Inside Pitch

Sample size is tiny but his average exit velocity has been way down. it's actually gone up with every game but he's still sitting at 85.7. I know he missed time in ST so maybe he's a bit behind but he's toast if he can't get it above 87 at minimum. Aaron Hicks is at 84.3.. Only reason I'm bringing it up is the guy he's blocking (Adell), is sporting an average exit velocity of 96.5. They really need to give Adell at bats while he's seeing the ball and making contact. Plus it's become pretty clear he's become an asset on the bases.

Rebuilding-ish.

I give them an eleventy on a scale of A-F.

If his legs aren't shot, he's not done. If they are, they should consider eating the contract.

That's the LAST thing they need -- they already have an owner that thinks he understands baseball. I was listening to the Orioles new owner when he was being interviewed by their TV guys -- he went out of his way to show how deeply he was a fan of Baseball and the Orioles in particular but then he said the only thing Orioles fans should care about, he said he knew his GM was great and that he was just going to stay out of his way and give him what he needs. The Angels need an owner that understands how to get out of the way of the actual people who understand baseball.

I think some Bmore site or something claimed Hicks called Trout out or something vapid.

Only two games, but so far the season highlight has been the thread on some dude named, Seymour Weiner

Looking forward to actually seeing him "hit" leadoff.

I'm always up to talk baseball but given you have ignored what I've said both times and downplayed what happened I'm not certain we would get anywhere. The Angels situation was essentially a case of one bad actor. First let me remind you initially called into question the legitimacy of what happened, now you are seemingly saying that they did in fact do some bad things, but so did others. I have forgotten more "bad things" MLB teams have done in regards to Latin American players than I can likely remember -- but none of those things matter in this particular case. Bringing up the past misdeeds of others serves no purpose other than to try to deflect blame or downplay things, I prefer to be honest about the situation and let's be clear here, the Angels didn't do bad things -- Clay Daniel did. I have no idea who told you this nonsense but they weren't even the team that caught the worst of it -- that would be the Chicago White Sox, or can you please tell me one thing MLB did to punish the Angels, I'll wait. The difference was the Sox didn't sweep it under the rug, they went to the Feds, got the justice department involved and had the guilty parties prosecuted -- three different people served jail time ranging from one year and one day to two years. Front office types were always known to have cut deals with buscones to sign lesser players so they would funnel the better talent to them (signing the shit guys raised the buscon's reputation among the player base), but what happened here was entirely different, players/teams were defrauded. Back to the Angels' situation, while the Sox owned up to everything and went hard after David Wilder, Jorge Oquendo, Victor Mateo, and the others, the Angels tried to sweep it under the rug, in part because it had not been as rampant as the CWS situation. Ultimately, Chicago's willingness to shit on Wilder and company (as well as the arrests and jail time), carried a lot of weight with the buscones and general population whereas the Angels course of action and their unwillingness to talk about it made them seem like they were covering up. Consider this... of the three teams that were under investigation for this you had one fire (he resigned) their GM (Nats). One had their director of player development and head of Latin American talent fired, arrested, jailed, and ordered to pay back monies (CWS), and then the Angels who fired a lower level manager in their farm system and left it at that. When you consider that the Nats were only guilty of having a GM who had worked with the people involved (he had been party to the deals with buscones to sign bad players while in Cinci), it made the Angels actions seem rather limp wristed. As far as where I got my info from... Preston Gomez was one of Stoneman's advisors, he had been one of the Washington Senators/Twins boys when they made their major push for Cuban talent prior to the revolution -- there were few people alive that had a more nuanced knowledge of MLB and it's approach to Latin America over the decades. His main thing at the time was to go down and meet with/speak to all the Latin American players at both of the Angels academies in the DR and VZ. He was intimately aware of who, what, where, and when. He gave me the rundown as it was happening, before it made it to the press ... ditto the Donny Rowland mess which is actually pretty hilarious but lacks the sexiness as it was entirely office politics so to speak. There was no making an example of the Angels, it was entirely a perception issue brought on by the Angels lack of action and maybe the CWS scorched Earth approach that iced the Angels out and made it difficult for them to sign players. Also there was a bit of arrogance involved. They believed they could weather the storm because the farm was in fact thriving and that they could rely on the draft to continue to supply the team with talent for a few years. They miscalculated on several fronts. Disagreements aside, I'd like to echo what others have said and wish you well as it pertains to your health. None of this Angels BS matters by comparison.

Somewhere Brett Favre feels left out of the NY weiner discussion.

At least you know they will know how to piss off (Struckland), then fight (Garrett), MLB players. It's kind of entertaining to think about imo.

You tried to downplay this once before -- there is no debating the legitimacy of anything, Clay Daniels was dirty. The CWS crew made the Angels look like choir boys but it wasn't a case of the usual Latin American BS, thus the Federal indictments, busts at airports, arrests, and prison time. Clay Daniel stole from players and it cost the Angels dearly. They didn't so much choose to shut down as much as they didn't have a choice, they were effectively black-balled in the DR. They continued to try to sign guys after the fact but couldn't, the buscones steered away the top end guys and the scrubs who should have been happy with room, board, and the chance to advance, deluded themselves into thinking they deserved more. The lone "positive" was that it led them to try to shift their focus to Central America. I got a very in depth account of the situation from people involved, it was brutal. They retained some scouts, but they shut down their year round academies for the most part. Dipoto traded away international money every year of his tenure in Anaheim. His purge of the scouting department on the heels of the Daniel BS, really set this franchise back, but he was able to benefit from the work Abe Flores had done in Central America before the purge. Mostly it was an afterthought to him, he was busy trying to tear down everything that had existed prior to his hiring regardless of whether or not it meant firing capable people. The single biggest factor in the Angels return to Latin America was simply time. People didn't so much forget as they started to let it go. Eppler jumped into it hard, he spent right up to the penalty figure every year he was in charge but there were a lot of lotto ticket types.. Truth is he may have offered more than he likely would have on the lower tier guys because he thought it may help smooth over the past -- he was also prohibited from signing anyone for more than 250K because of the Baldoquin idiocy ... but when push comes to shove it worked, he got the stink off the team in the eyes of the buscones and players alike. He also hired a few buscones he had relationships with while with the Yankees (partially due to Abe Flores who went to the Yanks after the purge), as scouts which went a long ways towards winning people over, particularly in Venezuela. Perry has built on everything Eppler had started and likely fine tuned some things he may have been doing wrong. Some of it won't show for a bit but he's added and added and added and the team will be better off for it. The Clay Daniels shit-show may be the single biggest factor into why the Angels farm system dried up the way it did. It should piss Angel fans off.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. The buscones have moved from developing players to developing tools, which is why we have seen more of the big money Latin American players flame out early IMO. They picked up on what teams we're looking for and taught guys to work on the things that would impress them. So having more guys actually watching them through workouts and through drills is huge. The other big change is the amount of video teams get from central scouting -- front offices are seeing a lot more of the US guys than they ever have before regardless of whether or not they had guys bird dogging players.

Didn't that guy get into some hot water at some point with some comment he made? Angels twitter is a shit-show.

I mentioned ERA because that's what people would typically talk about when someone references unearned runs. His walk rate was up a bit last year but he's always had that problem and we know for a fact the team was having the pitchers chase Ks which may have lead to him throwing more pitchers for balls to try to get hitters to bite. I think the biggest issue he has is the same issue's he's always had and WHY he will always need to work in and out of the zone -- his FB/sinker isn't good. It's not a velocity thing so much as it's just a rope. There was essentially no change in his velocity between 22 and 23 but the value of his FB which wasn't great to begin with cratered to 15% last year despite him actually seeing some of the best vertical movement of his career. Yesterday was interesting in that his FB velocity was up and he showed better vertical and horizontal movement than normal but his sinker got completely wrecked. Dude needs to pitch backwards and hitters know it.

I made my comments on those deals known at the time it was nice to see them try for a change but it didn't much if they didn't build on it in the winter -- here we are. Everything we have heard since the end of last year about the happenings at the deadline make me want to hurl. Anyway, I don't have any more info or insight into what the team was thinking than you, I just really think they didn't want to lose those picks. The reality that both of the guys that made the most sense for the Angels (Snell and Bellinger) had some noise attached to them may have factored into it as well. Hopefully there is less up in the air next winter and Minasian and company are actually allowed to do their thing. I say hopefully because I have zero faith in Arte letting his baseball people work.

If it makes you feel any better, the sample sizes were tiny but Neto, Hicks, and Trout were the only guys who had any previous success .vs Burnes -- the only other guy that had a batting average was Sano. They may be going with their gut more but I don't think they are going to start ignoring data completely.

You may want to consider for a second that maybe they REALLY value the picks they would have lost to sign a guy like Snell, or Bellinger. Best of all, if your theory holds true, it would be possible for them to sign BOTH Snell and Burnes next season if they become available. I legit believe the Angels are trying to open a window, not chase the one that's already closed.

They guy was far and away the worst.

His 2023 was bad but people are overstating how bad it was and they are glossing over how bad the team was behind him. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/custom?year=2023&type=pitcher&filter=&min=q&selections=p_unearned_run&chart=false&x=p_unearned_run&y=p_unearned_run&r=no&chartType=beeswarm&sort=p_unearned_run&sortDir=desc Those unearned runs may not have dinged his ERA but they massively impacted his performance. He isn't full of piss and vinegar like Lackey but sort of reminds me of him before his nuts dropped and he stopped losing his crap over every little thing. Also his FB is hittable AF.

I thought Sandoval was an odd choice as well. Given Walsh's tendency to build guys up, get them to believe in themselves, it's possible the choice was made to try to get him to step up. It's whatever for me. they couldnt hit the other team's number 1. Hopefully he reaches FA and a certain owner was watching.

That's exactly how most of X/Twitter sees him. People on this board like to point out fans here don't care for him but the cult of personality he has going on X is kind of funny. I actually think it's less about Blum and more the overwhelming hate for Moreno which to be fair is understandable. I think he understands where to get clicks and what his target audience wants to see/hear. It's also possible he grew up reading or listening to East coast sports coverage where a certain shtick is much more common. He seems young too and may still be learning the finer points of diplomacy that will eventually help him along if he stays in sports. But IMO he understands the TMZ nature of the internet so, I get it. I like that he asks questions, I get tired of him trying to ask the same question multiple ways to try to get the answer he wants or rather, the answer he thinks his audience wants to hear. We will have a clearer picture of who he is or what his style truly is if ever the Angels don't suck and there aren't as many negative things to ask about/point out.

FWIW, not sure if it's still true or not but they had a larger number of scouts in Latin America than they did stateside. Given the nature of scouting today and how much digital data there is via Rapsado (its cost has come down so much it's even in high schools now), it sort of made sense. The other thing and I know you know this, is with buscones being how they are ... most of the best players are corralled into those development schools where they aren't really taught baseball so much as they are engineered to perform well in the measurable areas scouts tended to focus on... So getting people on the ground to watch how they are worked out is significantly more important IMO. It's a huge talent pool of nearly free players that are massively underdeveloped when compared to similarly aged US players. Smart teams are sending their best scouts to Latin America if for no other reason it's the easiest was to get talent into systems...also why you see teams with two LA teams in the DSL.

He said the leader thing about Canning.

Dude went right back to pushing a narrative.... "Voice of the people".