Dtwncbad

I am personally not a big believer in Ward. I am concerned that the injury just postpones the team’s opportunity to find out if he is the real deal or not, with the downside being wasting time and finding out he isn’t really that good. That is my last choice outcome and I am willing to gamble a little to avoid that last choice outcome. I would rather tap into the possibility that he is a decent player now and spend that perceived value as trade capital while you can. Ward is 30. I don’t feel like the odds are good that a really late bloomer’s success is all that sustainable, so to me the window to move him is now.

If Ward has no mental challenge going forward, he is a better man than me. I got hit in the eye at 13 years old in baseball practice. Our coach’s philosophy is he should hit absolute rockets at us in practice so that balls hit to us in games would seem easy. I was playing 2B and he hit a bullet at me that was supposed to be a ground ball but it was more of a liner that bounced once about 4-5 feet in front of me and took a bad hop and got me square in the right eye. It was swollen shut for days and it damaged my eyeball permanently (and now with some age on me, the vision has degraded further, so that sucks). I never played infield again. I just couldn’t mentally get comfortable fielding hard hit grounders. So that was it for IF for me. To this day, I am not playing IF even in slow pitch softball. Somebody has to play OF, so let’s just agree I am in the OF.

I would be much more concerned about the mental aspect of getting back in the box over any concern about the success of the physical procedure.

To be totally honest, I had already completely forgotten about Jared Walsh.

I have no idea why we are talking about Joey Votto. If he has no job come spring training and he wants to show the Angels in ST that he has something left, then whatever. But this isn’t a player I would be even talking to in January.

The more accomplished and storied one player is with one previous team, the less interested I am in that player coming to the Angels. I have been a fan of Votto for a long time, but I have no interest in seeing him in an Angel uniform.

He was always Dunn.

I guess if they can’t get Ryan Howard, then Joey Votto is the next best thing.

I don’t think going deeper into games is exclusively an issue of stamina, fatigue or the number of days rest. I think the shorter outings is mostly due to contemporary statistical analysis of the decline in effectiveness in facing the same batter the third time through the lineup. And that is not also in isolation. It’s the combination of how fatigued a pitcher is and the fact that they are facing the hitter a third time. My personal opinion is even the pitch count is a bit overplayed. Yes there is fatigue. But is the concern of some fatigue really always injury, or is it expected effectiveness? Also it is certainly a lot easier to defend taking a pitcher out at a pitch count than it is to say “We don’t believe in his ability in that situation of third time through the lineup.” So I don’t think it will be a matter of the pitchers being “asked” to go deeper into games. It could be a matter of them just getting better. If the starter simply improves (strad used the word “maturing”), then maybe they are into the sixth inning with more experience and less overall fatigue (a mature pitcher may get through a troubled third inning with fewer pitches). I could envision the starters (overall) go slightly deeper into games even with a five man rotation, especially when you have a number of guys coming into their prime.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone other than Estevez is the closer by August.

He can be a fun story in a moment when he gets a meaningful hit. But you have to judge players overall, and overall he is toast.

We all know the team needs to take a huge step forward in wins and losses in order to be in any kind of race. The natural tendency is to start speculating how many more wins the team could achieve signing this player or that player, or by trading for this player. And that leads to stuff like, “It would be dumb to sign Snell because that’s not enough to make the difference.” But there is also a substantial change in wins possible simply from the range of performance from the players you already have. To me it is important to look at where there are large possible changes in performance. The two areas that have some of the greatest possible changes in performance are health (like playing 140 games instead of 50 games), and young players that level up. I am not predicting that the 2024 Angels will be a great team next year because equally health could be the same or worse and maybe your young payers just don’t level up. But when I look at this roster top to bottom, I overwhelmingly see a shitload of players on the projected 2024 team that fall into one of the two categories of could be healthy or could level up. Plus a little winning can breed more winning, with increased confidence and momentum. I would love to see the team go get one or two impact players. They don’t have to (all by themselves) mathematically BE the difference to make the playoffs. They very well could be the incremental difference to get there though, on top of the rest of the roster being more healthy and the young guys playing into their potential.

Maybe they are waiting to see who Lorenzen signs with.

Yes. And what is going on with this free agency this year? Are teams cutting payroll?

Roberto Baldoquin says hello.

I am comfortable being optimistic about Adell for 2024. I think he has figured out enough to have an acceptable floor. If Adell settles into an everyday job, signing Bellinger could really be a boost. I like the insurance of Bellinger and Ward both being capable of playing some first in case Schanuel struggles.

Can you list them?

Can you list them?

Follow up question. Does this mean he throws a splitter? Or maybe a (moose) knuckler?

Finally! Buckle your seatbelts. This should finally be the domino that falls to allow the market to move now for the Angels to sign some minor leaguers with invitations to spring training.

Seeing something he hasn’t seen in years.

Nearly every post in this thread could be rephrased to “I am so fucking bored by the lack of moves.”

Um, like that’s like “hateful.”