Jeff Fletcher

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.

First, “they” do a deep dive on every injury to try to find out why it happened and if it’s preventable. “They” just don’t tell us what they found. if you look in the Angels media guide at all the strength and conditioning and medical people, they keep cycling through new ones every 2-3 years, not to mention there being a new GM every 5 years. I have been working on a story for a little while and it’s really really hard because “injury” is such a vague term. A guy getting hit in the face by a pitch is very different than a stiff back which is very different than a torn UCL which is very different than a strained groin. You can’t even really talk about them together because the causes are so different. That’s why this story may go nowhere. I will tell you that so far I’ve looked at 20-23 and tried to isolate only the muscular injuries (oblique, hamstring, groin, etc) and I found the Angels are near the top this year, but in the last 3 they were basically right in the middle. And then I talked to someone who told me I can’t even classify obliques the same as hamstrings so now I think maybe all my data is worthless. Also, sometimes the reported injury is bogus in the first place. And sometimes guy are hurt and don’t even go on the IL, as we’ve seen. but my best guess is most of the problem comes back to my favoeite topic: the farm system. If you’re not getting young players to the big leagues, you’re relying on old ones. And they get hurt more.

It’s because they’re old, on average.

Canning was not on the opening day roster, IIRC. He was also on the IL in August. Thaiss was also on the IL in August. Ohtani, Detmers, Sandoval, Estévez and I can’t come up with anyone else. (edit: I just looked and know who the 5th is but I’ll save it to see if anyone else can guess.)

We were all very confused by the vagueness of the descriptions that Nevin and Suarez used to describe his recent work in games. It’s pretty weird that they called him up, if you ask me. I actually don’t think they need to do stuff like this for luxury tax purposes, because I think they’re safely under, but maybe they know something I don’t know.

I think Trout does want to the Angels to do what it takes to win, which is why I don’t think he wants to come right out and say “sure, guys, whatever. I trust you.” It also makes it look like he doesn’t care about winning if he says that. But ultimately I think he also likes his life in SoCal and doesn’t want to go anywhere. Also, I’m sure he knows that he has not been the best version of himself the past three years, so asking for a trade at this juncture in his career is not likely to work out that well for anyone.

This is probably the only time in my life that I’ll agree with Curt Schilling. By the way, I think … “Team X is open to trading Player Y if he asks to be traded” has always been a true statement at all times. If a guy doesn’t want to be there, you don’t want him there. And if it happens to be a guy who is more tradeable, then it just means you get more for him. In this case, I don’t believe Trout wants to be traded and I don’t believe the Angels could make a trade that would help them, so it’s a non-story.

Of course it’s true. I am also open to buying a Ferrari if a dealer will sell me one for $5,000.

We talked to him a few days ago and he said he was getting better but not yet cleared for baseball activity. He says he is trying to come back but it seems like maybe he won’t make it. He said he’s had this back issue since May.

This saves them a few thousand bucks because they’ll have empty 40-man spot. He was making like $600 a day in AAA on the 40-man. I think the Stassi move got them under by $200k or so, and then the Stefanic move got them another $80k of space (I think). Putting a guy on the IL today adds a little and activating a guy decreases a little. And the difference will get smaller with each day that passes.

When a player gets to 5 years of service time (and Fletcher is 20-some days away), he can reject an outright and keep his contract. Prior to that, if he rejected the outright, he'd be giving up the money, so obviously he wouldn't reject it. Fletcher has 2 years left on this deal, so unless the Angels are planning on keeping him in the minors for 2 years, he's going to get to 5 years. I suppose they could be thinking maybe he'll do something in the winter or in spring training that makes him a) more useful in the majors or b) a trade candidate. As of now, they can simply point to his .813 OPS at SLC (including .693 since he went back on July 20) to explain why he's not in the majors.

That is how it works. Phillips is getting paid $1.2m wherever he is, but Stefanic gets paid 730 in the majors and probably 120ish in AAA. if you take about 1/7 of all that, that’s the savings.

They did both obviously. They didn’t need to put him on waivers since he had options, but I guess they figured they were going to need 40-man spots for when all these guys come off the 60-day so May as well see if anyone wants him. They were pretty fed up with him after the stolen base attempt on Saturday.

At this point every time they activate someone from the IL, it’s going to go down a little bit. I can’t off the top of my head think of a way it could go up. But maybe someone has some kind of bonus?

Well I did re-check with Perry after that. I didn’t just take his word for it.