guy that can give you 200 innings with a 4 ERA, just like Arroyo. That's why I wanted Haren or Vargas.

[Hubs]

Richards is not going to have a 4.44 ERA. 

 

If this team can get 450 runs from their starters, and less than 200 from the pen, they'll be in great shape. The reason 2011 team didn't win, when it put up those numbers is because the offense was awful. 

 

Starting pitching has been drilled into all of our heads as if it's the Angels only weakness, and I guess what my point is with all of these, is that it's not the only weakness, and it's not really as bad as everyone seems to think.

 

The Starters need to give up 50-75 less runs than they did in 2013, and also pitch 20 more innings. How can they get to 50 less runs? Well, start with 10 more starts from Weaver and 10 more starts from the guy they sign to essentially be Vargas 2.0. If they had gotten those 20 starts instead of giving them to Blanton, you're likely looking at around 60 runs instead of 96 runs. 

 

Then if you can get a small improvement from Richards over the number of starts you actually gave Richards and Hanson, you're saving the other 14 runs.

 

Saving 50 runs off the starters is doable.

 

If they are able to get that fixed, the next (and I think more pressing) issue is the pen.

 

I have to hope that Frieri, Smith, Burnett, Salas, DDLR, Jepsen, and Kohn/Downs (I'd sign him) can give you less than 200 runs in 450 innings, can lock down tight games and get through the bad ones. If they just could've had one more solid arm in the pen, they'd have not given up the 90+ runs they did from the guys like Strange, Boshers, Roth, Gutierrez, Rasmus, Lowe, Enright who all had ERA's well above acceptable.

 

So patch the rotation, the pen looks better, and fix the offense.

 

Many didn't like Freese for Bourjos, but I am hoping for better offense from 3B. The Angels were 13th last year and in 2012 in the AL. St. Louis's production from 3rd (mainly Freese) would've ranked 8th last year and 3rd in 2012.

 

At other positions, C the Angels ranked 7th in the AL. I am hoping for a little better offense out of Catcher, but happy overall. 9th at 1st base. That's bad considering we have the most expensive 1st baseman in the league. A healthy Pujols at least should push them back to top three like they were in 2012.  4th at 2nd base production. I'd just hope to stay around here. 9th at SS, I'd hope they can move back to 4th as they were in 2012.

 

At LF, they were 9th, but hopefully Hamilton can put up numbers that push this production to top 5. In CF they were 1st. In RF, Calhoun hopefully can put up enough production to move them into the top half from 8th. And at DH, they were 6th. Lets stay there or move into the top 5.

 

I'm basically hoping for top 4 in the AL production from every position they can get it at. And top 7 where they can't.

 

Being 13th the last two years in the AL at 3rd is definitely a position of concern.

 

So DiPoto has addressed some of the Angels other weaknesses, lets hope he can do the same with the Starting Pitching...

[tdawg87]

The problem with your "runs" argument is that it is set completely in a vacuum. Sure they may give up 50 fewer runs, but so could every other team in baseball and the Angels are still weak in what would be a pitching dominant season.

 

And while runs are, in a nutshell, the biggest factor in baseball, you aren't taking into account defense which plays a huge role in run prevention. I mean you can't just assign arbitrary numbers to pitchers and say "yeah that should just about do it" because there are so many variables it's impossible to predict. For example, Weaver is likely to give up more runs than he did in 2013 if he pitches more innings.

[Brent Maguire]

1) Arroyo had a 3.6 ERA in the 2nd most homer friendly park in the league before his last start. He lasted only 4.2 innings, gave up six home runs. The Reds were out of the race, and I'm not saying he threw junk up there, but if you had $20 million dollars riding on the fact that you didn't blow out your arm that day, don't you think you'd basically pitch batting practice? 

 

He should be able to pitch to a 4.00 ERA in the AL, in a better park. 

 

2) I think Richards can be that starter, then you just need to get a guy that can give you 200 innings with a 4 ERA, just like Arroyo. That's why I wanted Haren or Vargas.

I like Arroyo's track record. I really do. My issue is he has a very similar skill set to Blanton and we saw what happened last year. Both are pitch to contact guys who don't walk anybody and have big HR issues. The HR issue carried over for Blanton even with the move to Angels Stadium.

 

Obviously that doesn't mean Arroyo will self implode and he has managed to outperform his FIP each year while Blanton always underperformed it. Some pitchers just manage to pitch better than their peripherals show and Arroyo looks like he's one of those guys. 

 

Moving to the AL will absolutely affect him. AL teams averaged 702 runs, NL teams averaged 649. If I had to guess, he would probably put up an ERA around 4.3-4.4, which actually doesn't sound too bad. We just need a rotation that can stay healthy and doesn't suck like last year. 

 

I just hope we find someone who is better than Arroyo, preferably much better as the 3. Richards/Arroyo as the 4/5 isn't too bad. 

[Angel Oracle]

Hubs, we HAD that 5th starter you speak of (Williams) and let him get away even though he would have only cost $3.9 million. He pitched around 170 innings with a 4.50 ERA. All he had to do for 2014 was to improve on his bad July, and voila, a low 4.00s ERA in close to 200 innings.

Dipoto is approaching the starting pitching as if he has no clue.

Regarding 3B, the one bright side to Freese being mediocre defensively is having a FB oriented staff. I sure hope though that he can at least hit like he did in 2011.

Edited December 5, 2013 by Angel Oracle

[Greg_Bearringer]

Hi! I am the Greg who wrote this article. Thanks for the nice comments! I am not sure why it took me this long to sign up for an account here... hmm.

 

Anyway, the point of my article is that the Angels are two low-end starters away from a solid, complete 5-8 win improvement on the team. Which is to say: not nearly enough of an improvement.