Jeff Fletcher

He is signed for next year with an option for 2025

I assume the Angels will need to know about 2024 pretty soon into the off-season.

The Angels could have put him on the restricted list and not paid him but they are allowing him to remain on the IL so he gets paid.

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.

He had a personal issue that took him away from his rehab temporarily.

A fair question. Maybe not immediately after O’Hoppe’s injury but certainly once they realized that Stassi wasn’t coming back anytime soon. And everyone does like Wallach/Thaiss. I think Stassi/Suzuki were just exceptional in that regard.

That’s why they traded a bunch of marginal prospects.

What I hope people get out of this is that an MLB org is a big machine. It’s silly to assign so much blame or credit to a “pitching coach” when he’s just one of dozens of people working behind the scenes of what you see on the field. The other thing I really got out of talking to people, which very few people have commented on, is how much difference it makes not having Stassi/Suzuki. I have a feeling a lot of the same stuff was going on last year but they were smoothing out the rough edges by being able to know (and lead authoritatively) when to go off the script the analytics people were providing.

That’s where you lost me. You really didn’t think that López is better than Webb? Or that Grichuk is better than Jordyn Adams? Or that Cron is better than Trey Cabbage? Or that Giolito is better than whoever happens to be the worst starter in a given week? Or that Leone is better than Zack Weiss?

It’s pretty easy to replace the caliber of prospects the Angels traded. Even in the case of Quero, I’ve heard the Angels didn’t believe he could stick at catcher and didn’t have the bat to play 1B. Time will tell.

The whole reason the incentive exists is to prevent teams from manipulating service time. I’m the sure the union would have a fit if the Angels did this, let alone the message it would send to every other player, in and out of the organization. You guys are overthinking it.

You’d have to be pretty certain he would win ROY for this be even remotely worth him missing out on the experience of playing a month of major league games.

Maddon picked him to be the third base coach, not to be the “replacement manager.” Nevin is not at all a “Maddon guy” in terms of managing the way Maddon did.

I just listened to the podcast and have some clarity on the “announcement.” 1. Arte himself was obviously the source quoted by Verducci in the SI story. 2. The Giolito-López trade was already happening before the Ohtani story. The “source” in Verducci’s story specifically said they were going to be buyers and get “a starter and a reliever.” 3. Once the Giolito trade happened, it would have been obvious the Angels weren’t trading Ohtani, announcement or not. 4. Regardless of any announcement, Perry was not giving other GMs the impression that there was a serious chance of trading Ohtani because his owner never wanted to trade him. Perry is not going to lose credibility with his peers by fully engaging and wasting people’s time (including his own) by soliciting a bunch of trade offers for a deal his boss wasn’t going to let him make. I believe Perry was willing to collect people’s offers but not willing to make counter offers or any kind of back and forth without Arte’s go ahead, which never came The point to all that is I don’t think the “announcement” really affected the dynamics of what was happening, because it was nothing that the people inside didn’t already know.

I don’t think he’s selling anytime soon. I think he’s keeping the team because he loves it.

A fun fact I learned about that last year: they are not the same hot dogs that they sell for normal price. So you’re getting an even worse product than the normal crappy ballpark hot dog.

No chance those were Arte’s idea. Grichuk was gone quickly so I certainly don’t think he rose to the level to become an Arte favorite, particularly since it was during the time when the Angels were abandoning the farm system. And Cron was certainly a useful player in his first tour with the Angels but not enough of a difference maker for him to be on Arte’s wish list. They got Grichuk to replace Ward (injured on 7/29) and they got Cron because that they realized on 7/22 that Rendon wasn’t coming back soon and Escobar wasn’t as good as they hoped. The Rockies trade was on 7/30.

Joe Maddon is the guy who picked Nevin to be on his staff. When Minasian picked Maddon’s replacement, he picked Nevin from among the candidates on staff. (Obviously Arte had to approve.) When Nevin got his extension, it was basically just because Arte was selling and it would be tough to get someone else to come into a situation in flux like that. Again, Arte would still have had to approve. The quote you highlighted was from the day Arte said he was selling the team so obviously the question was about Arte. The question wasn’t “who picked you as manager?”

Moustakas declined to talk and no one else who we deemed an appropriate spokesperson for that game was around.

I think the Mets are paying for all of Escobar, including the buyout.

I can’t imagine this situation would continue like this next year. He’s either going to at least try to play or he’s not going to get paid (either by retiring or going on the restricted list). As for the luxury tax, I think if they aren’t paying him (by either of those last two scenarios), it doesn’t count.

I never thought that 30% was contingent on them making the playoffs. I thought it was contingent on them playing well enough to show a promising future. They still could do that. But I’d probably knock it down to 28.34381% now.

I just remembered a conversation I had a couple days ago (with a source familiar with Ohtani’s thinking) that the latter part of this is true. If the Angels would have traded Ohtani, it would have been next to impossible to then convince him to re-sign after the season. He would not have believed the Angels were ever committed to winning if they gave up when they were 3 games out with more than 2 months to go.

Is this a serious suggestion? You’re gonna have him play OF for 7 innings so in the 8th inning he can run 40 feet to get to the bullpen instead of running 300 feet from the dugout? By the way if he has to bat in the bottom of the 8th then your whole plan was for nothing. Or if the Angels are losing.

The updates on Rendon have been regular enough. If nothing is changing they aren’t going to say that every day. As of Wednesday, he still isn’t doing any baseball activity, which means he’s not close to returning. As soon as he gets cleared to do that, you’ll know. Nothing has changed with Stassi. At this point there’s not enough season left for him to come back.