full circle

7 minutes ago, TroutField said:

Come on you can’t Monday Morning Quarterback this one. The reasons they kept him have been well documented and nobody could have predicted a second TJ surgery. 
 

I’m hindsight yeah they should have unloaded him for a solid package. It is what it is. Full rebuild is needed 

It’s not hindsight when you call out the scenario beforehand.  

Some of us tried to tell y’all we needed to trade him.  Man those arguments were stupid.  

No.  Hey, we’re 1 for 1 when it comes to winning it once you get there.  Could be worse, we could be the Rangers. 

4 minutes ago, Kotchman said:

I remember Strad mocking me when I said Sho is brittle. 

It’s a compliment.  StradTime is to baseball takes as Jim Cramer is to stock picks.  

4 minutes ago, SoCalDucksFan said:

Does this mean he's likely to miss the entire 2024 season?

If he gets the surgery immediately he could be ready to DH by say early May or sooner if he’s a quick healer.  He won’t pitch next season tho. I’d say this cost him about 200 mil at least.  Probably more 

Completely not surprised.  I’d love to know what his between start throwing regimen is.  And I bet I’d have a better idea of why this happened. 

Hillary hits like a bitch, tho still harder than Taylor.  

Interesting.  I like how posts disappear when certain posters look absolutely stupid, but when that same poster can make others look stupid, the posts remain.  Not surprising, but incredibly douchey all the same. 

On 8/18/2023 at 1:32 PM, m0nkey said:

Spencer Steer?

Long Beach Millikan alum.  Good kid.  

35 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

I think you’ll probably find out eventually but it will be Stassi is ready to talk about it. I imagine at some point he’ll either come back or retire, and in either case he’ll say what happened.

Are the Angels on the hook for paying him while he continues to decide whether he wants to go public with whatever his issue is?  
 

Again, that’s another unique thing about this.  Usually you can’t just skip out on your team, you have a contract.  
 

I wish him the best.  He’s fortunate to be playing on the West Coast, seriously doubt he’d get away this secrecy in East Coast media.  

If you’re going to insist on a “strategy”, you’d better be able to show proof of concept, or you just look stupid like the Angels do now.  
 

The thing that stuck out most to me in the article was the player saying how the Angels didn’t want them pitching to contact, and damn if that didn’t ring true.  It’s what we watch on a goddamn nightly basis.  If you’re a pitcher that’s afraid of the ball being hit then you’re not a pitcher period.  You can’t pitch scared, you challenge guys with your best stuff and say here, hit it.  

1 minute ago, Duren, Duren said:

It's the goddamn Twilight zone regarding the pitching hierarchy and philosophy. 

Treating it like hard, empirical rocket science. With it's own delegation of control and authority. 

Jeez. Might as well try and program robots. No room for individual instinct, feel, experience, unique thought processing. 

'Pitch shaping' as the priority? It's about getting the best results situationally. Which always goes back to the intangibles, competitiveness and execution of the pitcher. Control, location, sequencing and pure skill have always been the essence of pitching.

Analytics have been way too overvalued.

 

Those things they’re talking about with velo, pitch shaping and spin rate are all things that must be worked on outside of games and really most if not all in the offseason.  There is no mental space available to be thinking about any of that during a game.  During a game you just get guys out. 

4 minutes ago, Swordsman78 said:

Excellent take.   Stupid "anonymous" people who never are held accountable.  Hiding in the shadows F-ing everything up while the coaches get BBQ'd on social media.

For once it would be nice to hear a coach at a post game media scrum say "I wanted to leave the pitcher in, but was over ruled by Harold in analytics".   Or "Detmers couldn't shake off the sweeper that Bregman homered on because Einstein in analytics was calling the pitches tonight".

If it was my career at stake, I’d certainly call out what I felt was a problem.  Ultimately it is your career and you need to do what’s best for you. 

All of this is to say we have stupid people that don’t know baseball running our team and it shows all over the field.  
 

Baseball is a situational game that can’t be played by a script.   

2 hours ago, Chuckster70 said:

Totally overlooked in the difference between this years rotation vs. 2022

Everyone wanted Thaiss because of his potential bat, but besides just his poor catcher's ERA, he clearly misses so many borderline pitches because of a poor setup behind the dish which makes his attempt at pitch framing too obvious or too late.

He's batting just .222 with a .675 OPS.

Maybe he’s tipping pitches haha.  I know some on here fall for that. 

3 minutes ago, Trendon said:

That probably tells us that it has something to do with a family member of his, and not him specifically.

Cause if it was about him specifically, those things do tend to get out.

We find out when players’ family members have things happen to them as well.  Especially when it causes the player to not play.  If it’s not something directly about him, usually there comes a point when that player can play despite turmoil in a family.  This indicates it is something directly about him.  We’ve heard of players playing when their parents have terminal illnesses.  John Lackeys wife had cancer.  Players playing after they’ve beaten their wives.  It’s just unique. 

Speaking of personal issues, the Max Stassi situation is interesting.  I can’t recall another situation ever where a player sat out an entire season, disappeared, and people never knew what the reason was.  We’ve seen everything from severe drug and alcohol abuse, cancer diagnoses, steroid use, Wander freaking Franco, Trevor freaking Bauer, things I’m sure many of those players wish the public never found out about, and yet we found out about them anyway.  

Unless Moreno suddenly turns into Steve Cohen, we can’t sign Ohtani and win, bottom line.  One, Ohtani will never be worth what he’s going to get, and two, Arte has already proven he won’t back it up with more spending when that inevitably happens.  
 

Unfortunately a rebuild in personnel and coaching staff is in order. 

Freddie Freeman looking like one of the best free agent acquisitions in history.  

15 hours ago, AngelsWin.com said:

LOS ANGELES — Everything the Dodgers touch turns to gold; just about everything the Angels touch turns to something else.

We’ve been living a Bizarro bit of baseball in Los Angeles and “Los Angeles.” It might not shock you that the boys in blue are going so good they’ve exceeded expectations while the Halos try just to keep the sky from crashing all the way down in Anaheim. Not if you’ve been paying any attention to the Dodgers’ dominant last decade while the Angels kept whiffing on the playoffs.

Even accounting for recent history, the way the clubs have practically beelined for opposite poles since the Aug. 1 trade deadline has been remarkable. Especially because we were congratulating the Angels for making moves to meet the moment and criticizing the Dodgers for not doing enough to move the needle.

Yeah, ’bout that.

Pick a category, any category, and it tells the stories: One is an old, reliably motivational tale. The other is a tragedy, with a few teasing points of light sprinkled in – like Wednesday’s 2-0 victory, a near-no-hitter, against the American League West-leading Rangers in Texas.

Yin. The Dodgers are 14-1 in August and running away with the National League West – tacking on a 10th consecutive win with Wednesday’s 7-1 result against the National League Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers at Dodger Stadium. More of the same from the Dodgers, who do this every year: In nine division title-winning seasons in the past 10 years, they’ve gone 159-91 (.636) in August.

Yang. Despite Reid Detmers’ 7⅓ no-hit innings in Wednesday’s win, the Angels have lost 11 of their past 15 games, many of them handily.

Night. Angels manager Phil Nevin’s obscene dugout tirade on Monday during his club’s unfocused, error-filled 12-0 loss to Texas. Ohtani looking like he was trying to blink back tears in the dugout after the Angels gave up a ninth-inning grand slam that wiped out their 3-1 lead in a loss to the Seattle Mariners.

Day. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts gushing constantly about how much he loves his current club, calling them the favorite he’s coached. All the Dodgers waving their arms and doing the “Freddie wiggle” dance from second base. That fan who named his daughter after the Mookie Betts – Francesca Mookie Mancuso – carrying through his promise that he would if Betts hit one out, which he did.

North. After their latest victory against the Brewers at Dodger Stadium, the Dodgers have scored 99 runs this month, and they had a team ERA of 2.35 – second-best both.

Even their new guy, Lance Lynn – unheralded upon his arrival – has been taking care of business. He’s 3-0 in three starts since being traded to the Dodgers, with a tidy 2.00 ERA; that’s a sharp U-turn for the 36-year-old who arrived with a 6-9 record and 6.47 ERA with the Chicago White Sox.

South. The Angels having pushed across just 47 runs in August, when they have an ERA of 6.16, respectively third-to-last and last in the big leagues – and that’s with Shohei Ohtani pitching 10 scoreless innings and scoring 11 runs himself. And Wednesday’s shutout.

The Angels’ notable new guy, Lucas Giolito – he’d been among the best pitchers on the trade market, acquired by a team that was determined to make a playoff push with Ohtani and hoping, in the process, they could persuade the soon-to-be free agent to re-sign this offseason – hasn’t found the change of scenery helpful. He’s 1-3 with an 8.14 ERA in his first four outings with the Angels.

“Losing is a disease,” the diminutive psychologist droned on in an address to Roy Hobbs’ hapless New York Knights in the 1984 film, “The Natural.”

Ever seen that scene? “As contagious as polio,” the man went on. “As contagious as bubonic plague … attacking one but infecting all.”

Winning can be contagious too, though.

So, who knows, maybe the Angels – now 60-62 – will rip off a few victories? And get Mike Trout, Zach Neto, Logan O’Hoppe and Ben Joyce back from injury, go on a run and … maybe finish a few games shy of a wild-card berth. Close enough that their beleaguered fans can wonder what coulda been. What shoulda.

Dodgers fans, meanwhile, get to wonder what could be.

Could this team – free of the pressure that weighed so heavily on last season’s regular-season record-breaking unit – reach the World Series? If they can somehow avoid the Atlanta Braves, why not?

And if the Dodgers – now 73-46 – get that far, well, it’s baseball!

This team that’s shorter on experience than those in seasons recently past is tuned all the way into a winning frequency. The club with a suddenly stable starting pitching staff making up for the Dodgers’ inability to land any of their most desired trade targets, it’s got that winning bug.

“Like anything,” Roberts said before Wednesday’s game. “I don’t know if it’s the chicken or the egg, but if you have high-character guys who care for one another that play the right way, I do think that manifests good play and also fends off some of the lows. So the lows – the valleys – aren’t as deep or as long.”

Maybe chemistry and camaraderie and those intangible, magical metrics do matter a lot.

But there’s a science to what the Dodgers do, too. We can count on the mechanics they employ to tune up the baseball mechanics of just about anyone who pulls in, which is why General Manager Brandon Gomes was so confident Lynn would mesh well.

“A lot of the under-the-hood stuff is really strong – high strikeouts, low walks,” Gomes said soon after the trade was announced. “Getting him in our environment with our pitching guys and the energy that guys will have around him is really exciting.”

For Angels fans, they at least still have Ohtani – immune to contagions and curses with his AL-leading 42 home runs – to get excited about.

After that, it’s looking as glum for them as it’s looking fun for the Dodgers.

View the full article

But the senior citizen set on here says leadership among the players doesn’t matter, it all comes from the manager.  Spoken like someone who has never played baseball or spent any time in a dugout.  

2 hours ago, Swordsman78 said:

You obviously didn't read the article.....as usual.

The mental mistakes were cleaned up.   Thank you Nevin.  

Your takes are getting worse by the hour.  Do us all a favor and just post the lineups.

IpolishNevin’sswordman78

19 hours ago, Stradling said:

Yep I fell for it. 

This doesn’t surprise me. 

Just now, full circle said:

That’s not all I said douche Larouche. 

Oh and in case it’s not clear for you, I am insinuating that you are a douche.  

20 hours ago, Stradling said:

So in one game he had better stuff. Cool. 

That’s not all I said douche Larouche.