Butcher'd

On one hand I agree that the position the Angels are in right now is much better than it was last year and in 2012, which definitely gives people hope that they will be in the thick of the race at the end of the year.
 
That said, we are also assuming that they will just magically start playing better. Getting Hamilton and Calhoun back will be great, but neither of them can pitch out of the bullpen or in Santiago's spot. Remember, the Angels only played .507 ball after April last year. That isn't going to get them into the playoffs this year. Obviously this is a different team with different circumstances, but this team has to actually play good baseball for 5 months if they want to make the postseason. Right now, I haven't seen anything that would make me believe they are capable of doing that. Hopefully they prove me wrong.

Or you could say that they are one game under .500, with the best record they've had at this point in the season in the last several years all while doing this with a suspect bullpen and injuries to their lead off hitter, clean up hitter and most recently their starting third baseman. Oh and they are 3 games out of first place. I can't wait for those players to get healthy.

Stradling: complaining about posts at AngelsWin.com since 2013

Scioscia will leave him in the rotation the rest of the year. The man is too stubborn to make a change in May

Would have thought he said 0-6.
 
He was right by the way
 
Why make a 2-4, 1-5 and 0-6 options when you will go off on people who vote that.

This franchise is a TOTAL joke to MLB!
Angry Arte is a joke.
Scioscia is a joke.
Butcher is a joke.
The idiot that thought Maronde was a good 3rd round pick is a joke.
Half the players are jokes!
What an embarrassment of a franchise!

No, I just don't like him. Deal with it.

Time for Scioscia to go.

Time for Scioscia to go.

It's quite simple really.
Joe Smith had visions of Ian Stewart being the every day 3B for the next 2 weeks, and the rest is history.

But mt wouldn't that be the case no matter what if a catcher got hurt? Are you really increasing a chance of an injury by having a catcher DH?

Way to get out of that bases loaded no outs jam, Weaver! 

It is so frustrating that this team continues to get owned by Texas. I'm really sick and tired of it. I just want one season where we come out and beat these guys asses.

I keep seeing people say "we won" and then basically thinking that ends the argument. I mean, I understand the sentiment. Winning is the only thing that matters. The hows and the whys are irrelevant in the overall scheme of things. Hell, I even sympathize with this line of thinking; If the Angels win, I really don't give a shit how it happened, I'll go to bed happy.
 
That said, it doesn't mean there aren't negative things to discuss, nor does it mean those things shouldn't be discussed. Like, there's a legitimate concern about Weaver not being able to go deep into games. Sure the team won and Weaver got the W which in the end is all that matters, but when looking ahead, his performance thus far has been a concern. That's the biggest issue right there. People are happy the team won this game but are concerned for the future games ahead.
 
Just like this thread. The OP is concerned with Mike's decisions costing the team wins in the future. I don't agree with his post but I'm not going to just say "we won stop complaining!". If we only discussed the positives during wins then this board would get pretty dull and slow down. I mean how much more can you say?
 
"Great win!" "Yay we won!" "LTBU!" "Good job Aybar!". It's all saying the same damn thing and doesn't add any discussion to the forum.

Yeah man. Seriously. No reason to do it. 

Us winning doesn't change the fact that Herrera and Maronde should not be on a major league roster and have no business pitching in a 3 run game. Scioscia walked a fine line with his bullpen management last night and we're fortunate Jepsen/Kohn/Salas were uncharacteristically solid.
 
Regarding Morin, I can understand building his confidence but if we're waiting for a blowout before playing him we could be waiting for a long time. We haven't had a lopsided loss since the opening series so we're basically waiting for another game where we jump out to a 9-0 lead by the 5th inning. Those kinds of games are few and far between even for this offense, There's no reason for the 2 worst relievers in the pen to get priority over Morin. 

Going to have to call bullshit on this one. This argument might have worked the last 2 years, but he's in year 3 now. That's plenty of time to overhaul a bullpen. Plus, isn't it his fault that his "young pen arms" aren't on the major league roster right now and we're rolling out Herrera and Maronde?

Scioscia is clueless. He goes with proven crap over young guys with real upside. Morin, Alvarez, and Bedrosian all need to be on the team and pitching in key roles

Call up Green
 
release Freese if he doesn't start hitting in a month
 
Send Shuck packing to Salt Lake
 
Trade Kendrick for relievers in a month (when Hamilton and Calhoun are ready to mash)
 
Call up Lindsey in a month
 
Call up Morin
 
lineup becomes:
 
Calhoun RF
Trout CF
Pujols 1B
Hamilton LF
Green 3B
Lindsey 2B
Conger/Iannetta C
Ibanez/Cron DH
Aybar SS
 
Weaver
Wilson
Richards
Skaggs
Santiago
 
Smith
(relievers for Kendrick)
Morin
Frieri
Kohn

Call up Green
 
release Freese if he doesn't start hitting in a month
 
Send Shuck packing to Salt Lake
 
Trade Kendrick for relievers in a month (when Hamilton and Calhoun are ready to mash)
 
Call up Lindsey in a month
 
Call up Morin
 
lineup becomes:
 
Calhoun RF
Trout CF
Pujols 1B
Hamilton LF
Green 3B
Lindsey 2B
Conger/Iannetta C
Ibanez/Cron DH
Aybar SS
 
Weaver
Wilson
Richards
Skaggs
Santiago
 
Smith
(relievers for Kendrick)
Morin
Frieri
Kohn

It only seems like that because it's exactly what you're doing.

comedy.
 
You can't seriously believe Dipoto has just "run into some bad luck". It's called poor scouting, and your boy Jerry epitomizes that in the relief department. I'm all about results, and in the last 3 years the results out of the pen have been disgustingly bad. There is no small sample size argument to be made here either. Billy Beane never seems to have a year of "bad luck" from his pen. Why? Because he's a great talent evaluator and can find gems for cheap unlike Jerry. Dipoto's first year he signed Hawkins and Issringhausen...took him until late May to realize that wasn't good enough then he finally traded for Frieri when we were pretty much buried because of our terrible slow start (in large part because of the God Awful pen). Last year he brought in Madson (coming of TJ), and Burnnett (coming off shoulder injury I believe) and expected that to be enough. It wasn't. Shocker. This year he decided to keep Jepsen, trade for Salas, and keep Frieri (proven failure in closer role) at closer. All 3 of those decisions have already cost us a handful of games and it's not even May. His only good move to date has been Joe Smith and maybe DDLR, but we haven't seen enough of him yet.

comedy.
 
You can't seriously believe Dipoto has just "run into some bad luck". It's called poor scouting, and your boy Jerry epitomizes that in the relief department. I'm all about results, and in the last 3 years the results out of the pen have been disgustingly bad. There is no small sample size argument to be made here either. Billy Beane never seems to have a year of "bad luck" from his pen. Why? Because he's a great talent evaluator and can find gems for cheap unlike Jerry. Dipoto's first year he signed Hawkins and Issringhausen...took him until late May to realize that wasn't good enough then he finally traded for Frieri when we were pretty much buried because of our terrible slow start (in large part because of the God Awful pen). Last year he brought in Madson (coming of TJ), and Burnnett (coming off shoulder injury I believe) and expected that to be enough. It wasn't. Shocker. This year he decided to keep Jepsen, trade for Salas, and keep Frieri (proven failure in closer role) at closer. All 3 of those decisions have already cost us a handful of games and it's not even May. His only good move to date has been Joe Smith and maybe DDLR, but we haven't seen enough of him yet.

comedy.
 
You can't seriously believe Dipoto has just "run into some bad luck". It's called poor scouting, and your boy Jerry epitomizes that in the relief department. I'm all about results, and in the last 3 years the results out of the pen have been disgustingly bad. There is no small sample size argument to be made here either. Billy Beane never seems to have a year of "bad luck" from his pen. Why? Because he's a great talent evaluator and can find gems for cheap unlike Jerry. Dipoto's first year he signed Hawkins and Issringhausen...took him until late May to realize that wasn't good enough then he finally traded for Frieri when we were pretty much buried because of our terrible slow start (in large part because of the God Awful pen). Last year he brought in Madson (coming of TJ), and Burnnett (coming off shoulder injury I believe) and expected that to be enough. It wasn't. Shocker. This year he decided to keep Jepsen, trade for Salas, and keep Frieri (proven failure in closer role) at closer. All 3 of those decisions have already cost us a handful of games and it's not even May. His only good move to date has been Joe Smith and maybe DDLR, but we haven't seen enough of him yet.

At what point do we stop brushing off everything that's gone wrong for Jerry as "bad luck" and accept that maybe he and his people are just pretty bad at evaluating talent?
 
At this point, the entire bullpen is 100% his doing. And who can we really say we're surprised has struggled? Frieri, and that's pretty much it.
 
It was pretty clear from the get go this was a bad bullpen. It just hasn't hesitated to confirm that.