Inside Pitch

To be fair, they (Houston), had three 1-1 picks three years in a row and completely missed on two of them. They've only hit on two guys outside of the top five picks in the first round. They have had much better success in Latin America IMO.

They may not have unlocked him yet but they have mastered cutting him loose.

Im going to need to see him try harder and care more. Also smiles. Much more smiling, unless he made an out then he needs to look very very mad (care).

As you said, he's a far different player than what Dipoto thought he was getting.. He deserves credit for drafting him, but everything about him currently was due to development that came after he was gone. Even Ward's Dad credits Eppler with having "saved" his career. Truth is the real credit probably goes to those minor league coaches that worked him through those changes. Also, he's nowhere near the success story but I'd say Thaiss has "succeeded" in spite of everything they tried with him. It's kind of funny. He's got 1400 at bats of 112 OPS+. That number rises to a 120 OPS+ since 2020. I mean, if you just want to see him do it over more than 135 games in a season okay, but at this point I think it's fair to say he's an above league average player for his career. Not a star, but pretty much Kole Calhoun through the same number of at bats.

The Angels early on have been a bunch of haves and a bunch of have nots, both on the mound and in the lineup.

It's just more of that piling on that's been happening since that radio interview. All I know is people were getting in line to bury him after he started 0-19, not seeing anywhere near the same number of people commenting on his doing a Rod Carew "hit them where they aren't" clinic since then. Dude is made of glass but he clearly still has his bat-speed/batting eye and can still hit.

This is how stupid the Rendon stuff has become.

I meant overall... So wpa... It's the moat important data point

They habla-ed.... In ingles!

Adell is torching the ball... It was so stupid

Pinch hitting for the sake of pinch hitting....ffs

Has the autopsy been released yet or are they still no habla-ing ingles?

This post better get a lot of love.

100%! To be fair, that FG "Clutch" stat is a big reason why people think he's not good in those situations -- not because of the actual stat, but because the reality is he's always so good that people want him to be superhuman in those "clutch" situations. He's raised expectations so far where anything but awesome is viewed as failure. He's a dumbass basically.

His April has been crazy. He's putting up some career high numbers in batted ball categories, absolutely torching the ball but getting nothing to show for it. So you've got the people that read the triple slash stats asking whats wrong with him while anyone that's watched him play and actually gets it is asking what he has to do to buy a hit... While we are at it -- check out Miguel Sano People lumping him with Hicks are dolts.

It means he's been better at producing when it matters most (helping his team win) than anyone else in MLB since 2016.

Because they aren't measuring clutch at all they are measuring how good a guy is in leveraged situations compared to every other situation. So if you're always awesome, then their version of CLUTCH thinks you suck.. It's a poorly named statistic.

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=3&month=0&ind=0&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2016&season=2024&sortcol=2&sortdir=default&pagenum=1 Leads MLB in WPA.... WPL/LI (situational wins)

I think it's pretty safe he can do better than what he has on the table, even with a bad year. Half his 2025 salary is deferred until 2027, so unless he blows his arm out I'd expect he tests FA again. He's not getting any younger and long term deals offer the greatest amount of security for the player. Bellinger, the other guy people were rushing to lose a draft pick on is currently being outperformed by Rendon. He's actually seen some improvement in predictive data while seeing his actual results not be anywhere near what they were last year. Too early to come to any conclusions but that worrisome noise in the batted ball data from last year has been pretty loud early on. On the other side of the spectrum, I've seen people shitting all over Vlady Jr early on... If there is a poster boy for being on the wrong side of luck early on it's him.

Both times someone has brought him up this year he's gone on to shit the bed in his start. Two starts, 7 IP total. Not sure I get why anyone is still acting like the Angels missed out on something. Unless he gets hurt he'll be available again this winter with no draft compensation.

But does he care yet? Is he trying hard enough?

I have no idea what you think a number three is, but historically speaking, a number three is a 100-105 ERA+ pitcher that gets innings. Nobody seems to get innings anymore, so if he was at 109 last year, he's right there.. Here's another way to look at it -- a three would be among the top 90 pitchers in MLB, right? 2023 ranks fWAR: 52nd (so, a two) ERA: 62 (so a three) IP: 64 (so a three) Fact is he was a bit lucky last year. His ERA was better than his predictive data, so far this year it's been the other way around. The common issue is he's got early John Lackey mental issues.

So much "no habla ingles" this year from the Angels.

I saw that, I also looked at the expected averages in the game-log at baseball-savant -- I didn't watch the game but there were some really wild variances on the expected outcomes. He seemed to get lucky and unlucky at the same time -- but the FB was getting hit hard pretty much by everyone, so that seems to be an issue regardless. \

A 3.90 ERA translates to 111 ERA+. His FIP 2.71 and xFIP 4.39 are both significantly better than his ERA this year, dude needs to get over his Mike Witt BS and keep his head on straight when adversity hits because other than his FB still getting torqued he's had success with everything else.