Roy Hobbs

Eh. The Angels were in decent shape late July. It was Arte's last chance to win with Ohtani (and maybe help sway negotiations) and their first true shot at contending in years. Arte has long said his focus is on the fans and their experience. Most fans don't care about the farm. Most fans only care when the team is winning, and don't really care when they're not. It's only us diehards who see the baseball logic. Arte sees it as no more than a passing entertainment moment. When we remove our diehard emotions from the equation, keeping Ohtani was the obvious move to make. It had the best chance of giving the Angels a winning team in the moment and bringing fans in. It didn't work out. Those same casual fans will come back whenever the Angels are winning again. 
Flipping switches, sure, it would've been great to trade Ohtani and get some prospects back, plus keeping the ones we dealt, but while we did trade away a bunch of interesting guys, I don't think we gave away a bunch of future perennial All-Stars. Quero could be Victor Caratini, and he was arguably the best prospect we lost. Our farm is just that bad.

Also, these franchise player deals rarely make the impact people would expect. 

Betts and Price to Dodgers - Verdugo has been decent, now a Yankee, Downs has bounced around, Connor Wong is okay but not looking like much
Goldschmidt to Cardinals - Carson Kelly and Luke Weaver were the big gets, and both have basically flopped and become DFA waiver bait
McCutchen to Giants - hey! A good deal! Pirates got Bryan Reynolds
Longoria to GIants - Denard Span and a slew of flop prospects
Stanton to Yankees - Starlin Castro and a couple prospects yet to have any impact
You can go on with first Verlander trade, Miguel Cabrera, Nolan Arenado, Francisco Lindor, Blake Snell...none of these created franchise-altering returns. 

As nice as it would've been to get a cadre of prospects back from Tampa (who notoriously trades well), I have doubts that it would've done made a massive difference. If anything, Perry's work to trim payroll and get the Angels back into 2nd round comp pick territory might be almost on-par with the type of surefire guy we would've gotten back. 

If the Angels want to rebuild the farm, the best way to do it over the next 1-3 years will be avoiding FAs who cost them a pick and selling high on arb. guys like Rengifo, Ward, Sandoval, and Canning. 
If they sign one-year guys the next two years and flip them at the deadline, they'll arguably restock the farm with the same quality of guys they lost last deadline. 

Not a monumental deficit to overcome, IMO.

Fred Lynn
So Cal guy
3 Gold Gloves
.300+ hitter 
I remember thinking now they got something. 
Losing Frank Tanana wasn't thrilling, but we got Lynn, wow.

@Chuck Fred Lynn 

No

Yesterday Lilah's fight with cancer ended. That mass behind her liver had burst and cancer had already spread to her other organs. She had a cancer checkup just three months ago with blood tests and a MRI so this was a quick change of progression. She was happy and playful to the end but yesterday she wasn't eating and moving around slow. So we took her to the vet immediately but it was already too late. 
We knew the day would come but you are never really prepared for it when it does.
This sucks. 

https://www.mlb.com/news/2024-mlb-draft-lottery-odds?t=mlb-draft-coverage
 

Inside Pitch delivering some facts, I think as Angel fans we might be a little spoiled by Trout's excellence. 2fWAR doesn't seem very valuable but it turns out to be more rare than I thought.Great stuff, also nice quote from Clark W Griswold.

First, defensive metrics are the murkiest of all stats.  BB-Reference's version of WAR focuses on DRS, FGs on UZR they are pretty similar, but DRS throws in subjective analysis using stringers to determine the difficulty by employing Baseball Info's Solutions, "Good Fielding Plays/Defensive Misplays (GFP/DME) system", it does this to try to be more comprehensive but in doing so it can cause some double dipping which they then employ yet another methodology to try to factor that out.  It's there where the differences (however slight) make for "fuzzy" results and what many see as bWAR overrating a player's actual defensive production. 
Offensively they grade around OPS+ whereas fWAR uses wRC+ which is built on wOBA and if I have to explain to you why that makes one stat better than the other then there are multiple discussions that need to be had before even starting on the differences in bWAR and fWAR.  wOBA is built around the proven reality that getting on base (not making an out) is the biggest factor to scoring runs while OPS is treating OBP and SLG equally.
fWAR had Moniak as a 1.5 player.  It seems pretty clear that the version properly adjusting for the importance of not making outs is giving you a better idea of how well Moniak performed.  
Defensively it's back to the slight difference and added components.  DRS uses rPM (runs minus plus saved) to rate the player against the league average -- UZR uses RngR (range above runs average) to try to do the same thing -- both of these stats get their data from the same source (BIS), and RanR like rPM gives Moniak a positive score so it comes down to how much you really want to buy into subjective human analysis vs math.  
I don't know of a single person who prefers bWAR to fWAR.
And yet we see so few do that.
Total number of OFers in all of MLB to post 2-3 WAR seasons among qualifiers 
2018 - 41, 
2019 - 36 
2021 - 32
2022 - 30
2023 - 34
Here are the actual names per year if you want to try to find the "plenty of guys" taken off the scrapheap who managed a 2-3 WAR season.
2018 https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&pos=of&team=0&pageitems=30&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2018&season=2018&pagenum=1
2019 https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&pos=of&team=0&pageitems=30&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2019&season=2019&pagenum=2
2021 https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&pos=of&team=0&pageitems=30&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2019&season=2019&pagenum=2
2022 https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&pos=of&team=0&pageitems=30&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2022&season=2022
2023 https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&pos=of&team=0&pageitems=30&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2023&season=2023&pagenum=2
More importantly, here are all the Angels OFers to produce a 2.0 fWAR season since 2012 when Trout came up
Trout (every year). 
Hunter (2012)
Trumbo (2012)
Calhoun (2014, 2015, 2016, 2019)
Goodwin (2019)
Upton (2016, 2017)
Ward (2022)
12 seasons, 36 starting spots, another 1-2 back up spots, so anywhere between 36-60 spots and it's happened exactly once with Brian Goodwin.

I don't have any interest in discussing whether or not Yelich at 125 mil from age 33-37 (LOL), would be worth doing.  But let's not downplay just how valuable and yes RARE a legit 2 fWAR player is.  The Trout era Angels will likely be a case study on just how valuable and important a team full of 2 WAR players is .vs the eggs in one (or two) baskets approach the Angels have followed.
Sorry for the long post full of abbreviations and information very few of you likely have any interest in but out of respect for all parties involved I figured I'd do it this way than just say BULLSHIT! and dropping some snark... (like always)
Thank you and may God bless the Angels during these winter meetings.
"Hallelujah, Holy Shit! -- Where's the Tylenol!" 

Claudell will be a tough get, he died in 2020.

Claudell will be a tough get, he died in 2020.

You can say that again.

First post can hardly wait for the responses. 
Yamamoto 25 year old potential ace. Go all in. Snell all in second choice.                                               
Yamamoto sure looks like an ace but also fulfills the rebuild concept.                                    

 
 
                                                    
 
 
 
 
 
 

The prison gangway to walk from BART to the stadium?
Mt. Davis blocking any semblance of a nice view?
The foul territory larger than a whale's vagina?
The surrounding ghetto and all its "character"?
 
Ya we're all going to miss that shit hole.

The only thing you own is a history of incredibly dumb posts. 

Mine, that is.
35.5 years in IT
Freedom!

Yesterday.

I though you were done posting?
And I'll stick to 30 percent

No.

First off, all of us  cannot express how much your kind words about our brother Lou have meant to us. We've been reading your comments and messages. Second, thanks to the many who have reached out privately. I tried to write reach of you back it's been too difficult. So I thought I would send this out to the Angel Win family. I was given the difficult job of going to through my brother's tablet to find some pictures we can use for his services this Friday, September 8th. You wouldn't believe the amount of screenshots he had of your posts going back SEVERAL years! He loved this site and it brought him joy until his final days. He had 3 tabs open so he could read all the wonderful, funny and especially smart ass comments you all made about him after learning about his health. This site brought him so much joy. Some have asked about sending flowers, cards or well wishes. What you may not know is that our brother wanted to move to Mexico and help with kids and children who are in need of assistance (orphanages). My sister and oldest brother are in the process of finding a charity that will help. So if you'd like, please wait on the flowers and I'll post something once it's been solidified. He had this group picture pinned to his photo log so it shows up first. next picture, Lou is the one on the left taken WAY back in the day and finally, his marker that will be at his burial site. Thanks again for everything...and GO HALOS! 

He has really been struggling in August, only 52 AB's. 173/259/288 he has more SB's than hits 10-9.

My dude, maybe start off with some middle ground, consensus normie takes before you start throwing out the full retard hot takes.

I'm sure it's a good article, but I just can't bring myself to read it. It feels like scratching an itch bloody, again and again.

Also I wanted to thank you @jsnpritchett for starting a good chunk of the Gameday Threads over the past few years. 
Besides being a great supporter of the website both past and present, your contributions both to discussions, news & GDT creations here are much appreciated by us all. 
If I learned one thing about the passing of Lou and Brandon most recently it is to really appreciate those here who are a value to the community and to never take them for granted. 
So for that, thank you. I hope you're enjoying your special day today. 

Dude your are awesome. You are such a big part the board.  Happy birthday.