houstoncali

16 hours ago, Angelsjunky said:

The great game of baseball...how fortunes can change...

 

What you see above is the AL West this year - with games above .500 through 6/16. Green is the Athletics, the Mariners are teal, Houston gold, Texas blue, and the Angels red.

Now look at June:

From June 3, when the Angels were tied with the Mariners at .500 (the black row), with the Astros +12 over .500 and the Rangers rising to peak at +20 on June 6. Fast-forward to tonight and the Angels are+8 over .500, tied with the Astros, and just 7 wins fewer than the Rangers (or 3.5 games behind).

The ups and downs of great game of baseball, but you've got to love the Angels trajectory over the last 12 games, with a 10-2 record.

Very well done.  I was hoping for an upswing recently, in light of our young pitching staff and knowing we practically played the AL East twice in both April and May.  I am also hoping our aggressive promoting of players like Neto and O'Hoppe and the emergence of our young staff, this trend will continue.  

I am not sure when we should start taking this seriously, but he's absolutely erupted.  He started off hot and hasn't stopped.  I wasn't sure if the position move would make him a better prospect or worse (catchers are just hard to come by), but damn, this guy is knocking the cover off the ball.  Furthermore, he only has four errors 33 games.  While that may be just OK (it could be worse) if I am not mistaken most of his errors came towards the beginning of the year.  And the reason I would state that Ward is doing better than Fletcher (although he's having a monster year too) is that Ward is playing in the pitcher friendly Southern League and Fletcher is in Salt Lake (i.e. Blash's 10 homeruns in 24 games).  Although, I think Fletcher's stats are a bit inflated, they are more legitimate than some others in the PCL (Fletcher has more triples than walks for example), but nevertheless it's hard for me to trust offensive performances in Salt Lake overall.  

Will Ward see the majors next year?  If Kinsler continues to suck it up, do we bring in Fletcher, or Ward to cover third and move Cozart over to 2nd?  I really believe Ward and Fletcher give us a tone of options later this year and next year.  

I agree ... I think the best Richards could get is a 3 year 45 million deal.  In addition, Richard's mechanics are just awful.  He throws across his body and a violent delivery.  I think he's going to throw his arm out in a couple of years if he doesn't re-injure himself.  Anytime Richards cranks it up and throws 97 or 98 I completely hold my breath.  With his effective slider I wish he'd take a little off and keep his fastball between the 93-95 range and go a bit easier on his arm.  At one time, I thought Richards was a true ace.  I no longer believe that.  Outside of his slider and fastball he doesn't throw a lot more.  He's afraid to throw his change-up (I think he attributes his change up to his arm injury), and his curveball is still a work in progress.  In addition, Richards allows his psyche to get the better of him.  That's why yesterdays game was a real big deal because he didn't have a meltdown after his early struggles.  If Richards puts together a complete season then I hope the Angels offer him a nice contract.  Something that is front loaded with an option in year 4.  Also, correct me if I am wrong, but Richards has avoided arbitration every year and I think we should reward him for that on the front end.  I figure a three year worth 50-55 million with a team option for year four.  Again, that's assuming he stays healthy all year.   

I was always a fan of the angels but not a die hard until the early to mid 90's.  I just remember the Chad Curtis was the centerfielder when I started watching them almost every night on TV.  My fandom went into a new gear in 1995.  This was after the players strike so the stadium was practically empty, and the ownership were practically giving tickets away.  So, about once a week or so my buddy and I would drive down the stadium after school (I had just got my license) and throughout the year we probably hit up about 20-25 games in person.  I remember one time we got tickets right behind home plate for next to nothing! Now, considering I went lived in San Bernardino we put a lot of miles on our car.  My folks were completely cool with that because as some as you know, the 909 is am armpit and if my folks new that I was at Angels Stadium every other night then I wasn't local getting myself into trouble so they not only were OK with it they encouraged it.  Of course that was the year we completely went to shit and a couple of years later Disney bought the team and gave us the single ugliest uniforms in the history of sports ... but that's neither here nor there.  

For those who were devastated in the 95 collapse ... the feeling of the 2002 World Series was that much sweater.  The Angels in the late 90's were the single biggest laughing stock in all of professional sports.  In fact, I would say we were worse off than how the Cleveland Browns are viewed now or how the New Orleans Saints were viewed in the 60's and 70's.  In fact, what people tend to forget was (and correct me if I am wrong) but after 20 games we had the worse record in baseball ... and then the magic happened.  

All of the young talented pitchers who were supposed to make up our next great rotation (Richards, Heaney, and Skaggs), and not to mention back of the line-up arms Tropeano and Shoemaker are finally back and healthy.  Unless they all go down immediately again, we'll be better by default.  If most of them remain healthy all year, we could be looking at 95 win year.  On paper this is an overall better team than the 2014 Angels.  We have a better hitting line-up in 2017 than 2014, and although we don't have a dominate ace like we did in 2014, we have a much much deeper rotation with more quality arms.  

Above:

1. Heaney ... I don't understand why so many have written him off.  He wasn't ready to come back last year.  I think he'll into a great starter, and a legit #3 guy.  I predict around 25-28 starts with 160-170 innings.  He'll have an ERA in the mid to low 3.00's and a WHIP below 1.25. 

2. JC Ramirez ... I am not just basing this on his Spring performance, but before he got hurt last year, I was starting to think we had found the next great reliever turned starter.  He was a bit inconsistent last year and was working in a brand new pitch, but I am expecting another great year from him with a little more consistency.  I predict he'll have very similar numbers to Heaney.  

3. Cam Bedrosian ... He finally turns into our closer.  He'll post 30+ saves this year. 

Below:

Ohtani ... This is easy because anything short of Babe Ruth will be a disappointment considering the hype.  He probably bellows in AAA for half the year to get used to the elevated opposition and it is obvious he's shell shocked.  I hope throwing him immediately into the fire doesn't do more damage to his psyche.  We'll see how his start tomorrow goes, but if anyone needs a good outing it is him.  

Simmons ... I think he'll have a very good year, but he won't perform to the level he did last year.  His fielding will not change, but he he'll regress to what his mean is from the plate. 

Middleton ... He'll struggle again like he did last year.  Two games he looks like K-Rod, and then the next two games he looks like Mitch Williams after he signed with the angels. 

Justin Upton is one of my favorite players, but I have absolutely no sympathy for the players what so ever.  In many cases they have held the league hostage, and I am a good capitalist, and know the league would give two farts about them unless they were a superstar. But I believe there is a continuum and constant balance between the league and owners and players and their salaries (and the fans are in there someplace but they have been more or less left out).   And quite honestly, I am glad the owners are fighting back with the players.  After all, where were the players when Josh Hamilton held our program hostage for three years.  That POS completely didn't fulfill his end of the bargain and walked out on the team.  In any other industry he would have been given a severance package and told to hit the door or be just fired out right.  You can't tell me the owners didn't watch that situation closely and see exactly what these massive contracts can give you if things go south.  I would absolutely love it if some reporter would respond to a player lamenting about the state of baseball and say "Do you think how Arte Moreno was forced to pay the remaining amount of the Josh Hamilton deal when he walked out on the program and how all the players went to Hamilton's defense has something to do with the hesitancy the owners have in giving these massive long term deals?"

20 hours ago, Scotty@AW said:

Minor League Ball does the best job outside of AW in terms of scouting the depths of our minor league system.

Baseball America does the best job at scouting a selective few.

Baseball Prospectus is basically the same as BA with slightly more statistical analysis.

FanGraphs does a very solid job ranking the prospects, but their scouting reports are pretty terrible. Riddled with errors, obvious ones too. They aren't scouts. But they take other sites into account and create a ranking that's generally accurate. They're the opposite of MLB.com. One gives you no information because they don't want to be wrong, the other throws crap against the wall hoping some of it sticks.

Keith Law isn't a scout, and never actually was. If you read his list as you'd read any other fans, expecting bias, it's solid work. But if you're taking what he writes as "expertise" then you'll be disappointed or misinformed.

MLB.com works off the mantra, "No information is better than misinformation" which is a step in the right direction I guess. Very shallow reports and rankings that leave a lot to be desired. 

Scout.com has outstanding insider information. TBW is a good  reporter. Good writeups. He isn't a natural scout, but he also isn't misinformed either. 

Halos Heaven used to have good scouting and poor reporting, but not anymore. They have improved as a fan site, but you can't trust their rankings or scouting reports.

AngelsWin has a solid ranking system and decent scouting reports. They (we) toe the line between scouting and fandom, which is a unique place to be, but it also opens us (me usually) up for criticism.  It's highly likely other publications read our information, put their spin on it and present it as their own. I think if nothing else, AW's content is forcing others to step up their game if they want to be taken seriously.

Thanks Chuckster and Scotty for the welcome and well wishes.  Yes, I am pretty familiar with many of the blogs you provided.  I think Halos Heaven is just OK ... but there interface isn't user friendly and they don't have a true message board.  Monkey with a Halo is non existent and Halo Hangout doesn't do much anymore.  And the Keith Law's and Baseball America's of the world have good info, but you are right they are very selective and tend to be biased (especially when it comes to ranking our fringe players with other organizations fringe players).  Last time I checked, scout wasn't very good.  I visit other scout/247 sites but not baseball.  A while back I used to write for scout and they were always much better being a college insider pub than pro.  I'll take another look.  And I am not just saying this, but I do think AW is the best site around.  If I didn't believe that I wouldn't have joined and started posting.   But nevertheless, I have always worked off of the assumption (and could be wrong of course) that MLB at the very least has access to scouts at every organization and therefore there rankings probably more closely reflect what people in the organization feel.  But again, that assumption could be wrong.  I will say, the top 30 this year was solid.  Not because we were given better grades, but like I said earlier, they started rating some of our international signees which they have been avoiding doing for a while.  

40 minutes ago, Warfarin said:

Admittedly I am not high on Thasis at all.  I see someone who might be a fringe player currently.  I know that may not be a popular view here, and I hope he develops more pop and improves his defense while proving me wrong, but I just don't see a strong future for him currently.

That said, we have certainly done very well in the other rounds of that draft, as well as last year's draft too.  We have a lot of OF talent percolating in the low minors and some very intriguing, high-upside arms as well.

I'd love to learn how our analytic approach changed as we transitioned from DiPoto to Eppler.  It's impossible to know, but I'd definitely love to learn how it evolved.  Not to derail the thread, but it is definitely very eye-opening to see how our farm system has evolved the last two years, while the Mariners' has been transformed to the worst in the MLB in that same stretch of time.

I hear ya on Thaiss, and feel he is a bit overrated.  But, he isn't the worst prospect.  And there has been years where I would have loved to have a consistent first baseman who bated .270Ave/.350OBP with average power (15 HR's a year) where I think he projects.  I also like the fact he's a lefty, which will make him a valuable situational hitter, and ultimately think he'll platoon with Pujos in 2019 at first base.  Now, oddly enough, lowering the right field wall I believe will benefit him when he makes it to the show next season.  

But you are absolutely right about DiPoto.  Some of that I blame on Moreno for letting him destroy our minors as much as he did.  And yes, he's doing the exact same thing to the Mariners ... trying to cash in every chip to win now.  You can't win that way in today's league with the inflated contracts, the seven year control a team has over a player not to mention the depth required to win a 162 game season.  Now that we are fully beyond the steroid era, the days of having 4-5 200 inning pitchers a year are over (not every pitcher during that era was on steroids, but I am sure many where on various supplementals to help with recovery that are classified in today's league as a PED).  The Dodgers have the new model, and it is one that I hope the Angels will follow.  You have to plan to use 8-10 starters thorough out the year and have none of your top guys go over 180 innings.  In order to do that you need to have a couple of valuable swing guys in the pen, and a few guys in AAA who can give you valuable innings.  

Personally I am quite happy Eppler has been as stingy as he has with our minor league players.  But with that said, I also like that Eppler is willing to make the right deal (unlike Stoneman who was overtly miserly with our prospects).  Don't forget Eppler this past year traded Long, Elvin Rodriguez, and Troy Montgomery; and of course we all remember the Newcomb/Ellis trade.  

30 minutes ago, Vlad27Trout27 said:

You just have to give Credit to billy and Co for the system.  One think that may have gone under the radar is how much pitching depth That have build, we have 2 sets of categorized of pitching depth now, 1 that contains the safe bet guys with low ceilings and that the guys with high bust rate what also extremely high upside. 

  1. Gatto, personally i see need him to develop a third pitch that at least Consistent. If he can still improve i can see him being a number 3

  2. For a Bp arm Jewell is in the bottom 30  but as a starter not so much

  3. CRod's stuff just jumps out, His Fb to me is an 65 grade pitch right now with a chance to be an 70 grade pitch, Mix it in with a  wipe-out slider and a change that has shown flashes of being a plus pitch, than consider the fact he can toss an average curve. 

   He struggled last year, but you have to remember he was going up against guys that were about 4 yrs older than him, There were also a few stats to like; only 144 BB and 2 Hrs allowed. I think next year is still going to be a learning season for him, but i'm excepting better results and by the end of the season he'll start dominating.       

You are a bit higher on Gatto than I am, but I hope you're right.  I recall at one time some considered him our top prospect, and then he totally went the way of Hunter Green.  But Green of course was destroyed by injuries but Gatto just seamed to have a meltdown.  I always assumed that from a maturity point of view, he struggled immensely living the minor league player life and it carried over into his play.  Well, last year was quite the comeback for him, and he show steady consistent progress throughout the year.  So is it possible for him to pick up where we left off last year and absolutely explode?  Sure, in the mean time I am just hoping for a better change-up and much better K-BB ratio.  

That's a good question Warfarin, outside the obvious answers.  The Dipoto era draft seemed to focus on high floor - low ceiling types of picks whereas the Eppler era drafts seem to higher ceiling - younger types.  But the drafts haven't been all sunshine and roses.  Thaiss has been just OK (but drafting him allowed us to pay more money to Marsh, William, and Rodriguez).  And someone correct me if I am wrong on this one also, but not signing our 5th round pick last year (his name escapes me) allowed us to over pay for Rivera and a few others.  We'll see but I would love to see an in depth article about the changes too.  I've read we have added more resources in the international scouting department, and are basically one of the only teams scouting certain territories and oddly enough we have the inside track on all those players (it's how we got Deveraux).  I am curious if we have also changed our analytics in the minor leagues like we have at the major league level (for example I believe we threw significantly less fastballs last year than we did before).