fanfromday1

It's never to early to start building for next season. I agree with what jsnpritchett said above: 
 

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I really hope the Angels don't make any trades for players who aren't controllable past this season--so for me, that would eliminate people like Ian Kennedy, Mychal Givens, etc.  The Angels are likely going to have to completely overhaul the bullpen heading into 2022, so if they can make a trade this season to kickstart that process, I'm all for it.  But acquiring a non-controllable, marginal upgrade to the current 'pen, even if it just means giving up a marginal prospect, doesn't seem worth it to me.

What happens first....
A.  The Angels have a competitive pitching staff
B.  A Tesla leaves the Solar System
 

Don't start getting down on Trout JATF. You know Trout has always been a sporadic hitter. I think that he sometimes tries to put the team on his back instead of just relaxing and letting the game come to him. If you look, and I'm sure you have, Trout is still leading the league in several categories, or at least he is in the top 10. But I do have to say, I sure wish he would find a way to cut down on his strikeouts.  

Well he's not pulling them under with those 3 yellow barrels stuck in his side either. "Not with 3 barrels in his side he can't" Captain Quint.

Very well written and thought-out article.
I think Pujols would have gotten a lot more respect from Angel fans if he had been able to produce 1 or 2 of his spectacular offensive seasons with the Angels. But injuries and father time robbed him, and us fans, of that opportunity. Also, from the very beginning Albert arrived here much like Mo Vaughn, disliked and a bit past his prime. He also went out in pretty much the same way - 'don't let the door slap you in the ass on the way out' kind of attitude from all of us fans.
Someday I hope that all of us will be able to change our perspective about Albert and say to our kids, or our grandkids - I once had the privilege to see the Hall Of Famer Albert Pujols play baseball for the Angels. 

Photo Credit: Alex Gallardo/Associated Press
By David Saltzer, AngelsWin.com Senior Writer
—"Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.” Semisonic
In life, we all will face the point where we will be replaced. It’s never easy. If we are lucky, it’s on our own terms and we can retire when we want to. At other times, life dictates the ending. Whether it’s a business closing, an illness affecting us, a life event happening to someone else, a global pandemic, it will happen. That’s an unfortunate certainty to life.
If baseball is anything, it is brutally honest about when it’s time to go. Injuries and age take their toll. Whether one is a sure-fire Hall of Famer, a regular player, or just up for a cup of coffee, players with more ability and skill will eventually force the issue. It may be hard for the player to accept it, but the game doesn’t lie about it.  
There are a lot of ways to analyze the end of the Pujols era with the Angels. As a baseball decision, it is an easy decision. His performance on the field wasn’t good enough to justify the playing time. The emergence of Walsh and Ohtani playing everyday made the team better offensively. There wasn’t going to be much playing time for Albert going forward.
Additionally, after a shortened season last year, the concern about pitching is very real. The Angels aren’t the only organization to be struck by injuries to pitchers. Teams are carrying more pitchers for a reason, and that meant that keeping Albert in a bench role didn’t make sense. The Angels needed someone with more defensive versatility and better offensive performance than he could provide. 
Baseball, though, isn’t just a game of numbers. While fans may care most about numbers, those inside the business know that the people are just as important as the numbers. If I learned one thing from all of Tim Mead’s dugout talks with AngelsWin, it’s that how people are treated is of great importance in life.  
Right now, there’s a ton of speculation online of what happened prior to the Angels designating him for assignment. We have the statements from the Angels Front Office that the meeting with Albert ended with Minasian giving him a hug. Hopefully, the meeting went well and Albert didn’t feel “disrespected” as Pedro Martinez tweeted.  
Many fans have a hard time understanding the importance of respect for players. They focus on the money the players earn and the lifestyle and conclude that that should be enough for them.
To those fans, I would say, everyone deserves respect, whether they make millions or hundreds. And, at some point or another, we will all feel disrespected. It may be how a doctor delivers bad news to us in an unfriendly manner, or a judge rushing us through a traffic ticket violation, a boss giving an unfair performance review, etc. At some point, we will all be treated with disrespect and would not want others telling us to just accept it because they envy our position
As fans, we will never know the whole story. I have every reason to believe that Albert will continue to be as classy as he can about the situation and won’t divulge all the details of the meeting. While I do expect him to talk about it at some point, I don’t expect him to reveal much more than what we already know. The Angels Front Office won’t issue more statements about it, so, as fans we have about as much information on the subject as we are likely to get, at least in the short term. We will have no way of knowing how this may affect the Angels in future negotiations with other players.
If there is more to the story (not assuming that there is more to the story), those inside the industry may learn about it. How this affects future players signing with the Angels remains to be seen. If this changes the perception of the Angels as a franchise within the industry, it could have long-term consequences as players and agents may steer players away from the Angels if they perceive the team as disrespectful. This could be a case where those fans gloating over Albert’s release should be cautioned to be careful of what they wish for.
What does this mean going forward for the Angels in 2021? Honestly, not too much. Releasing Albert won’t solve the pitching and injury problems that are hampering the team. It won’t help with many of the shifts from the analytics department that didn’t work. Until those issues are resolved, the team will struggle.
There is one way, though, that releasing Albert will help the Angels in 2021. It will alleviate a potential issue for the future. As noted above, from a baseball standpoint, the move made the most sense. At some point this season, a Minor Leaguer such as Adell or Marsh would likely emerge and force the issue by performing so well that the Angels would need to promote him to play the outfield and move Walsh back to first base.
At that point, the issue of Pujols’ playing time would become a distraction for the team. It would take a toll on players, the coaching staff, and the Front Office as Albert got less and less playing time and reporters asked about that issue more and more. In many ways, biting the inevitable bullet now prevents a future issue and team distraction from arising. 
How this affects the team in the future remains to be seen. There’s no doubt that the Pujols contract had wide ramifications on the baseball industry. Paying older players large sums for many years is not likely to happen often again. Teams now know that paying players more money in their prime years is less risky and less detrimental to the franchise than spreading the money out over more years.
So, if the Angels are at the end of an era with Pujols, I hope this means that the Front Office is going to move ahead fully with the notion of paying players more money for prime years. There’s no need to repeat the mistake of jumping onto a new idea with one foot, like they did when they signed Roberto Baldoquin and no other major international free agents.
There are signs that this may be the case under Perry Minasian with the recent contract for David Fletcher. Hopefully they will lock up their own players earlier in their careers and find ways to sign free agents for more of their prime years.  
But again, I will caution fans who want this approach to be careful of what they wish for from the Front Office. Not all those future contracts will work out, even for younger players in their prime. The Angels, like all teams, will get burned eventually on a deal with a player. Injuries and aging still happen, and at some point, the team may get hampered by a shorter-term deal with a higher salary. It is the nature of the industry. So fans wishing for this approach need to understand that there are risks to these deals just as there are risks to signing players for longer term contracts.
Personally, I would like to think of the Pujols era for what it meant to the franchise. When we signed him, it was the third largest contract in MLB history. I remember the buzz online and at the stadium for the press conference announcing the signing. The national perception of the Angels dramatically changed as a result of signing him. Suddenly, the Angels were on the map as a destination for players—not just some players, almost all players, especially the best of that year’s free agent class.
Signing Albert changed the way the Angels were seen nationally—much in a way that signing Vlad did not. The Angels went from being a scrappy team that won the World Series in 2002 to one of the larger payrolls in baseball. During every offseason for years, we were the rumored “mystery team” involved in negotiations, and that made being an Angels fan special. Our payroll has gone up quite a bit since we’ve signed Albert and doesn’t appear to be in jeopardy of shrinking.
I get that many fans are upset because the Angels never got the performance from Albert that they paid for. That is truly regrettable as he was such a joy to watch in St. Louis. The fact that Albert didn’t perform so well wasn’t due to a lack of effort on his part. Age and injuries take their toll on everyone, and baseball is brutally honest about that. He is still, a no-doubt first round Hall of Famer, and he should go into the Hall of Fame with a unanimous vote.
As for the contract that he signed—that was the result of the way baseball operated at the time. The Angels were freely negotiating with him, and was later revealed, the Marlins had a higher offer for his services.
The fact that the Angels never won a postseason game with him was not entirely his fault. That had more to do with the lack of pitching and lack of depth in the organization throughout his time with the Angels. According to Matt Birch, the Angels had a 590-591 record in games in which he appeared.
Albert was and is a class act on and off the field. He never whined to the press or complained about the team or its record. I saw him personally interact with fans in meaningful ways, often not in ways that the public could see. He gave us some great moments (my favorite being when he and Trout fired arrows back at Fernando Rodney on July 20, 2014). He hit many milestones with the Angels and ranks in the top-10 in many all-time records for Angels offensive categories. 
Now that it’s closing time on the Pujols era with the Angels the endless debates about his contract and performance will come to an end. We can and should appreciate him for what he was throughout the entirety of his career, and hope that as we move forward, that the end of his era leads to a better new beginning—one with Walsh at first base and Ohtani as the full-time DH.
I wish Albert Pujols all the best in the remainder of his career and look forward to seeing him inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Talk about exit velocity!

It honestly seems like this could have been handled by Albert and the team (maybe) a bit better. Sucks to have to release a HOF player in the final year of his career, but it had to be done. The optics are bad on both sides though. Pujols says he wants to keep playing, and that's just delusional on his part. I just wish someone from the Angels/someone in Pujols' camp could have talked him into taking a coaching position or something like that with the team. I'd have to think the Angels would have created a role for him on the staff to avoid this look.

If Arte is fed up with losing then he should have given a bigger budget to improve pitching.  DFA Pujols does not make the Angeks contenders.   Pitching would.

It's not a coincidence that the day I got vaccinated that this happened. The shot works people. 

Albert Pujols was a great player and still is a great person that does a lot for other people. I wish him the best but baseball doesn't care about any of that and its time to move on from him. 

This is like when we dumped Mo Vaughn before the start of the 2002 season all over again!!!

Not sure how I feel about this.  After all this time, in his last year, to just cut him after the FO benches him feels like dirty pool.  It’s not like he’s singlehandedly cost us these games and certainly isn’t a damn pitcher.
this feels wrong in so many ways to treat a first ballot HOFer this way this late in his contract.
I am not saying we are not better off without him by any means, but it doesn’t feel like something the Angels would do. 
there’s got to be more to this story.  A lot more.  I really hope he requested it.  and that the decision was his.  Then at least we’d have clear conscience?  But on the surface we look like aholes
 
Update: sounds like Albert asked for it, so be it then.  Again I’ve wanted him to walk away the last couple years.  So yeah we are better off.  Just the timing is so freaking bizarre.  We tolerated his mediocre numbers for 9 years, and this year wasn’t any different, yet they make the call now to cut him?  Not in spring?  Not in the off-season when we could’ve gotten pitching.  Just weird, isn’t it.
and sad that such an amazing career is going out like this.  Fizzling out with deflating ballon noise and negativity and controversy.  What a shame.
but...moving on

I have been following the Angels since 1961, so there have been quite a few players that I have formed a dislike for. But the all time worst for me was Jonathan Papelbon of the Red Sox. A Relief Pitcher that always dominated the Angels. But I'll always remember that 2009 play-off series when we had that infamous 9th inning rally against him and won the Division Series.   

I have been following the Angels since 1961, so there have been quite a few players that I have formed a dislike for. But the all time worst for me was Jonathan Papelbon of the Red Sox. A Relief Pitcher that always dominated the Angels. But I'll always remember that 2009 play-off series when we had that infamous 9th inning rally against him and won the Division Series.   

This asshat.  Hands down.  I hate Verlander.

This rule was not made for people who love baseball.  Dog shit.  Two thumbs down. 👎👎 

Totally missed that. Still haven't watched a whole lot this year and keep missing that runner on second thing. I literally stepped away from the tv just before fletchers hit, and in the bottom of the inning, and was wondering what the hell i missed and how there were runners on.
Yeah, that rule is stupid

I think we're (understandably) frustrated because the A's are playing ridiculous baseball right now, the Mariners are playing way over their heads, and now Houston is roaring back.
We knew it was going to be a dogfight for this division. The M's won't be there but Oakland and Houston will. 
I think we'll be there as well. This offense is just too good. You also have to look at our schedule so far. We're playing nothing but good teams (besides Texas) and we're .500. 
Baseball is a frustrating sport to follow because there's so many games. That means we're going to have games where we lose 15-1, games where we blow large leads, and a healthy dose of heartbreak. We'll get swept. We'll lose 7 games in a row (or more). We'll get 1 hit. Honestly, is there a loss that is easy to swallow? It's happening 70 times this year. That's 70 days of being pissed off at a baseball game.
Now on the negative side, this team is actually performing exactly as expected (or feared). Great offense with terrible pitching. Hopefully either the rotation significantly improves or the bullpen does. If they both suck, we're in for another 75-80 win season. 
At least this shit is happening in April. Every game is important but if we're facing a tie for last place with a loss tonight, it's so much better to happen in April instead of July or August.

As much as the past 8 games mostly suck, it is a longggg season.   Feels good to not hold in the frustration though, realizing just how long the past five losing seasons were.
NO WAY I’m trading Trout!   Just ask the Marlins what happens in baseball when a superstar is traded for poorly scouted acquisitions.

FFS, some real cry babies in this thread. It's just baseball. You win some, you lose some. It's a long season. I'm just glad I get to watch a full season and I'm going to watch as many games as I can.
With everything else going on in the world, losing a game is a small thing. Yes, it sucks - but this season is just getting started and I'll be damned if I'm going to miss watching Trout and Ohtani because one day, that show will end. I'm going to soak it all up.
 

By @Angelsjunky, AngelsWin.com Contributor
I like to find new angles on the greatness of Mike Trout - not hard to do, but always satisfying. Here's something tasty for your enjoyment. I'm going to be focusing on 8 WAR seasons. Why 8 WAR? Well, it represents a level beyond just garden variety superstardom. Generally speaking, 8 WAR is either a career year for a superstar or a good peak year for an inner circle Hall of Famer. In other words, it is a good benchmark for a truly great season.
What is 8 WAR? 
As you can read here, below 2 WAR are bench players and scrubs; from 2-4 WAR is the range from solid to good regulars; and 4 and above are various shades of stardom, from borderline stars to MVP candidates. In any given year, the best player in the game is somewhere around 8 WAR or higher; only rarely is the leader below 8 WAR, with the last two both from Jeff Bagwell with 7.8 WAR, in 1999 and 1994. 
In most years there are two or three players with an 8 WAR or higher; some years less (or none), and some more (the most 8 WAR players in a single year was six, which happened three times: in 1912, 1961, and 1997). The point being, with an average of two or three a year, an 8 WAR player is a candidate for the best player in the game and a possible MVP. 
It is also worth pointing out that WAR is less volatile than it used to be, with fewer high outliers. If we ignore Barry Bonds for a moment, the last position player to reach 11 WAR was Joe Morgan in 1975, which also happened to be the only position player season over 10 WAR in the 1970s. Including Bonds, from 1970 to the present there have only been thirteen 10 WAR seasons: five by Bonds (including one pre-roids in 1993 when he had 10.5), two by Trout, one each by Joe Morgan, Cal Ripken, Rickey Henderson, Alex Rodriguez, Buster Posey, and Mookie Betts.
Meaning, super-high WAR seasons (above 10) are very rare, occurring--on average--only once every four years or so over the last half century.
In 119 years of the two leagues (1901-2019) there have been 266 position player seasons of 8 WAR or above, or a little over two per year. Again, this averages out to a little over two a season.
Active Players
Among all currently active players, there have been 21 8 WAR seasons by the following players, in order of highest WAR: Mookie Betts, Mike Trout, Buster Posey, Albert Pujols, Bryce Harper, Josh Donaldson, Miguel Cabrera, Aaron Judge, Jose Ramirez, and Andrew McCutchen. Other than Trout, the only players to have more than one such season are Betts with two and Pujols with four. And Mike Trout? He's got seven. 
Meaning, Trout's got as many truly great seasons (as defined by 8 WAR) as any three of his peers combined. What does that mean, in historical context? Let's take a look.
The Club of Seven (8 WAR Seasons)
Mike Trout had his seventh 8 WAR season in 2019 at the age of 27, when he tied with Alex Bregman for the major league lead with 8.5. It was the sixth highest WAR of his eight full seasons, with only 2014 (8.3) and his injury-shortened 2017 (6.8) being lower.
In baseball history, there are only nine players--including Trout--with seven or more 8 WAR seasons in their entire career. OK, take a breath. Consider how crazy that is, given that Trout is only 29 years old (and possibly would have had his 8th such season last year).
Here are the leaders in numbers of 8+ WAR seasons:
11: Babe Ruth, Willie Mays
10: Barry Bonds
9: Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig
8: Honus Wagner, Ted Williams
7: Eddie Collins, Mike Trout
No one else--including inner circle Hall of Famers like Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Jimmie Foxx, Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, and Alex Rodriguez--have more than six. Meaning, everyone but the seven players who are as good a septad of the greatest to ever play the game (although I would include Cobb, Aaron, and either Musial or Mantle to make it a rounded ten).
Now here is where it gets even crazier (yes, it gets crazier). Trout is way ahead of everyone else's pace for adding up 8 WAR seasons. Here is when each player listed above had their 7th such season:
Ruth: 14th season, age 32 Mays: 11th season, age 31 Bonds: 16th season, age 36 Hornsby: 13th season, age 31 Gehrig: 13th season, age 32 Wagner: 13th season, age 35 Williams: 13th season, age 35 Collins: 15th season, age 33 Trout: 9th season, age 27 To be fair, some of those players were delayed due to various circumstances. Ruth wasn't a full-time position player until his sixth season when he had 9.4 WAR in 1919 at age 24, ushering in the home run era. Chances are he would have had two or three by then if he had been a position player all along, and reached his seventh a few years earlier than he did. Williams lost three years in a row due to WWII at the age of 24-26, with two 11+ WAR seasons and two 10+ seasons bookending that gap. He almost certainly would have had his seventh 8 WAR season by 1947 or '48 at age 28 or 29. But even so, not even Ruth or Williams would have reached their seventh 8 WAR season by age 27.
Trout did. No one else has. 
Trout will eventually slow down. Yet he has established a baseline of about 9 WAR per season or even higher, so even if he slows by a half step he should have--at least--two or three more 8 WAR seasons, and maybe more. As of this writing (through April 21) he's at 1.6 WAR through his first 16 games--that's double the pace he needs to reach 8 WAR this year.
What this means is that Trout has a legitimate shot at having more truly great (8 WAR) seasons than any other position player in history. Or, at the least, he probably has better than even odds in joining the "ten or more club" with arguably the three greatest position players in baseball history: Ruth, Mays, and Bonds (I would add Williams as of similar caliber, but as mentioned, he lost almost five years to military service, reducing what would have made him one of only three 160+ WAR players, to "only" 130.4, which is still 8th all-time).
But Wait...What About 9 WAR Seasons?
I've written about this before but think that 8 WAR is a better benchmark, because differences beyond that point are more due to era and occasional extraordinary performance than sustained greatness. That said, Trout is still among the best of the best. Ruth has the most with 10, followed by Hornsby (9), Bonds (8), Mays (7); Wagner, Cobb, Gehrig and Williams (6 each); A-Rod and Trout are next with 5 each.
Meaning, he's one of only ten players in major league history with five or more 9 WAR seasons. If we go back to our active players, he has one more than everyone else combined (Betts, Posey, Pujols, and Harper with one each).
If Trout manages to have two more 9 WAR seasons, he'll be one of only five with seven or more. At that point, the only players with more would be Ruth and Hornsby--both of whom played in a very different era with only eight teams per league and more outlying statistics, and Bonds, half of whose 9 WAR seasons were clearly augmented (Bonds' greatness shouldn't be understated; consider that he accumulated 99.2 WAR through 1998 at age 33, before he "allegedly" started juicing, and even without steroids he likely would have gone down as one of the top 10 or so greatest ballplayers ever).
Conclusion
The numbers speak for themselves, and we all know Trout is great--not only the greatest player of his generation, but also one of the greatest in baseball history. Within the month of May he's going to enter the top 40 for career WAR, and has a chance at the top 30 by the end of the year.
What these statistics--the 8 WAR club--illustrate is what makes him one of the very best of all time: that he not only has reached extreme heights, but has done so with remarkable consistency. His level never drops, or when it does it is "all the way down" to the 8 to 8.5 WAR level, which is about the level of Hank Aaron's best seasons.
At still only 29 this year, he has a real chance of compiling the needed five more 8 WAR seasons to stand above everyone else, with more truly great seasons than anyone in baseball history.

While it's way to early for this, I believe Brandon Marsh with his speed and ability to take a walk and get on base (.368 OBP -career in the minors) he could be an option to lead off down the road. 

Then when he warms-up in the bull pen he would'nt need a catcher.