DCAngelsFan

Are you certain the ump wasn't giving him some, like "here, son, I think you need some of this..." ?

I mean, not dismissing their grief, but they missed out on a huge payday when he died. So, in true American fashion, when something bad happens, you sue, and hope to win the lottery. They may have a legal case - if not a moral one - as an employee, the Angels may be liable for his acts, even if they're illegal and done without the knowledge of the company. But to me, that's pretty thin, a generous interpretation of the law. (don't listen to me, I'm not a lawyer) I suspect they have a lawyer on contingency, and the lawyer is angling for an out-of-court settlement, hoping the Angels insurance carrier doesn't want to take a chance on a huge settlement. Is it legal extortion? Not for me to say. Of course, who knows what Kay has said on the record? When he realized the situation he was in, likely he pointed fingers every which way to save himself. But Skaggs was a big boy, and unless Kay said "Time Mead told me to keep Tyler hooked up", it's really on Tyler. (This is where opioid addiction gets problematic - it would probably have been better had the Angels doctors supplied Tyler with pharma-grade meds than Kay scoring him stuff off the street that was laced with fentanyl, and killed him)

I agree - I think they've both suffered from some poor defense behind them (Upton's early numbers were disastrous - seems, for whatever reason, he's been 'better' in recent weeks). I'm not sure I'd want to do "both" but at least one of them would be useful. Whether they'd want a shorter-term deal is another issue, of course. We definitely want 1 TOR guy - Scherzer is probably top of my list for a 1 or 2 year deal, but I don't think he wants to move (I could be wrong) - but Scherzer, Gausman, Stroman - in that order, would improve the entire rotation, bumping our less-effective starters down. Ohtani, Scherzer (or Gausman), Sandoval, (Heaney/Cobb), Canning, Suarez and Detmers / CRod on the horizon, I think that's pretty solid.

Trading him would be unthinkable - it might actually make long-term sense, but it would be a PR fiasco. It's a delicate walk - to give him what I think he really wants - a contender - we need to take this offseason's money and invest in addressing our shortcomings. We have to convince him that *this* team will get him to the World Series, and show him how we plan to do it. I'm happy we seem to have some pitching prospects coming along nicely, and in a year or two, we should have a really solid rotation - but I still think we need a Gausman or Stroman and an actual bullpen. He and Mike are great recruiting tools - what player wouldn't want to be on the same team as two of the best players to (possibly) ever play the game? But if only to spare us from the prolonged agony of every other fan and sportswriter bleating at us how we're wasting his best years, I think Arte really needs to suck it up and be willing to go over the salary cap and try to extend him now.

Can you imagine if we draft him -- and then he doesn't sign?

His slider looked a bit like a forkball, hard, no hump in it, little horizontal movement, with a nice late vertical break, and didn't seem like the batters were picking up the rotation. (tbf, though, the clips I was looking at had a pretty poor quality, so it's just an impression.) But I'd read his slider was a poor-quality pitch, and he never threw it - something new? Did I hear he spent some time at Driveline? Again, just my impression, but "can't pick up and lay off that high fastball" - that tracks, it really did look like the batters were making late and bad swings, often at pitches out of the zone. Thanks for the update - after yesterday's game, nice to think about something positive.

(sigh) not even the ASB ...

I don't like drafting high schoolers, especially pitchers, and never in the 1st round. But if you're certain you can sign him - you're right, he sounds like a unicorn, and if it were up to me, I'd take him if he's there - but I don't think he will be. After that, I agree with @Second Base on Bachman over Madden -I like a guy who can miss bats, and if I'm building towards a playoff team, I want pitchers that can dominate. But Madden wouldn't be a terrible pick - I think Madden has less risk weighed against less upside. (all assuming Leiter and Rocker are off the board - and I could see Rocker falling to us - people seem to have doubts ...) Most of the mock drafts suggest we're taking a position player ...

I don't think he was trying to be the hero - I think he just thought, situationally, that he'd *have* to throw him a strike. After the 1st one, I knew the next one would be in the same spot

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/raisel-iglesias-lefty-and-righty-specialist/

Surprised this hasn't been memory-holed .... https://sports.yahoo.com/verdict-shohei-ohtanis-bat-not-good-023611674.html

Yes, I recall - I'm glad he's going down - he has so much more potential value as a starter Are you thinking Suarez will return to starting? (sorry if that's common knowledge) Your rotation seems a little optimistic to start the season next year - but if we get one solid TOR guy - Stroman/Gausman/Lynn - heck, I wonder if Scherzer might want to have a little fun for a year or two playing on a team with Ohtani, Trout, and Rendon? - we start to look a lot better, since we have Canning for depth and personally, I'd like to consider extending heaney - his FIP and SO/9 suggest he's been somewhat victimized by the defense, and he should be a useful depth piece (assuming he stays healthy the rest of the season.) Just - where the heck do we get a bullpen?

Don't disagree on Olson - but Abreu doesn't belong in the top three - and I'm not convinced on Gurriel - his stats are anomalous and someone his age doesn't suddenly get dramatically better ... well, most don't .. Walsh and Olson both deserve some recognition and I'd be happy to see them as the #2 and #3.

I think Tatis had some early push in exposure that's driving him as a name non-baseball-fans know. But I think Ohtani is doing things that no one else has ever done - and people are definitely (finally) noticing him. I also like he's a bit enigmatic - I could easily imagine some self-aggrandizing "look at me" player maximizing his exposure and perhaps being more "popular" - but in the same way I feel about Trout, I respect him doing his talking between the lines.

I suspect someone in MLB headquarters is gonna make sure this happens ...

I'm gonna go with Arte - but I'm not actually sure it's on him, as much of it is speculation and rumor. But some issues: 1. Lack of organizational spend/support - we've all heard and looked at things that suggest that, say, the Dodgers have a dozen scouts to each one of ours, and have a cabinet full of baseball operations people, while we have a few "billboard" people - we're operating in a information vacuum - we don't *know* these things to be absolutely true - but there's a lot to suggest the Angels' ops/draft/development operation spend lags other clubs badly 2. Lack of international presence - do we really think our GM's told Arte "We don't need no steenkin' Latin players or scouts?" Our budget most years was dismal and we didn't even bother for several years (of course, when we did, we found Baldoquin, so careful what you wish for ...) 3. Apparent interventions - there were suggestions he elbowed the GM's intro trading for Wells and signing GMJ and Hamilton. None of which lets our GM's off the hook - but I can't believe any GM would be so afraid of Arte that they didn't tell him "look, we need scouts, we need operations people, we need development people, we need analytics staff, and we need money to scout/sign/develop internationals" - and the evidence he didn't provide those things is our weak international presence - other than Ohtani - for the last decade. Eppler gets a *lot* of leeway - I have little doubt Ohtani is here because of him.

Holy crap - I thought, "here we go" - A's are gonna come right back ... Then Iglesias does that trick catch ...

Yup. What that means in practical terms, I'm not sure - except we can't be stampeded into selling out for a 1 year run at the ring that'll take 10 years to recover from, just to try and win in the Trout window. Have seen that movie ...

Well, nah, not that bad - but the ending made me feel dumb for having watched it - just kind of disappointed they took what looked like a promising concept and steered it into the ditch. Of course, any minute now, we're gonna start hearing about how we're wasting his best years and should trade him to the Yankees or the Phillies or ...

Well, not sure *I* am (glad) But yes, Ohtani is the real life "Steve Nebraska" - who, to be honest, as much as I love having Trout on this team, Ohtani's the guy I stop to watch because I want to see what he's gonna do next

Not sure if you were asking - but if you were, the setup for the movie "The Scout" had Albert Finney scouting local baseball teams in the remote backwaters of Mexico as a punishment for bad signings, when he discovers a player who's basically a cross between Sidd Finch and Roy Hobbs - and Finney's line was something like "I've found him! I've found Kong!" (as in King Kong) The setup was kind of funny, but after the first 20 minutes, the movie crashes and burns with a maudlin middle and a terrible ending (apparently Brooks re-wrote the ending but the studio forced a "happy" ending)

Meh, his Baldoquin move stands alone in its excretory glory even without factoring in Vlad Jr. Baldoquin's slash line at Las Tunas (Cuban league) the year before we signed him .279/.372/.324 - the mystery is what Dipoto saw in him to make him think "whoo! I've found Kong!"

We definitely talked to him after Regains uh, "stepped down", and there seemed to be a lot of mutual interest - and then it fizzled out, and we hired Dipoto instead. I guess I'd be morbidly curious to know what actually happened - like Friedman asked for something - like partial ownership, or a particular operating budget increase, or to bring certain staff with him - something that caused us to say "no." Or maybe, just maybe, it was Arte choosing Dipoto over Friedman b/c he was the new hotness with all his "analytics." Which, I mean - tbh, it took awhile to realize Dipoto was salting the earth of our farm system. It's "morbidly curious" because there's no answer that would make things right - I just want to know if this club is making poor decisions (and who's making them), are underfunding the operations side (I definitely smell smoke here - it's not hard to believe Dipoto's inability to draft talent was due at least in part to someone else short-changing his scouting budget), or if it's just all bad luck?

You're right, the actual hit rate on drafting players in MLB is shockingly low, same with internationals. And it might just all be pointless wishful thinking to think about such things - but I think it can be instructive to remind yourself of your mistakes, so you don't allow that mindset to make the same error - anyone that signed GMJ should have never traded for Wells, nor signed Hamilton. Those were all idiot moves on their face - that's not revisionism or hindsight. Yet somehow this org had learned nothing. And taking a look back to see what you might have been able to do is to remind yourself what's possible if you can improve your success rate by even a little - when a small improvement can have large downstream impacts. (If I were in the front office - I'd have someone examining every past draft pick, the mistakes and the successes, to see where we went wrong, or right - and how to get better.) There's are reasons this team hasn't won a playoff game in over a decade, despite its huge payroll. And it starts with our ability to draft and develop talent.

I know what you're saying - I mean, it's unlikely that instead of that crop of nothings we drafted that year, we'd have drafted all of Yelich, Snydergaard, Simmons, Castellanos But if we drafted, say, Yelich. Do we still sign Hamilton? If we don't sign Hamilton, we don't lose a pick to Texas - and maybe we draft Aaron Judge with our natural pick. So, in some universe, there's an Angels team that had an outfield of Yelich, Trout, and Judge. Say we drafted Simmons - do we still sign Baldoquin? Why would we? So, do we keep our powder dry and wait for Vladito the next year? So, yeah, it's all butterfly effect stuff. But fun - or annoying - to think about...