Inside Pitch

So.... .284/.383/.556 as a 20 year old at Orem.. 10 walks, 18 Ks.... Pretty significant improvement .vs last year. He's been promote and demoted from Burlingwhatever back to Orem but he seemengly turned a few heads.

Smith's curves (both of them) and change are well ahead of what Saunders had -- and if he keeps his velocity where he has it now, he's about 2 MPH above where Saunders pitched at. You seem to downplay what Smith does, I don't really get it -- particularly after the lengths you went to in order to talk up Michael Roth. It's so pronounced that I sometimes wonder if we are watching the same pitcher. Smith's biggest issue will be keeping the curveball down, because when he misses, they can torque it. Still, he routinely makes hitters look awfully stupid. There is no denying MLB hitters aren't as easily fooled, but Smith seems to be getting better. Arkansas Travelers ‏@ARTravs Jul 31 .@Smithsonian15 is through 3 scoreless w 4 Ks. Smith has not allowed a run over his last 20 IP & has an ERA of 0.58 last 47IP! #Angels #MiLB I'm looking forward to seeing how he handles pitching in SLC -- I'm expecting some of the same struggles Nick Adenhart had. Adenhart BTW is who I would most closely comp him to. 92 MPH FB, change, big curve... but not nearly as big as Adenhart. Smith may not be a sure thing, but he's hardly been squeaking by or marginally fooling people. He's had stretches of flat out dominance.

One of the Beastie Boys, dummy....

Bingo -- I'm pretty sure the owners all thought that everyone would toe the line and nobody would dare do what the Dodgers are doing... BOOM.... LA has exploited the system in a very pointed way.. To blame them is to ignore than MLB agreed to let the possibility exist. Those tradeable competitive balance picks are golden. A team picking up a FA with draft pick compensation need only find a way to acquire one of those picks in order to soften the blow of losing a first rounder. It's a tremendous workaround.

Its not the wild cards that's changed the postseason IMO. Its the added days off to accommodate the TV schedule - that's completely changed how teams play in the postseason and nullified the strengths and weaknesses of certain teams. A team with 5 capable starters but no shutdown guy is tough during the regularly season but at a disadvantage in the postseason .vs a team sporting a King Felix and the sort... There is no way the Giants can ride Bum the way they did last year in postseason play setting that more closely resembles the regular season. The changes to how teams draft has also IMO dramatically altered how teams go about things. Nobody had ever purposely publicly tanked til recently. Baseball's chase of the all mighty dollar has IMO weakened/cheapened the postseason.

BTW -- Nate Smith to SLC...... This is where we may see him have some issues -- a curveball up in SLC can go pretty far....

Grit is a good way to put it. He basically ground out a MLB career with very marginal stuff. Had he still been throwing 93 and still had that hard biting slider he would flash in college, he had front end potential but they seemed to abandon him when he left VT. Anyway, it was that grit and bullish mentality that let me move beyond my disappointment at our drafting him over a HS lefty I had watched pitch in several showcases and who I was sure would be a front end starter. A guy from SD named Cole Hamels.

Fine, based on what we have seen of both Weaver and Tropeano, IMO Trop gives the team the best chance to win. I'm not so sure that Nate Smith wouldn't give the Angels a better chance to win right now than Weaver. It doesn't make me happy to see Weaver struggle like he has -- he's meant so much to the organization, but Father Time can be cruel.

Personally, I think it's in the best interest of the Angels to play the rest of the year with Trop and Heaney in the rotation. Find out what you have, let the next GM be able to make the critical decisions that need to be made moving forward. They already decided not to part with the farm -- may as well find out what pieces they want to keep moving forward.

I don't really see him comparing to either of them. I give Saunders a lot of credit for having had as good a MLB career as he did, he was nothing remotely close the the pitcher he had been in college, there was an almost instant drop in velocity after he was drafted and the change from NCAA to MiLB balls really hurt his breaking pitches. Awful curveball.

Laserblast

06-14 - .292/.332/.423 2015 - .290/.337/.415 Still the most boringly consistent player ever.....

Yep.... Seeing Salas have such a prominent role in the crappiness has been murder for me.

People can talk about Trout all they want.... We know who the real MVP is....

Salas started it.

This is a fair and well articulated post. When it's all said and done I'll look back on the Dipoto era as having been the right plan and the wrong implementation. Not because I feel JD did anything wrong, but rather because his owner failed to let him pick his own manager. That's not to say MS is bad, he just wasn't JD's guy and there was always a level of mutual mistrust at the very top as a result.

Doc, I agree he shouldn't be catching crap for just bailing -- but let's not pretend his family was at risk. He wasn't being asked to act as Mayor of Fallujah, he was the GM of a MLB team, extremely well liked by the fans and completely devoid of fault in the eyes of most people as it related to the team's most recent and glaring missteps. You say the team is rudderless -- seems to me the team is simply in a very difficult situation. They can't take any one course and run with it knowing there could be massive change once the season ends. I said it when the shit hit the fan and I'll say it again. This team/franchise needs to worry less about the final outcome of this season and more about what the long term plan and who will be running it. EVERYTHING changed when the guy at the very top took his ball and went home. Its foolish to get caught up in the who and why, the only thing the franchise needs to worry about is what this team wants to be and who gets to lead them there moving forward. I'd feel better about the situation regardless of how the team finished if Klentak were officially given the reigns. At least there would be ONE person to blame or praise again, instead of all the cloak and dagger BS about Stoneman, Scioscia, and Moreno.

And the flip-side to your stance is..... Pretending he didn't quit and defending him without knowing the facts of what happened is stupidity on your part. Wouldn't a team quitting on him be a sign of bad leadership? I mean, when in the history of the game has a GM ever had his team quit on him? Maybe the better question is has a GM ever put himself in a position where that was actually possible? I'm not being rhetorical, I'm trying to remember an instance in MLB where the GM quit and cited the reason as the team having quit on him. And again -- the flip-side to you argument is.... wouldn't it be "stupid" to fault the team for quitting on him without "fully knowing their side". Are you capable of applying your logic evenly or do the rules only apply when it's a defense of Teflon Jerry. His self serving dribble as he exited rings hollow in face of the actual situation. What good did he feel he would be doing by creating chaos and leaving the team in a lurch with an unfinished plan just before the deadline? It's hard to argue that the team was in a better position by handing the reins over to someone else, anyone else, when JD was the architect of the long term plan and he had been the one building the relationships... This was about him and only him. Which is fine. Obviously you liked Dipoto, you bought into his talk and despite your call for critical thinking and waiting out all the information you are squarely in his camp.. I'm not condemning you for picking a side, just please try to refrain from calling others stupid when you fail to play by your own rules. Praise him for what he did right, fault him for his missteps, I bet if you asked him he'd tell you that would be fair.

They used to be very tight lipped -- that hasn't been the case of late. Lots of loose lips all of a sudden and I honestly wonder who and why it's been happening. Dipoto wasn't a bad GM but his best skills are as a politician. There is no denying the guy can talk a fair game and that he is extremely personable/likeable, that's won him a lot of fans, much more than say Bill Stoneman who rarely spoke and accomplished a world more in less time. With Chuck coming out and admitting that JD wasn't completely devoid of responsibility when it comes to Pujols and Hamilton, people need to reconsider his tenure. I'm not saying he was a bad GM, because I don't believe that is the case, but he's not the blameless figure some have tried to portray him as..

Thats it exactly -- had they called him up he would have been pitching on short rest.

This probably means its a bullpen day..... not sure thats a good thing.

He will play them using a very intricate system. He's going to go alphabetically according to height.

Taylor Blake Ward ‏@TaylorBlakeWard 3m3 minutes ago C.J. Wilson will have surgery to scrape bone spurs, which should be season ending injury; not career ending per medical source #Angels

I may have said something before I should have -- but here is your confirmation. http://m.angels.mlb.com/news/article/140227778/angels-promote-sean-necomb-to-double-a

Its a weak stat no doubt -- but the ERA is what it is...the sample size is the full season and the innings pitched component of the QS has some merit. The Angels rotation is second to the CWS in that department.. But I wouldn't mind if someone called me out on bring up QS, it's a crap stat.. Well, it's a poorly named stat currently. At the same time, most teams would be okay with a number 5 pitcher giving them a guaranteed 6 IP even if he was allowing three runs per game -- the Royals rotation for instance is averaging 5.5 innings per start and a 4.36 ERA. I forget where it is, but someplace is now tracking something called a super quality start or something along those lines that is 7 innings and 2 ER, and I remember Dayn Perry trying to get people on the "dominant start" bandwagon, which as far as I know wasn't being tracked anywhere but in his head and was intended to measure any starts of at least 8 innings and 1 or fewer runs allowed.