Inside Pitch

Josh just wanted to have fun and be happy again. I hope he's having a lot of fun and happy.

Escobar was a great signing -- 18 mil for 3 years and he gave them 450+ innings of 121 ERA+ ball and 9.3 WAR. They resigned him in 2007, he put up a 5.0 WAR season and got hurt.... that was the end of it. Garland was obtain via trade in exchange for Cabrera who was a pending FA, and to make room for Aybar. Garland was coming off a 3 year run where he threw 640 innings of 114 ERA+... He tanked, but it was hard to argue it was a poorly thought out trade especially since he ended up filling the 5th spot of the rotation.

I'm "thinging" he has a g thing, mang.... He laid one hell of a slobberknocker on Mike Scioscia too.

Well, they did make an effort to go with catchers good at framing pitches... it is seemingly paying off.

It's interesting we see this deal so differently. I actually believed it was Dipoto's best move until the Trumbo deal. I thought he did an amazing job of getting max value out of one prospect (Segura), I saw the two pitchers we moved as more suspects than prospects... suspects with good arms, but still suspects.

You may want to hold off on any future lectures about being a "smart ass", at least until you stop making proclamations that only one conclusion could be drawn. Similarly the forest for the trees comment can be taken as somewhat arrogant -- am I really missing the bigger picture or are you? Is trading for the sake of trading really the point of the deadline, or is it getting better? Sorry you feel I was "calling you out" but I wanted to be very clear it was very easy to come to a different conclusion so long as someone considered all the factors. I don't want to belabor this, we don't typically have any issues discussing things and I respect your opinions and the effort you put into your posts. But having wanted to see him "try" just for the sake of having tried seems pointless to me. I'm much more critical of his failure to make offseason moves, IMO there were plenty of times he could have improved the team in the offseason and those are fair criticisms. I just genuinely believed they genuinely believed they had better in house options in those days. Anyway, I think the team needs to upgrade in LF. I think at this point it would be foolish to wish on Joyce finding his stroke -- it could happen but its safer to bet against it. While Cron is doing better it would be foolhardy (IMO), to assume he won't crash.... so they can't really count on him to continue what he's doing. Risking finishing the season with two potential black holes would IMO be indefensible, they need to make a trade and IMO most everyone knows this and will try to exploit it. Thing is, I don't believe Stoneman is the driving force behind whatever is happening or will happen. I firmly believe he's here to give the appearance of stability, regardless of whatever chaos may still be happening behind the scenes. To me Bill Stoneman is a non factor for us at the deadline.

Overpays happen at the break. They are painful and often regrettable but, it's par for the course at the deadline. It will suck if/when it happens but if ever this team was in a situation where overpaying (within reason), should be considered, it's this the year. I don't believe Bruce is the guy to overpay for, but there is no question that LF is a black hole.

Thats the conclusion you are coming to -- one that requires a person to ignore what the team actually DID do. You really just don't have any real memory of the situation when he got here, do you? Who exactly did he have to trade? You realize the Angels farm system was considered to be in much worse shape than the one Dipoto took over right? They had a grand total of ONE teenager in the entire system at the time of his hiring -- they had ranked dead last both at the MLB level and the minor league level by BBA. To say the farm was barren is a massive understatement. Other than the mandated Edmonds trade and moves for guys like Figgins, it's true he didnt make moves -- but those guys he didnt trade despite ownership wanting him to led them to their only WS. Just for giggles -- check out the Angels top ten prospects when he took over the team, Ramon Ortiz, rhp Scott Schoeneweis, lhp Mark Harriger, rhp Elpidio Guzman, of Jason Dewey, c Seth Etherton, rhp Keith Luuloa, inf Norm Hutchins, of Bienvenido Encarnacion, ss Darren Blakely, of What trades of "consequence" should he have made in 2000 or 2001 with that collection of talent?? Let's consider that the team wasn't really in position to make moves that would have made much of a difference those first two years.... Does it matter to you that the two guys at the top of that list were both parts of the WS winning team? Have you completely forgotten they were 21 games back at the All Star break in 2001 -- 21 games... Were they going to make a trade to catch up to 116 game winning Mariners? In 2002 he traded for Alex Ochoa -- they won the WS. Were you one of the people clamoring for him to trade K-Rod for Alfonseca? Were the guys they called up for the bullpen better options than what might have been available at the deadline? Shields, Donkey... K-Rod -- did they suck? In 2003 they were 13.5 games back at the deadline.. Again, what trade should he have made that made more sense that to keep rebulding the farm system? In 2004 they added Vlad, Escobar, Colon, and Guillen in the offseason -- they were 2.5 games back at the break, and ended up winning the division. Other than possibly finding an upgrade for Sele, their number 5 starter what would you have had them improve on? Think maybe the plan at the break in 2003 after being bought by Moreno was to add FAs in the offseason? In 2005 they replaced Sele with Byrd. They signed Orlando Cabrera to take over SS and Steve Finley to play CF. They had added Mighty Macier and Juan Rivera in exchange for Guillen... They were up 3 games at the deadline...and finished 7 games up. So other than finding a replacement for Finley, (They had DaVanon and Rivera in house), what would you have had them do? In 2006 they started graduating all the players who they didn't trade. Kendrick, Napoli, Morales. They went into the deadline down a game -- ended up missing the playoffs. They had a hole at 1B -- they had Morales and Kotchman... What possible 1B could they have traded for would have been better than what they ultimately DID do with those guys? I'll wait. In 2007 the offense had 6 of the 9 roster spots manned by people with an OPS+ above 108 - 2 of the spots were no worse than an OPS+ of 93 -- the one black hole was DH where they had Hillenbrand, but they had Morales and Rivera who they could play there.. The rotation had four guys with ERA+ north of 103, and Bartolo Colon. The bullpen had four lights out guys and Chris Bootcheck. They went into the break 4 games up -- won the division by 7. So, what should they have impoved on? Stoneman stepped down after 2007 -- you are incorrectly attributing 2008 to him. So, other than possibly 2006 what failure at the deadline cost the team? Maybe you missed it but the Angels were pretty good about signing FA to fill needs and then staying in house during the season -- you may not have liked it, but it wasn't a bad route to take and other than ONE year, it didn't really come back to bite them in the ass.

Stoneman's history was that he had in house options he liked better. That isn't the case currently. Not that it matters since Klentak and company will be the ones driving any deals that might happen.

You watched too much Braveheart maybe... BTW, I have done the same thing.

Looks like the numbers at that site are outdated...

BBRef has similarity scores on each players' page. Trouts top ten through age 22: Mickey Mantle (941) * Frank Robinson (935) * Hank Aaron (923) * Ken Griffey (922) Miguel Cabrera (918) Al Kaline (914) * Vada Pinson (914) Cesar Cedeno (911) Tony Conigliaro (911) Orlando Cepeda (910) * You can check out the actual stats here http://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/scomp_bat.cgi?I=troutmi01:Mike%20Trout&st=age&compage=22&age=22 Man -- his OPS+ and WAR completely blow away his most similar comps.

Thats pretty awesome. Good thing the Sox never led -- she may have gone Nando on you and given you back the ring... at least until the Angels won it in the 9th.... Congrats.

The dude was actually pretty highly thought of -- he was the wonderboy GM of his era, at the time of his hiring he was the youngest GM in MLB history.

Where are you looking at his splits at? Not seeing a great deal of variance at SLC http://www.milb.com/player/index.jsp?player_id=592230#/splits/R/hitting/2015/MINORS His LH/RH splits are pretty wild though -- he is wrecking RHP.

Real men stand in front of the mirror and do a slow pivot until they find an angle they can live with... at that point you proudly proclaim "Yup, still got it" and move along.

Odor also was a bit aggressive at 2B after a play was over .vs Altuve... I think there was bad blood simmering.

They had been undefeated, if that means anything.

I don't know that he should be untouchable, but he's good enough that we shouldn't have to throw in a lot of filler to get something for him. He's been underrated by people due to old school biases -- he wasn't especially big, he pitched at Furman University... but all he's done is succeed and up his game.

LOL.. that's not in between -- that's exactly what I said it was. Pretty close to neutral. I wasn't popping you, or calling it a hitter's park, it's just never been as pitcher friendly as people believe. I had always assumed it was pretty pitcher friendly too. On to the greater point .. I'd agree that Markakis as a leadoff or number two probably works... at least we know he can actually milk walks and get on base -- he doesn't K a lot either.. He's not cheap, but 11 mil per for the next three might not be awful. He would only need to be a 1.5 WAR player to earn that paycheck at the current rate of 7-8 mil per win in FA.

Hows a three year sample working for you? http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/ATL/2015.shtml Ballparks: Turner Field · Attendance: 996,120 (15th of 15) Park Factors Over 100 favors batters, under 100 favors pitchers. multi-year: Batting - 99, Pitching - 98 · one-year: Batting - 101, Pitching - 102 These are the numbers after it's first three years.... Ballparks: Turner Field · Attendance: 3,284,897 (2nd of 16) Park Factors Over 100 favors batters, under 100 favors pitchers. multi-year: Batting - 99, Pitching - 98 · one-year: Batting - 97, Pitching - 96 And these are the numbers in the middle of its run... Ballparks: Turner Field · Attendance: 2,550,524 (9th of 16) Park Factors Over 100 favors batters, under 100 favors pitchers. multi-year: Batting - 100, Pitching - 99 · one-year: Batting - 96, Pitching - 96 It's always been a pretty neutral park -- the reason many thought it was a pitcher's park is because the Braves had moved from Fulton County Stadium, which was a well known launching pad. See below: Ballparks: Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium · Attendance: 2,901,242 (3rd of 14) Park Factors Over 100 favors batters, under 100 favors pitchers. multi-year: Batting - 105, Pitching - 104 · one-year: Batting - 105, Pitching - 104

You can't compare OPS across leagues -- apples and oranges. You can however look at their OPS+ numbers -- Markakis is currently at 107, Reddick is at 121. The park in Atlanta has actually played pretty close to neutral and has favored slightly favored hitters this season. Didn't he have some sort of surgery on his neck or back .. a disk issue? You see a guy drop from middling power to nothing after surgery -- that's a pretty huge red flag.

I'm not saying this to disparage the station as it is now, nor the artists they play.. But KROQ stopped being "K-ROQ!!!" a long long time ago... The KROQ you guys remember likely reached it's zenith at 1988's Depeche Mode's Concert for the Masses -- KROQ drove that thing, it was pretty epic.. Not long after that Rick Carroll passed away, the DJ's lost a lot of their autonomy and they became much more corporate. I'm guessing it's massively more profitable these days than back then -- but when they moved away from what had made them "the World Famous KROQ", they simply became KROQ, an LA radio station. I still listen to KROQ and 91X over the net.... I don't know the call letters for a single Miami radio station.

A .754 OPS in a neutral park setting is well above the league average of .691.

Great googly moogly... Melvin Upton has been such an asset that he's managed to amass a negative 2.0 WAR since 2013 -- a span of over 1,000 plate appearances. This despite having had the comfort zone of playing with his brother... He's got all the talent in the world and the worst work ethic in baseball since Derek Bell proclaimed he was going on operation shutdown. Anyone that thinks spending 32 mil to have Upton be a backup OFer needs to get their melon checked.