Jeff Fletcher

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.

Yes that’s the number. Im still not willing to say 100 percent they will be under, but I can’t imagine they would have done this if it didn’t get them under or give them a fighting chance to get under. The descrepency is whether you recalculate the AAV based on the new total salary he’ll make, or just pro-rate the AAV. The latter is illogical to me because it doesn’t reflect what he’s actually getting paid or his actual AAV, but that is apparently how it works.

Also, Arte clearly agreed to go over the tax in the first place so he must be Ok with it. When he went over on July 26 it was clearly with the intent of keeping Ohtani, which likely also would have meant going over for the second straight year in 2024.

They understand that the moves happened because the Angels players played like crap. They are not stupid.

And my point is those are both moves that a lot of people would have endorsed without caring about the players feelings. So let’s not go too far caring about their feelings only when it suits the narrative we want. Also, every single player in the clubhouse knows that all of this waiver stuff happened for one reason: because they played like crap.

I think you’re over estimating the downside to this move. I think a lot more players would have looked negatively on the Angels if they’d been sellers when 3 games out or if they’d put Max Stassi on the restricted list (which literally takes money from him, as opposed to having guys keep their money and change teams)

That’s all true. It was all true on July 26 when they went over the luxury tax threshold. And it’s remained true every day since then.

That's true. But he did have a hip issue. It's a weird situation, but the further they got into I think it made it kind of tough for the Angels to do anything different.

You are allowed to do that. I think it depends what the "personal reasons" are, as far as how a team would handle it and how it would be perceived.

If the Angels had put Stassi on the restricted list, Arte would come off looking even worse.

Grichuk is staying with the Angels

Yes. But a player with a no-trade clause can’t be.