Our Picks

Settle a disagreement. Vote! 


 

Someone spent some time in the gym this offseason. You love to see it. 💪
 

We all knew this but he's confirming it now.  Wonder what "winning"  is in his mind.

https://theathletic.com/1600725/2020/02/19/a-beer-nerds-guide-to-baseball-ranking-every-stadium-by-craft-beer-offerings/?amp#click=https://t.co/EMwZpf5Xpo

Actually, PRIZE FIGHTER! 

 

Much respect. Go get em, Heaney. 

 

 

More at https://thehaloway.mlblogs.com/2020-spring-training-day-2-ce8568eb3673

Day 2

Heaney and Bundy


Mickey Callaway


Ohtani hitting


Ohtani pitching


Heaney, Briceno and Marcel Lachemann


Mickey Callaway again


Eppler

Angels Acquire Joc Pederson, Ross Stripling, & Others

Look at where Stripling ranks amongst the best pitchers in the game.


Ohtani, Stripling, Teheran, Canning, Heaney, Bundy is solid folks. We even have Sandoval who I really like as well, in addition to Andriese for depth. 

Let's talk about Stripling who I believe the Angels will increase his workload. 

Here's an outing by Stripling early on in the season in 2019 where he went 8 innings. 

I’m quite fond of the Angels’ starting rotation. Julio Teheran is unspectacular, but he’s kind of a unicorn. I’m a noted Andrew Heaney truther. I’m pretty high on Dylan Bundy and can see him getting a great deal better. We’re quite fond of Griffin Canning here at Pitcher List, and the same goes for Patrick Sandoval. Then there’s Shohei Ohtani, whose potential is undeniable, but his durability and path to a meaningful amount of innings are unclear. Aside from Ohtani, I think you could make the argument that every pitcher in the Angels’ rotation is underrated.

Full Story: https://www.pitcherlist.com/player-profiles-2020-los-angeles-angels-starting-pitchers/

By Robert Cunningham, Angelswin.com Senior Writer

There are only two words you need to remember for 2020 in Right Field:

Jo Adell.

Certainly Brian Goodwin will factor into the playing time, perhaps even more than we anticipate, but the light will be shining on the Angels top prospect as he is nearly a lock to be called up early in the season, perhaps even cracking the Opening Day roster.

As Jeff Fletcher recently noted, the Halos may not even be concerned about his service time due to the fact that a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) will have to be negotiated prior to the 2022 season and one of the hot topics is player service time, due to some high profile cases, including the current, ongoing one, Kris Bryant is fighting. The potential result of a new CBA could be a complete rework of player service time that would possibly redefine Adell's overall years of control. Realistically, the Angels will probably error on the side of caution and wait until they gain the additional year of control which also, per Fletcher, should not be to long after the season begins.

Regardless, Jo appears to be ready for the challenge of playing full or part-time in right field for the Angels in 2020. Below is a snapshot of his batter splits in the Minors over the last three seasons per Baseball-Reference.com:




Each season he has shown pretty consistently equal splits against both sides of the mound, perhaps favoring LHP slightly which is not surprising and points to Jo being an everyday player and potential star in the making if it all breaks right.

However, fans should temper their expectations for the Halos young star. Adell, currently, has some swing and miss to his game that could translate into his first couple of years in the Majors. Basically, he may struggle with strikeouts early on in his career as he adjusts to big league pitching and he would certainly not be the first to do so in the history of baseball careers.

After this week and then seeing some of what Altuve and Bregman said today I honestly think I hate Houston more than I do the Red Sox, whom I’ve hated for a long time. I used to hate Papelbon and disliked Pierzynski, but that all pales in comparison to what I’m feeling today. Here are some links to fuel your fire. 
 

right, it’s called consequences not adversity. 
 

Whaat?! louder than the trash cans?

Feel free to add more of this trash to the thread. We can may be have some good bulletin board material here. 

We've had a lot of negativity lately so I felt like putting on the rosy glasses and being a blind superfan for a few minutes. 

Let me preface this by saying I'm not an analytics nerd like some here, so I'm not going to draw up some novel using graphs and spin rates and launch angles. I will however simplify things using fWAR. I want to state I in NO WAY believe WAR equates directly to wins. But I'm doing this anyway.

Now, Fletcher has stated many times before how the majority of improvement comes from within. So I'm going to use WAR to see, realistically how this team (without Rendon, Bundy, Teheran, or Castro) can improve. I will not be using any fangraphs projection systems because fuck you. Again, I'm aware that WAR doesn't quite work this way but it's the simplest way to project things from a fans standpoint and also fuck you.

Anyway, I'm just going to look at the major players and how many "wins" they can add over last year. I won't do this for every reliever.

Trout: Trout missed the final month of the year. I think it's safe to say if he played that final month, he would have been worth 1 more win. So that's a +1.

Upton: Upton is a big key to the success of the team in 2020. Upton was injured and missed more than half the year. He was worth -0.2 fWAR. IF he's healthy, he's one of the most consistent players in baseball. However, I'm going to be conservative here and say he only adds 2 wins over 2019. A 1.8 WAR is quite low for him based on his career numbers but I don't want to be entirely unrealistic. So +2.

more....

Angels acquire Matt Andriese for Jeremy Beasley, DFA Luis Madero

Astros punishments: A.J. Hinch and Jeff Luhnow suspended for a year (fired by Crane), team loses 1st and 2nd round picks in 2020 and 2021

By Robert Cunningham, Angelswin.com Senior Writer

This series will attempt to identify other potential front-line starters that the Angels can possibly trade for and we will continue the series looking at the Cincinnati Reds, SP Tyler Mahle.

Facts

Contract Status - 2020 will be the last season of pre-arbitration control for Tyler. After that he has the three standard years of arbitration control, for a total of four years of team control before hitting free agency.

Repertoire (2019) - Four-Seam Fastball (56.7%, 93.6 mph), Curve Ball (22.6%, 80.6 mph), Split-Finger Fastball (13.5%, 87.4 mph) and Cut Fastball (6.6%, 90.2 mph)

Statcast Information - Mahle has a below average spin rate on his four-seam fastball. However, his curve ball has above average spin (2,595 rpm). Exit velocity, across all of his pitches, has averaged 88.3 mph to-date in his Major League career. Since 2017, his K% has risen steadily from 15.2% in that year to 23.2% in 2019 with a corresponding drop in BB% from 12% in 2017 to 6.1% last season, resulting in a solid 17.1% K-BB% for 2019. Below is a Statcast graphic of his pitch type and frequency use, including his pitch grouping:


Also here is his 2019 Statcast Plinko graphic showing how often he uses his pitches in various pitch counts:


As you can see he generally starts hitters off with a four-seam fastball or, to a lesser extent, curve ball. Unless he gets behind he generally tries to randomize his pitch repertoire after that, only going to the four-seam when desired or he really needs a strike.

What has been your favorite AngelsWin.com moment whether in a post, an entire thread or event that you've attended over the past decade?

Secondly, what has been your favorite moment in Angels Baseball over the past decade?

I'll post mine later this morning. Good night ya'll. Happy New Year!

Here's to an amazing next decade of Angels Baseball and the times we spend together over the next 10 years at AngelsWin.com.


Cheers! 
 

By Robert Cunningham, Angelswin.com Senior Writer

NOTE: This article contains a detailed summary of each prospective bullpen candidate under the "Spoiler" bar. Some of you may just want to jump to the conclusion so the player contents are hidden from view. If you want to read that section, simply click on the bar and dive deeper into each of our reliever candidates, there are some interesting tidbits.

In 2019, the Angels continued to develop a core group of relief options that produced to the tune of 2.5 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) across 761.2 innings pitched (IP). The latter number was the 2nd most IP, just behind the Rays bullpen at 772 IP. Assuredly, Eppler and staff would like to not only improve the bullpen's production, but also reduce the total number of IP, for the group as a whole, if possible.

The good news is that most of that relief corps will remain this season and a key reliever, Keynan Middleton, should return to the fold, which could provide a real boost to a squad full of upside and potential, capable of closing out the later innings of any ballgame. It is the hope that the bullpen will potentially improve on their 2019 performances, giving reason to believe that the Angels relievers, as a collective, can build on last years 16th ranked production level and become a Top 10 relief staff.

To start let us review 2019 results for the current, projected, 40-man relief staff as of December 16th, 2019:

Here is the official AngelsWin.com hot stove thread for rumours of signings and trades throughout the entire offseason.

First Base is not settled. Who gets the most playing time at first in 2020?

La Stella?


or

Albert Pujols?

So the last pick three contest failed miserably in that nobody really came close. This contest may be a little easier in that the Angels will undoubtedly add a pitcher and catcher from what is a smaller list of candidates that are available. So this is your chance to finally win this awesome artwork to frame it and hang up on your wall. 

The rules: 

Select who the Angels next catcher and pitcher will be from the list of FA candidates or those available via a trade. 

Example: 

The Angels sign Jason Castro & trade for Chris Archer. Or the Angels trade for Wilson Contreras and sign Alex Wood.

Prize: An awesome Mike Trout by the numbers picture to frame and hang up on your wall. It's a 16"x 20" artwork of Mike Trout's numbers from his  2014 MVP season.

Is Trout, Rendon and Ohtani the best 1-2-3 in baseball?

Vote on who you think is the best in baseball.

I went with our boys, because Rendon & Trout alone are MVP caliber players and I believe that Ohtani is just going to crush it this year.

Vote! 

THE ANGELS GOT RENDON (7 years, $245 million)

...a deal to keep the Angels in Anaheim through 2050, per Bill Shaikin on Twitter. They’ll purchase the stadium and surrounding parking lots.

Bundy doesn't throw 100 mph anymore like he did in his early career, but he can hit 94 MPH on the gun, sits 91-92 MPH and his offspeed stuff is really good. Here's hoping Callaway can help him improve. 


https://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfxo.aspx?playerid=12917&position=P&statArr=&legend=1&split=base&time=daily&start=2017&end=2019&rtype=mult&gt1=15&dStatArray=FA&ymin=&ymax=




vs. Houston Astros


vs. Oakland A's


vs. Cleveland Indians


vs. Boston Red Sox