Jeff Fletcher

Feel free to think that if it makes you sleep better

Over the last 3 years, only 17 teams had even 7 different guys play 120+ games. Ten of them made the playoffs.

He had an arm injury that pretty much ended his pitching career in 2020, even before he broke out as a hitter. Not saying that anyone is suggesting he pitch again, just that I wouldn't judge what his RF arm would be now by what it was before then.

You should look up the ages of all those players.

If the bold numbers happen, the Angels will be good. Doesn't even matter what the other numbers are. That being said, good luck with that.

My 30% pick is pretty genius. If he signs with the Angels, I can say I knew better than anyone else. And if he doesn't, I can say I guess it was the other 70%

I went in and fixed it.

He did. (My colleague who is actually supposed to be working tonight is going to write that.) He didn't say anything new. He just reaffirmed that 4 doctors said he had a bruise, a 5th said there was a fracture, and ultimately it doesn't matter because the treatment is the same.

I though you were done posting? And I'll stick to 30 percent

100 percent. We saw the locker was cleared out at 9:30. Obviously, the most likely scenario is he just shut it down to have surgery, and that's why it was cleared out. We asked Angels PR if they could give us a definitive answer so we wouldn't just have to leave people hanging with "his locker is empty." We waited for a full 30 minutes for them to answer before any of us tweeted anything. Finally, they just said: "Sorry, we will tell you what's going on tomorrow," even though they acknowledged that the gap was going to leave all kinds of room for wild speculation.

I didn't even give it a second thought because I've seen place-holders in team photos just about every year for the 25 years I've been doing. Ohtani arrived at the park just after the picture, so I figure he was at the doctor or something. A huge nothingburger.

I have written everything I know on this one.

I think there’s no chance he’s already decided he’s not coming back. I’m not saying he is coming back. I’m saying he doesn’t know. It may seem crazy to us mere mortals to not have already thought all this through, but I truly believe that Ohtani is freakish enough to compartmentalize all this so it’s not in his mind during the season. Beaides that, the rehab and whatever surgery he has will have an impact on what he does.

According to his agent, he wouldn't be doing this if he thought it would jeopardize him being ready on opening day. I specifically pointed out that in 2018 he waited till Oct 1 for surgery and couldn't play till May, and he said it's different this time because the injury isn't the same. I have no way to confirm if all that's true, but that's what his agent says.

Here's the thing with all this Ohtani uncertainty... Yeah, it's frustrating and confusing that you don't know. But what's the alternative? Just tell Ohtani to go on the IL because he's taking away Trey Cabbage's chance to come up and collect some service time? Or Michael Stefanic? If Ohtani said "I am done," I am sure no one would tell him otherwise and they'd put him on the IL and go about their business. But as long as he says "I think I can play in less than the 7 days that I'd have to miss by going on the IL," you're not going to say "Sorry, dude. We need to get Trey Cabbage up here."

He was put on waivers, but no one claimed him because a team would not only have to pay the remainder of this year's salary, but also the $2M buyout of his option. No. It's already baked in to his current AAV of $8.5M. (His deal was 2/$17M. It was $7.5, $7.5 and an option for $7.5 or $2M.) If the Angels picked up his option, only the remaining $5.5M would count against the cap for 2024.

Exactly. This is why you all should subscribe to the Athletic and the OCR. They are two different types of coverage. Even on the days when Sam and I are both at the same game, we are doing two different jobs.

I think he would want to play a position if he couldn’t pitch. Also, it’s not good for any team’s roster management to have one player locked into the DH spot. It’s a small price to pay for having Ohtani as a pitcher, but if he couldn’t pitch I think it would be tougher to justify.

That average is based on 28 different IL stints over 4 years, so I don't think a few rehab assignments could make that much difference. Also, it's only the "muscle injuries" so Trout's back, Rendon's wrist, Trout's hand aren't even included in those numbers.

When you’re talking about why any 2 people are different from each other, I don’t think it has to do with what uniform they are wearing.

This season they have had more of all kinds of injuries (except pitcher injuries, which are still pretty good) to all kinds of players. Considering that all the training/medical staff this year has been the same as last year, I think you can discount blaming them. The difference is the players. Also, it's possible that this whole discussion is as simple as this: Trout and Rendon are injury prone. If two of your highest paid players are not on the field, it's going to magnify all else that's going on. The Dodgers have a million injuries, but Betts and Freeman are out there every day. The Braves pitching staff has had a million injuries, but Acuna and Riley and Olson are out there every day.

Since no one may ever see this data, since I don't know what's going to happen with the story. Here is it. "Muscle injuries" (hamstring, groin, oblique, lat, calf, biceps. Nothing with contusion or fracture. No pitcher arm injuries) 2020-23 Angels: 28 IL uses, average of 26.5 days missed. MLB average: 25.1, 32 days. (The inference from fewer days could be that the Angels have more "phantom" ILs in here, or else that their standard for putting guys on the IL has been lower, when other teams may just have the guy sit out for 4-5 days but the Angels put him on the IL for 10. I think it's probably neither, but just a fluke of the sample size. 23 only Angels: 10 (5th most), average 26.1 days MLB average: 6.2 and 33.7 days

Not to my knowledge

I don’t think Arte has any involvement in firing trainers. I think he has involvement in firing GMs and then the new GM wants his own people.

I think you should remove any pitcher arm injury from there. Pitchers hurt their arms/elbows/shoulder because pitching is unnatural. That’s not the same as a strained hamstring. As for all the other strains, I filtered out all of what I believed were the preventable ones (hamstring, groin, oblique, calf, lat, biceps) and found that the Angels were a little higher than normal this year, but it’s not at all a trend. The last three years they were average or better. And you’re right about some of those being phantoms. (You can guess which ones.) I will get to this story eventually but I don’t think it will ultimately have the answers you want because it’s such a big, complicated, vague, topic.