Jeff Fletcher

I still expect them to activate trout today. If they don’t, maybe Trey cabbage comes back.

Understood. my point is that you shouldn’t be criticizing the umps. You should be criticizing MLB for not using the technology. Maybe that’s semantics. It’s just a pet peeve of mine whenever I hear people say things “umpires have gotten so bad”

Although I understand that some form of automated strike zone is coming, I just want to make sure you guys understand that umpires today are actually the best they’ve ever been. It seems like they are worse because before we didn’t have the technology to evaluate them at all. But go on YouTube and watch a game from the 20th century sometime.

Yeah, their offensive performance is definitely worth a closer look at some point between now and the end of the season.

I can’t answer that one.

I think they all really do like him and think he’s very good at what he does. He’s great at making your “stuff” better. But the guy he replaced had 40 years of real world “how to pitch” experience.

I didn’t read all this. The Angels’ first baseman got hurt. Their options in the minors were Cabbage, Walsh, Schanuel. It doesn’t seem so crazy when you look at it that way.

It should say “one chance to drive in the run without a hit.” He said he’d rather have 3 chances to get a hit than 1 chance at hit/SF/etc and then 1 chance at a hit. Also he mentioned that Fairbanks throws really hard so he figured Grichuk was probably going to hit it to the right side anyway, which at worst moves the runner and at best might be a hit. He also said he wasn’t really bunting when Velazquez was at first. He was just trying to get in the way for the steal. As for leaving Estévez in, he said he “just felt like he needed to leave him after getting the big strikeout.”

I assume if he shows anything in his time in the big leagues this year that he would be in some top 100s next year.

If he does half decent in the big leagues I assume that will vault him onto the top 100 lists going into 2024.

They don't update that in real time. That's what he started the season with. In any case, now Nolan Schanuel can win the ROY.

He already has 31 days, if my math is correct. (Don’t forget he came up last year.) So he just needs to be active for 14 more days to lose his rookie status for 2024.

No idea. But it’s a safe bet that’s what they would do.

I’m not gonna say which one, but there was an early game this year in which a reliever came out looking pretty bad and I have heard subsequently that it was largely because O’Hoppe didn’t know what he should have been calling. They talked to him and he did not make the same mistakes again. (This also sort of relates to the other thread about O’Hoppe sitting out so he can be eligible for ROY. I think every pitch he catches in 2023 will make him better in 2024.)

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.