AngelsandDodgersFan

one of the best story tellers we've been privileged to hear over the years.
 
he's witnessed so much baseball history, and he's been good at talking about it in ways that keep us interested.

I hope Arte has enough money left over to buy the letters on the back of his jersey...

The downfall of the Angels (which I think is incredibly silly considering where this team was prior to 2002 historically) is the inability the last several years to draft and develop players. You can all say, well if we wouldn't have signed this guy or if we wouldn't have signed that guy, or if we had just offered a QO to this guy, but that isn't it. How bout you draft guys in the 2nd round that make an impact in the majors. How bout we spend money internationally? How bout we run a program down in the Dominican that is run on integrity, rather than stay away because you aren't comfortable with the way things work down there. Instead change the way things are done. Position players worth a damn that we drafted in the last 10 years, Trout, Calhoun. Am I missing anyone? Grichuk. Two were first round picks in the same draft the other was a fifth round pick. Come on Angels how bout a 2nd round pick that comes up and is an everyday starter. Or how bout you draft pitchers that we can trade for position players. That is the downfall of the Angels, not spending money on free agency, it is HAVING to spend money on free agency.

In case no one is aware...
 

Pain.

I think you are right on the mark Shane.  The fact that he quit and walked away at the worst possible time rankles me the most; great timing for him, very poor timing for the team.  You can't expect someone like Stoneman to come in at that point and do anything significant, he's just trying to keep the club from doing anything rash prior to finding a permanent replacement.  Jerry didn't give Scioscia a team that was suitable to Scioscia's strengths as a manager, i.e. this club was given a stationary offense.  Now we are probably forced to make wholesale changes in the coaching staff, manager, and who knows elsewhere in the front office system.  These kind of changes will likely set us back for more years then they should have under an organized change over at the GM position.  He was better than Reagins, but worse than Stoneman's first tenure as GM.  The original Stoneman had the better instincts, inter personal skills, and stability that Jerry lacks.  Jerry has the tactical skills for the saber metric baseball world (there are many in the baseball world these days who have those kind of skills), but falls short after that.
 
One other thing is that I can't completely blame Arte for this mess (although he made a number of apparent mistakes), when a GM tries to force certain changes on an owner by giving him an ultimatum (do as I want, or I'm gone), I wouldn't necessarily back him either.  It's a collaborative effort, you have to lead people by convincing them your ideas are sound, and will work.        

I don't want to hear Schilling's politics during a baseball broadcast, but twitter is his world as far as I'm concerned and he can do what he wants on it, unless it's an espn twitter account.
 
I admit that I grew up in a much different world. I'm 50 years old. When I was young, All in the Family, Sanford & Son, and the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts routinely said things that would blow up the internet today. Hell I just watched the 70s version of Bad News Bears and the little kid said the n-word, as well as a Jewish slur.
 
I always found that when guys can tease each other, it makes them closer. I remember working with a black guy who would say "What's wrong with your people? You bombed the yellow man and killed off all the red men, too." I just laughed and said "We tried to kill off the brown man, but the son of a bitch breeds too fast." He laughed his ass off and we were close from that point on. He knew I wouldn't freak out when he pushed my buttons and vice versa.
 
 
Nowadays it's a gotcha society. We became a great country because we celebrated achievement instead of conformity. Now it's learn to be PC or be ostracized.

So, if I understand your post...he's been a big leaguer for 9 years...since 2006...and it just happens that in July of 2015 the league figured him out and he will never be a productive bat again?
 
Wow...Angels sure have bad timing.

I just see Jose Guillen....with wheels

Whats worse is when you have ladies in their 40's using that word. Its silly.  I have become more of a reader of facebook updates then posting. I just take it all as entertainment. I am surprise that people share what they share though. They seem to forget you cant take it back. Especially photos.

Whats worse is when you have ladies in their 40's using that word. Its silly.  I have become more of a reader of facebook updates then posting. I just take it all as entertainment. I am surprise that people share what they share though. They seem to forget you cant take it back. Especially photos.

better to remain silent and thought a douche than to speak and remove all doubt

True, it was late night when I did my post and those were all I could think of quickly. We also had Don Baylor, Eddie Murray, Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden. I believe this post is now 100%  . 

I don't think so. I believe those same kids are still up, but they're playing video games instead. Also, like someone said earlier, baseball is not as glamorous a sport when it comes to the get rich quick mentality. And who drives that thought early on in a child's development, the parents of course.
 
There are many reasons why american black participation in baseball is waning. One possible reason might be their accessibility to the sport, at least in So Cal. After age 13, the available options to play ball decrease considerably. Unless you are a parent willing to go to great lengths both financially, and with your time, sanctioned baseball isn't all that readily available. High school baseball is far more likely to man their teams with kids from travel ball teams. If kids don't play in high school, they certainly won't be drafted, or stand much of a chance to play in college ball.    

90% Offense - best offense in MLB and they....put up 5 runs in 3 games, 4 of them on solo HR's. Horrendous hitting
2% Scioscia - Putting Hamilton on roster was terrible. Calhoun bunt on 3-1 was terrible. Wilson being in rotation was terrible
5% Royals - 1st 2 games were there for the taking. 3rd game they straight up whooped them though
2% Hamilton - Useless would be an understatement for what he provided the team this postseason. I don't have a lot of hope for him going into next year either
1% CJ Wilson - This goes back to Sosh starting him. He gave us the usual, expected outcome...still doesn't excuse the fact that the team needed him to step up big time and he does that crap. Just like when Ricahrds went down, needed him to step up in the rotation and he failed miserably. Just like with Hamilton, I have very little hope for him next year. His stuff looks to be in decline...add in his always horrible command and that's a bad mix going forward

A guy who was 0-5 and looked horrible at the plate drives in the winning run in the 12th inning.
 
The beauty, and madness, of baseball!

I thought this was about George Washington and that would be a duh. Across the eastern seaboard is home after home that proudly declares Washington slept here.

I avoided social media all day while I was at work to come home and watch without knowing the score. What a feeling.
 
This team deserves such big props. I always thought we'd win the division title if most things went right for us (most teams are in a similar boat) but never thought we could win with this much going wrong. But to overcome the seemingly endless pitching injuries (Skaggs, Richards, Mulder, Alvarez, Burnett), your closer turning from being decent to one of the worst pitchers in baseball and the offensive injuries/struggles too says a hell of a lot. A hell of a lot of guys have proven people wrong this year. We deserve this, when this much goes wrong and you win the division so comfortably it really tells you something. Props to the players, props to Scioscia and props to Dipoto. I've been critical of all of them at various points, but you can't argue with this result. Long may it continue.

There is only one trophy they need to win this year.
 

By Glen McKee, AngelsWin.com Staff Writer - 
So, last night was quite a game, eh?  The brass tacks are that the Angels won 4-3 in ten innings.  There’s more to it than that, though, and that more has the A’s fans as butt-hurt as Boston fans when they first realized their team wasn’t going anywhere this year.  
The first part of the more is the light wave, which sounds close to a light saber, which makes it automatically cool. I had to research a bit about the light wave and here’s what I found:
Your browser does not support iframes.
It’s such a big deal that I found that link on the MLB website and MLB was so concerned about it that they did…nothing at all.  Nada.  It happened again last night though, and even though light couldn’t penetrate either of Vogt’s chins or his scruffy goatee, which obviously isn’t up to Oakland’s “homeless guy beard” standards, suddenly A’s fans are convinced it’s a deliberate and foul effort by Angels management to cheat. Even though fans have been taking flash pictures for years and cameras are still allowed, it’s cheating because it happened to them just now.  I heard a rumor from my sources (impeccable sources, I tells ya, impeccable!) that in light (ha ha) of this concentrated protest from Oakland that MLB will ban cell phones from games starting now.  So rejoice, fans of the other team from the bay area, your whining has produced results!

The second part of the butt-hurt is over this play:
Your browser does not support iframes.
There was so much butt-hurt about it that Bob Melvin, scarecrow in the offseason and manager of the A’s, protested the game because of the call.  I get the protest; it’s like a challenge in that you roll the dice and hope it goes your way.  If my fan situation was reversed I might even have felt the same way at first.  However, let’s look at the facts here.  First and foremost, Erick Aybar is a baseball genius/idiot, or to quote AngelsWin.com’s Lou, a geniot.  That was a brilliant play on his part.  His base path was obstructed because two players were blocking it, and to avoid them he would have had to go outside the base path and thus been automatically called out.  Instead, he did the smart baseball play and got into a collision.  The umps had a meeting with Melvin and themselves and determined that they made the correct call, and Aybar stayed at 1B.  In a nutshell, the umps made a judgment call (and they’re sticking to that) and you can’t protest a judgment call.  Well, you can, but it will be dismissed.  I’m an internet baseball lawyer and I know my stuff; case closed.  But that’s not stopping the Oakland fans, oh no.  Never mind that if Aybar was on their team (and white, and had lousy facial hair) they’d be praising his baseball acumen and talking about how genius Beane was for signing him to such a team-friendly contract.  He cheated!
Nope.  He played the game the way it’s supposed to be played, and the umps rewarded him by enforcing the rules.  And then the Angels didn’t score a run, meaning the baseball gods passed temporary judgment on them.  That judgment was revoked in the next inning when Pujols went from first-to-third on a single from Hamilton.  Let me repeat that: Pujols went first-to-third.  I’m 45 and semi-fat and I think I might be able to at least keep up with Pujols on the base path, but he made it to 3B without a throw.  I am not kidding.  There’s no greater sign that the baseball gods were on the side of the Angels than that.  And then Howie Kendrick, who I was 100% certain was going to choke, of course came through with the game-winning/ending RBI, and the baseball gods said “Yea verily, thou Oakland fans are collectively a goatish, hedge-born nut-hook!*” and smited them off the field.  And the butt-hurt flowed.  All I can say to the fans of Oakland is this:  Oh yeah, and this:
 
In case you missed my subtlety there, Oakland is the bratty kid and the Angels are Jimmy Dugan.  Let the butt-hurt flow!

*= stolen from http://www.sciencedump.com/content/how-create-shakespeare-insult-10-seconds

so he's just like every other GM?

So, I read thru the first 29 pages of this thread and stopped, because 90% of the posts are pretty much the same.
 
And 90% of the posts are overreacting.
 
This deal makes our bullpen arguably the best in MLB now. Yes, better than Oakland's. We're primed to go deep in the postseason with this pen. If it doesn't happen, it won't be because we don't have Lindsey, Rondon, or Alvarez, none of whom realistically was going to help this year (no, not even Alvarez).
 
Lindsey, if he gets to the majors, will be a AAAA guy. He'll hit a little but suck defensively. And this comes from a guy who was really high on him.
Rondon was just getting promoted to AA, which is the level that really makes or breaks prospects. He could have been the SS of the future, or he could have ended up being a bust.
Alvarez was a RELIEF PITCHING PROSPECT. Those guys are a dime a dozen, even in our system. We'll probably be using a few of the others next season.
 
We have a year and two months of Street. The option for 2015 is a team option, and you'd better believe they plan on exercising that option. In the meantime, he will take his career .9 HR/9 (even after having pitched in Coors for 3 years) and 2.3 BB/9 to Anaheim. He may even help teach a few of the younger guys how to, you know, not walk people.
 
We've had a weak farm system because we've had no high-impact prospects. That hasn't changed with this trade.
 
So, in other words, relax. Enjoy the ride. This trade will actually look good in retrospect.
 
I will go on the record as LIKING this trade.

Enjoy the ****ing current season and quit worrying about other shit you can't control.
Jeebus

This trade really pisses off the beach ball boppers. That's one less player who's name they actually know!

I doubt Scioscia or Dipoto are let go.
Many folks are highly overrating what, if anything, would improve if they are let go.
If the owner still micromanages everything not even Earl Weaver in his prime could turn the ship around.