DCAngelsFan

The Nationals announcers give you the distinct impression that they were broadcasting small-town high school football games on a 250w radio station up until last week. Sad part is, they've actually gotten better since the beginning ... Yes, he's a bit of a jerk - but would love to have him on my team all day, every day - except probably not at the free agent dollars he's gonna get.

Suggestive of my problem with it - the Cards were punished, and the Astros benefited, which arguably punishes every other team in the league, particularly those in the ALW, by making the Astros that much more competitive (in theory.) In the end, I imagine that "punishment" will be negligible - but seems possible the penalty was lessened for precisely this reason - to not overly-enrich the Astros. I dunno - anyway, I agree - the penalty paid by the Cards should have been higher, but don't know enough to know what compensation - if any - the Astros should have received.

Before starting to read this thread, it barely occurred to me to think we might sign Cespedes. Now, after reading all these perfectly rational and sound reasons why Cespedes would be a terrible signing for us has, to my horror, convinced me that signing him is precisely what we'll do ... Been an Angel fan too long ...

Eh, I have no problem saying I didn't like the trade at the time - in a vacuum, it was a good trade. But considering it addressed none of our actual needs at the time (2b, LF, etc) and, especially, considering the lack of pitching depth in the pipeline to fill out our rotation in the coming years, I thought it just wasn't the right move for us at that point in time. I think the jury's still out - Newcomb finished the season strong - he's young, has plus stuff, lots of strikeouts, and improving control - we may yet regret this trade.

That looks like it was over-designed to a certain extent, with a lot of padding to reduce impact and shock. In Matt's case, he had an impact focused on a very small area - the spherical shape of the ball puts all of the energy into one very small "point", and it acts as a penetrating object. A rigid ballistic plate - based on some composite material, with a small amount of padding could take the energy that was initially all focused in an area that was probably like .10 sq inches, and disperse it over an area 100 times that size. You could make it almost eggshell thin and it would prevent the most dangerous thing - skull fracture / hematoma - which is what happened to Matt. Obviously, the more padding, the more protection. Baseball should offer a set of technologies to players - from minimal to "bubble boy" - let the players choose - but pitchers, base coaches, must choose at least "minimal".

Actually, our dysfunction in the international market is even worse than they say - sure, signing Baldoquin was a mistake - but that wasn't the only one. We made the mistake worse by not doing what the Red Sox and Yankees did when they exceeded the bonus pool; since they were going to bonus pool jail, they signed everyone in sight - the smart thing to do. We didn't. And the article really doesn't say how useless we've been in other international areas - never signing any top prospects for years, never submitting bids on international free agents and posting candidates - we did *nothing*, for years. Giving up those comp picks probably had little impact - we'd just have drafted another Chevy Clarke or something. And it doesn't seem fair to lump in pitching injuries with bad drafts, bone-headed fa signings, and cheapness in the international market - injuries are random - moronic moves and poor management are not.

Well, only one who received a QO - and last I looked at the FA list, there were very few players worthy of a QO and even fewer worth the money + loss of pick. The time to have stocked up on free agents was last year. We're facing the cumulative result of years of bad decisions, bad drafts, and almost no international activity - it's going to be difficult to find our way out of the wilderness.

Walden for Tommy Hanson - one of those "high-risk, high-reward, he just needs a change of scenery" deals - in 2013, he started 13 games. and pitched 73 innings, with a 5.43 ERA before being non-tendered that off-season. Not that Walden turned into anything special, but point is, every tteam but us knew Hanson was physically "done" - - the 2nd half of 2012, his velocity disappeared, and he served up a .901 2nd half OPS, and his tenure here was predictably Blantonesque.

No offense, but this is *precisely* the same thing many said in defending the Wells and Hanson trades. Further, my baseball knowledge is probably deficient compared to most posters here, much less a real front office - but looking at the front office decisions of the past few years, I've been right quite a bit more often than they. So, an "appeal to authority" in this case just doesn't hold water ...

Castillo's only 20 - he could well turn out to be a useful part down the road. However - if the Twins paid Nolasco's entire salary - ah, who am I kidding? - we still got ripped off. Meyer's 26, had a 12+ ERA in the majors this year, has major control issues, sidelined the last two months with shoulder inflammation - almost certain to join the ranks of all those guys who *almost* made the majors and are now selling real estate. Smells like the Walden for Hansom trade - mostly built on hope ...

Holy crap. This is a joke, right? A typo? The only positive I can come up with here is it's not as stupid as the Vernon Wells ... Another nail in the coffin of my dying love for Angels baseball ...

Probably a bit of selection bias, too - guys who tore their ligaments pre-TJ surgery just quietly went away, careers over - there was nothing to count.

Teams lock up their aces these days - so those who hit the market as FA's are generally not highly valued or are on the downslope of their careers. So, yes, you have to develop your own pitching - it's a truism these days. Arte better take the money saved on Weaver and Nibbles and sign Otani (if posted) and any other useful international FA pitchers he can scrape up - or hope Sidd Finch or Steve Nebraska comes to an open try-out - 'cause there's really not much going to be available to acquire ...

The *signing* is on Dipoto - but the apparent refusal to spend more money signing internationals that year - which should have been the strategy - *especially* since our talent pipeline was so disastrously thin and this was the *only* way to begin to replenish it. The cost would have only been "money" - once we exceeded the pool amount, we should have gone all in. We didn't. Our unwillingness to invest much in the international market pre-dates Dipoto. I have to believe it was Arte - much like Eppler "refusing to spend" this past offseason and exceed the CBT threshold even if only for one year - certainly was Arte's decision.

One of the single worst decisions the Angels have made in recent years - and there's just so many to choose from. We're *still* in the penalty over that signing. What everyone knows - when you're going into the bonus pool jail for international signings, you may as well sign as many as you can that same signing year and just pay the financial penalty - that's what the Red Sox and Yankees did. We signed Baldoquin to an absurd, record-setting amount of money - which was clearly stupid. Then stopped. Which made it moronic. Or should I say "Morenic?" The same year, the Yankees signed 10 of the top 30 international prospects. The Sox signed some 46 players, including Moncada and two of the top pitching prospects - but hey, we got "Baldoquin", a complete unknown with no track record - at all - was on no prospect list, and who mysteriously, inexplicably got a record-setting deal. Not that I lack for reasons - but Angels' activity that year in the international marker was the year I turned the corner, and began to loathe Arturo Moreno ...

Methinks you're embracing this prospect just a bit too enthusiastically .... So, we measuring in feet or meters?

Richards' performance was annoying - he never really adjusted to his fastball flying away - nor did Perez - nor did the pitching coach. But at this point in his career, he shouldn't need to be reminded that commanding a 94 mph fb is much better than a 97 mph fb that's repeatedly at the top or above the zone. Perez didn't call a very good game - at all - too reliant on the fastball - when he mixed in sliders and changed speeds, the batters were *far* less comfortable. Still, I felt like the game was over as soon as the respective batting line-ups were posted.

Free MLB.tv premium for T-mobile subscribers - must sign up from their network - signup between Apr 3rd and 10th. I wonder if that works with pay-as-you-go? Like buy a $9.99 starter kit . . ? https://www.t-mobile.com/mlb.html

Of course, Woolforth is also CJ WIlson's pitching coach (he introduced Kazmir to Woolforth while still an Angel) - not that it's a bad idea, but the time to meet with him was this time last year - Kazmir took months of training to find his velocity. Or even September. Jered's more likely to try to become Luis Tiant or Phil Niekro than a power pitcher - Woolforth will never untangle that delivery ... http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/11123695/how-scott-kazmir-came-back-help-unconventional-training-espn-magazine

Yep - our reliance on him hasn't changed one bit since last season - we may compete with him on the roster and healthy for 162; hard to imagine competing if he's impaired in any significant way. What's sort of sad (or "amusing") is how there seems to be a certain percentage of people that want to blame Trout for that - for him being "not good enough" and "overrated" while ignoring the rest of the team being mostly "meh" (I'd probably use a stronger adjective but not appropriate for my first post ) If he only has a 10 WAR season, but we miss the playoffs, they'll blame him for not putting up a "12" (not that those who complain like that would ever accept WAR, but one irrational thing at a time ...) (Since I saw you, and some others here, I joined up - I'd gotten pretty sick of the MLB board before it had it's throat cut, so was already losing the habit of reading/posting - hopefully things will be a bit more on-point around here. Hopefully, will see Exno, Exile, stevearino, and AG among others here ...)