Warfarin

Exactly. I see a lot of criticism towards young players who sign contracts immediately after promotion, saying they are giving up far too much money by taking the guarantee now. There is no guarantee that a player won't regress, get hurt significantly, etc. Even the contract that Ruiz just signed, for 40+mil, is obviously life-changing money, and his family is set for life.

Notably, this is yet another example of Perry promoting someone directly from AA. Silseth, O'Hoppe, and Neto were all called up directly from AA, bypassing AAA.

I think we are about to see a wave of young players start to get promoted throughout this year. Perry has aggressively promoted players. We saw it with Silseth last year, and we see it now with both O'Hoppe and Neto already starting. I imagine we could start to see some of our relievers get promotions, and then maybe even a SP or two, depending on how the tail end of our rotation performs.

Yeah, likely being optioned signals he's near the end of his time here. He just can't hit at all. If he was an elite defender at SS, that'd be passable, but he isn't that. I remember when Perry signed him to his extension, it looked like a steal for the Angels, but that just goes to show you how quickly things can change in this game. Fletcher was smart to take that contract.

I see this also as a move to try to help the defense overall. This may shift Rengifo into more of a part-time role, and given how poorly he grades all over the diamond, perhaps that is best. Neto is the primary SS, and will be backed up by Urshela on his needed days off. Rendon will be the primary 3B and will be backed up by Urshela (likely 2+ times per week). I imagine Drury will now absorb more starts at 2B in place of Rengifo, and Urshela will perhaps split time at 1B with Lamb (and eventually Walsh, if/when he is healthy). Rengifo, in turn, will probably see more time on the bench now.

Urshela seems to have actually graded out decently well to start the year, both defensively and offensively. But yeah, obviously, he is just a one-year stop gap, so it's great to see Perry promote Neto and see how ready he is.

What is really surprising to me is that Fletcher got optioned. I would have assumed he would have been IL'd with some phantom injury. For his purposes, it doesn't really matter (i.e. service time), given his contract is guaranteed. But still, that's rather shocking to see. How often do we see MLB players on significant contracts get optioned?

This also shows how ultra aggressive Minasian is. This is the second year in a row the Angels have won the "first draft pick promoted from the previous year's draft." Silseth got that last year, and now Neto this year.

All that talk about pursuing a star SS in the offseason, and various people saying that we can't use Neto as a reason to not do that .. well, it appears that Perry had his eye on Neto becoming the SS much sooner than anyone expected.

Looks like Neto was called up to become the full-time SS from what I am seeing. I think Urshela now becomes more of a 2B/3B backup, and will likely start at SS on Neto's designated rest days. Drury likely relegated to platooning at 1B, maybe.

I doubt one game led to this change. I think Urshela now becomes more of a 2B/3B backup. Drury likely is exclusively a platoon option vs LHP. More than anything though, I think Perry wants to accelerate the contention window and is willing to call up his top prospects to get them on the team.

Wow, that's amazing! That said, I cannot help but notice they are calling him up after 16 days of the MLB season, which means he will fall a day or two shy of accruing one year of service time, lol. Either way though, this is really exciting to see!

Presumably neither of those things will happen this year. At best, I could see some sort of "opportunistic" injuries occur so that they can stash various players. Urshela will be a FA after this year, and I'm assuming Neto is likely on target to replace him. Rengifo's versatility likely will ensure he sticks around for awhile, as he'll probably become more of a 2B/3B next year (thus filling the role of Rendon's backup given Urshela will likely depart). EDIT: lol, I post this and word immediately breaks that Neto has been called up. Lol.

It takes multiple years for a new GM to take over and put his team in place to help create a strong farm system. I think we are starting to see how good at this Perry is. He appears to have learned well from his former boss in ATL, and I think this is the year we are seeing huge leaps forward by a lot of prospects. In a year's time, we will likely see a number of these guys graduate and become solid contributors. They won't all succeed, but as long as enough of them do, this team should be in great shape moving forward.

With bullpens, it will just take time for it to play out. We'll gauge how trust worthy certain guys are fairly quickly, and the roles will play out. Loup obviously had a poor start after a poor spring. Tepera came in early, but he did come into a key spot, albeit with the aim of getting 1 out against a RHB that doesn't hit righties too well. I'm pretty sure we'll see Joyce sometime this year. CRod, it'll be interesting - he could be a shutdown reliever, but maybe they'll stretch him out as a SP and see where that goes. He just started throwing a bit ago, so either way, we likely won't see him for awhile.

While I am not surprised by quick promotions, as the Angels seem to be very aggressive on that front, I'd be a bit surprised to see a catcher aggressively promoted. Especially in Quero's case, where there are some questions about his defense, I would think they'd take a bit more time in helping cultivate his defensive skills.

All of this aside, now we really have to hope that Minasian is the right guy to steer this franchise. We have a solid payroll, but we are unlikely to see a meteoric rise like the Mets and Dodgers did when they were bought out. Winning teams CAN be generated without mega payrolls. I think Minasian has a good vision and seems to be putting together a more complete organization. I am disappointed Arte is around, but mediocre owners can still win titles. Let's just hope Minasian is as good as his former boss, and we should be fine.

The timing of this is interesting in that @Dollar Bill stated that bidding wasn’t going to start until February. So it seems he pulled the plug before bids even came?

Likely an ownership group did not offer as much as he had hoped. I would assume it is as simple as that.

So I think with all of these scenarios, it'll be interesting to see what happens with Minasian. It seems most of us feel he is doing a good job. Will the new owner want "his guy" in place and fire Minasian? Or will they allow Minasian to finish his contract (2 more years, including this one) before making a decision?

Well, if you can get Nola, I don't think you'd need two - Nola is on par with Ohtani in terms of being an ace. If Nola was signed, we'd likely roll with a 5 man rotation instead, and we'd have something like Nola, Sandoval, Anderson, Detmers, Suarez, which would be just as good as what we have now, without having to really worry about a 6th SP. But of course, you would need a hitter to replace Ohtani as well. If Ohtani did indeed leave, and we signed Nola or Urias to take his place, we could likely use our SP prospect surplus to acquire a hitter. Not an ideal route, but just an example of how we could recover fairly readily if Ohtani leaves.

https://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/trades.php?p=colemvi01 Per the Baseball Almanac: 06-30-1996 Signed by California Angels (June 30, 1996). 10-15-1996 Granted free agency (October 15, 1996). It appears he played for our AAA team: https://www.milb.com/player/vince-coleman-112487

In truth, I think that's probably the most important part, and why some organizations are as successful as they are. We got hints of the discord last year between Maddon and Minasian, and how having that conflict led to significant player development related issues, as they had different visions of how players should utilize information to make adjustments. I think that is why Maddon was fired instead of simply just waiting for the end of his contract - I think that discrepancy between the two was too great. So on that note, I'd really hope to see that unified approach moving forward.

It's pretty neat to see the Angels have 2 catchers listed within the top 10 catching prospects of baseball. When was the last time we saw that?