Warfarin

This is a very good perspective. I do think though if the Angels make Ohtani available by trade, they'll like get the value that Rojas is referring to. While this seems far fetched, perhaps the best version of this whole saga would be to essentially do with Ohtani what the Yankees did with Chapman and the Cubs years ago - trade Ohtani to a team, get a huge bounty in return, then re-sign him in the offseason, so you not only get to keep Ohtani long-term, but you also get several top 100 prospects to go along with it. I don't think that is a likely scenario at all, but that'd be pretty cool to see, all things considered.

Joyce didn't really look that great before his injury, and all of the guys you mentioned are rather unproven in the long-term. They can, of course, continue to be good, but it'd be nice to add another arm to that mix.. Someone to keep an eye on might be Hader. The Padres are surprisingly fading away, further and further out of the playoff race. I highly doubt they'd trade away anyone who they have control of beyond this year, as they are likely to compete again next year, but it's possible they could look at trading a pending free agent, such as Hader. Adding Hader would be a huge addition to this pen, should he become available, and I imagine the cost wouldn't be THAT high, as even the best relievers don't cost too much for just a 2 month rental.

I am not sure why anyone would want to trade Renfroe. We just saw how quickly depth can be depleted with our infield injuries. Keep the depth and hang onto Renfroe.

Right. Basically - Moose is an upgrade over Walsh (in his current form) and Padlo. It is sending a message to the team that their GM is willing to quickly make moves to provide reinforcements and reach the playoffs. Those moves are likely popular in the clubhouse and important for morale. Now, instead of Rengifo, Padlo, and Velazquez being counted on as starters, they are bench players, optioned, and/or DFA'd.

I gotcha. I'm not really hoping for any miracles, but I think if he can improve to, say, a ~700 OPS hitter who can play very good defense, I think he can at least be a serviceable backup who can function mainly as a late inning defensive replacement.

The downfall of this team for years has been having terrible depth, which is always exposed over the course of a full season unless you have stunningly good health, which few teams do. Minasian did a solid job of building infield depth, but a wave of injuries have struck (once again), and we were basically being forced to trot out subpar replacements. Acquiring Escobar and Moose, at least, provides us with replacement level or better players. I'm a bit interested to see if Fletcher has improved his approach at all in the minors as well. He started off poorly but has been rather solid since his slow start.

I think Escobar actually is also being eyed to take Urshela's role for next season, too, given that Urshela is a FA. He has an option for 9mil next year and effectively can serve as 3B/2B insurance. It is unlikely Rendon will ever play a majority of a season, given all the health issues he has had, so it makes sense to have a solid backup in place. Escobar will ensure that for us next year. So in that context, I think that's a decent acquisition.

Right. I have seen various MLB players out for months with an oblique strain. Obviously there are various degrees of a strain, but I am assuming he will be out for a minimum of a month, but probably more.

I give Perry credit for doing what he can to help this team win. Moose is obviously an upgrade over Padlo. Not exciting, but he can play 1B/3B, provide a LHH, and essentially serve as a serviceable MLB option. I agree with others that it hurts to see some MILB depth traded, but I think we actually are in fairly good shape in terms of both controllable MLB pitching depth and MILB minor league depth. Ohtani is a wildcard, but Ohtani aside, we have Sandoval, Detmers, Anderson, Canning, and even Barria - all controllable for multiple years. Bush, Silseth, Mederos, and Koch are all promising prospects as well. While it always hurts to trade MILB depth, I think the quality of arms we parted with can be somewhat easily replaced.

I think all of this could be true, but I think Perry recognizes that the odds of everything being healthy at the same time is .. perhaps somewhat unlikely? Rendon keeps getting hurt (though obviously the last one was not his fault), and it seems inevitable that someone else probably will - just the nature of the game. So I think that is why we are seeing all these little moves - better to have too much talent, and then try to figure out how to shift the pieces, than the opposite. That said, should everyone be healthy at relatively the same time, I agree with your assessment, though I think we'll see Fletcher optioned before they let go of Rengifo. They will likely try to maintain as much depth as possible, and while Fletcher has an option (or can even be DFA'd and sent back to the minors as we just saw), Rengifo cannot.

Yeah, this. Given how they've deployed Drury, it seems they essentially have him pegged as our 2B/1B coverage. I'm sure they could slide him over to 3B as needed, but would probably like to keep that as an "as needed" basis and not routinely scheduled. From what I've read, it seems Padlo is a fairly decent defensive 3B. Not sure how he'll fair offensively, but he's had a solid year in AAA with a good BB% and a respectable K%. He'll probably slide into the Urshela role for now, and may get a fair amount of starts until Rendon returns. We'll see how he fares in the big leagues.

I am thinking that Padlo may end up sticking on the roster even after Rendon comes back. Stefanic can probably be optioned back, and Padlo will serve as a backup for 3B/1B. Drury will mainly cover 2B, but so can Rengifo, etc.

The Angels needed someone who could play 3B. We have Rengifo and that's about it, so it makes sense to call up someone who can play 3B. Notably, Padlo plays 3B/1B, which is effectively what Urshela covered. Given Urshela is likely out for a long time (the rest of the season?), it seems to make sense to call up someone who covers the same positions he did.

Would assume it would be Suarez to the 60 day IL. Only other option would be Urshela, which is possible given that his injury sounds rather significant.

I think the best FOs tend to have some blend of advanced metrics and traditional scouting. I think Fangraphs (?) posted some grid years ago about the FO's, and how they skew towards one direction or another. I can't remember where we fell on it, although I'm pretty sure it was generated during Eppler's era. It seems to me that Perry has somewhat of a blend in his FO, based on his various hirings, but hard to say exactly.

Truthfully, I think that is one of the biggest issues with the way our bullpen is currently constructed. We have way too many pitchers who don't have any options. It is essentially what led to one of our best relievers (Wantz) having to be optioned - because we didn't really have anyone else who could be optioned at the time. Hopefully we are moving in that direction with time, as our young pitchers get closer to the majors and some of our poorer performing options are DFA'd/let go, but for now, the only way to cycle through relievers is to essentially have them get "hurt" and use the IL to call up a fresh arm.

I agree. I don't see this team signing Renfroe to a long-term contract. I get the impression that Perry will ultimately shy away from long-term deals. Anderson's 3 year deal already looks rather questionable based on early results. I think if Ohtani does indeed move on, which is my guess too unfortunately, I think Perry will ultimately just try to spread the money around on depth, to try to ensure we have as much depth as possible. If you peer at the fWARs of this team, while some players haven't performed as well as we would have hoped, there aren't too many players in the negative fWAR territory for now. That's a stark difference to last year, when we had many, many sub-replacement hitters getting lots of at bats. That's very solid roster building.

He was used in a leverage spot, but against the bottom part of the order. I think Silseth will get optioned when Tepera is ready. It would not be my choice, but I think they will err on the side of trying to keep as many arms as possible, although I'd just prefer they move on from Tepera at this point TBH.

Actually what's interesting about that is the Dodgers are often thought of to have one of the strongest catching pipelines in baseball, but even that didn't prevent them from having to scrape the bottom of the barrel to fill their temporary gap. It just goes to show you how difficult the position is to fill. Again, I think we actually HAD very good depth. When any team loses their top two catchers, they will invariably suffer.

I think Rengifo is having his role adjusted. He grades out rather poorly defensively, such that he isn't really ideal as a regular starting 2B or 3B. I think they are instead reserving him moreso to face LHP, and rotating his spot around the diamond (2B, LF, CF). I don't think he'll be let go. But I think he'll play more sparingly and in more select spots, barring injury to others (which, as we have already seen, can/will occur).

I think Wallach grades out fairly well defensively. He has historically been a black hole offensively, although he has had a strong start to his AAA season. All that said, if he can be good defensively, then we'll just have to take it, IMO.

What's actually kind of crazy about the situation is, entering spring training, we actually had shockingly good catching depth. O'Hoppe was a top-rated prospect and Stassi, at the minimum, could be considered a very good backup. We had Thaiss and Wallach, who would seem like decent fallbacks who can hold serve for short periods of time for short-term injuries. And we had Quero, who while far off, is an exciting prospect. That just goes go show you why teams so heavily prioritize catching depth. We are now down our top two options, and you can quickly see what a huge drop-off it creates.

It appears likely that someone in his family is very ill / going through a difficult health situation, and the outcome of that is unknown, so privacy is maintained for now. The situation will "resolve" in one of two ways: 1. The person recovers. Stassi opens up about it because the process is over and the person has recovered, and he discloses the difficulties involved. 2. The person does not recover and passes away. Stassi, having had the opportunity to grieve the situation, may open up about it at that point and how much it has impacted him, and so on. Many people in their lives have ill family members and don't openly discuss it for awhile. He deserves his privacy and the opportunity to deal with it in the way he feels is best.

Yeah. I am generally rather optimistic, and I don't think this is a bad team at all, but I think it appears more of the same. Losing O'Hoppe and now having C be manned by Wallach and Thaiss indefinitely hurts a lot as well, unless Stassi can come back soon. The positive side, though, is it does appear that we are having a lot of growth in the minor leagues. If Minasian shows he can draft and develop talent well, then that will make up for things and enable us to contend, but it does take at least a few years, at the minimum, to see that process play out. I am bullish long-term, but I am not sure we will contend this year, and I think that if we fall out of contention, we would probably be best served to trade Ohtani and get multiple very good prospects, instead of inevitably letting him leave.

I suspect if we don't make the playoffs, Ohtani will probably move on to a team that offers him the opportunity to make the playoffs on a yearly basis. It is hard to envision Ohtani staying after not making the playoffs once in the six years he has been here.