Reveille1984

Why would any of these moves make any difference to Ohtani if we flame out and don't make the post season yet again? Like he's gonna give us a participation ribbon for getting Giolito? The dude is constantly saying he wants to win and that it's important to him, we haven't done shit in a decade.

Comparing those lineups is kind of depressing

Yeah, weirdly on my Fire Stick with another VPN app it only works if I select Central/Norcal locations. When I try to use Seattle, Denver, Vegas, etc. it doesn't work. I haven't tested it again in a while though.

It essentially just redirects your internet traffic to another location. So when I connect my VPN to San Francisco on my laptop, my connection gets proxied there and MLBTV thinks I'm outside the regional SoCal blackout area. ExpressVPN is a pretty common one to use for this sort of thing if you ever wanted to test it out on your laptop. They have a 30-day guarantee if you end up not liking/using it.

Got a free year of MLB TV via T-Mobile. Already had a VPN (Private Internet Access) subscription, so I just use that and set the location to either Silicon Valley or another US West site. The only pain point is my living room has an Apple TV that I primarily use which doesn't support any VPN apps. So I bought a shitty Amazon Fire stick and just downloaded my VPN app on it if I want to watch Angels games on my actual TV. Overall pretty pain free, but like another poster said you'll probably have to switch VPN locations occasionally as they get wise and update their blacklists.

It's mostly the "hired gun" mentality, he's just a talking head with no real investment (other than financially) in the Angels success

Angels baserunning

Last 30 days - .167/.277/.347 - wRC+ 76 Guy is basically a black hole in the lineup right now

Pretty much this. This is a massive overpay. I mean hell, people were saying we might get one top 100 prospect and change for Ohtani and we give up our only one for Gio lol... jesus.

Again, just meaningless insults and nothing of value. It seems like maybe only I have watched the last decade, because I haven't been very impressed nor have many other Angels fans. But hey, if you've been inspired by what you've seen I don't want to pull you from the joys of that alternate reality.

I never said I prioritized both. I would love to build our farm system and and have those players become impactful major league talent. I was simply responding to a post that isn't really living in reality in terms of the talent we have at the lower levels. Not trying to derail the conversation. What would I do? I wouldn't make any acquisitions unless we're within 1-2 games of a WC slot by the TDL.

Churning out major leaguers? Every team's system graduates minor league talent. We're going on nearly a decade without a winning record now, so would you say we've been doing better than average "churning out" quality major league talent opposed to other teams? We are pretty much unanimously in the bottom five based on evaluation of impact talent compared to other orgs. If you want to give me your own evaluation based on your long track record of scouting and talent evaluation, go right ahead.

Seriously. Our pitching has so many holes, what would we even trade for? Our farm system is one of the worst in baseball, who are we moving to get someone like Giolito vs. the 10+ other interested teams? Even Giolito has been about a 1.5 WAR player this year. He might give us one additional win over the course of these last couple months, probably less adding him to a six man rotation. It's funny too that people are saying how disappointing the Padres have been and might sell off Soto to us, when they have a +30 better run differential than us... Keeping Ohtani and selling off even more of our already barren system when we're 6+ games back of the WC would be a very Angels thing to do though, so I wouldn't be surprised if we're buyers.

I think the report in general of the Angels "starting to listen on Ohtani" is kind of nothingburger anyways. Every GM is going to listen to offers on any player whether they're looking to move them or not. Do I think Arte will be on board even if Perry gets an "offer he can't refuse"? Probably not.

Whenever he does come back, he better be covered in wrist/shin guards at the plate. I don't want to see a single inch of exposed limb on this MF'er

Seattle doesn't strike me as the type of team to throw a $500M+ deal out there, but with their Japanese ties and him being literally a once in a lifetime player who knows. He also said he wants to play for a winning franchise, and Seattle historically isn't that. I can't imagine the Dodgers not matching anything Seattle would throw out there, and are a much more desirable franchise to play for if he wants to stick on the west coast.

Yep. Arte ain't trading his cash cow, he'll milk those endorsement and marketing teats until the second Ohtani's locker is gone. Unless Perry can somehow pitch him on it, I just don't see it happening. Moreno just isn't the type of guy who's going to put the future talent depth of the franchise over his shiny object fetish (and yet another reason we needed him to sell in the offseason, because we all saw this coming).

The Dodgers just won the WS in 2020...

Unless Perry is truly worried about his job security, I can't see a world where we make serious TDL acquisitions. We've lost 12 of 15, have lost some major ground in the WC hunt, half our starting lineup is injured, and we have one of the most brutal schedules in baseball coming up in the next month. Outside of some last ditch desperation effort to try and keep Ohtani around, what about this team is inspiring people to sell off the remaining few assets we have for rentals?

Same story every year, unfortunately. Until we actually rebuild we'll be floundering in mediocrity. Feels like we've had a bottom five farm system for over a decade.

Typical Angels, finally have some momentum for once going into the ASB and completely shit the bed crushing all momentum

Our entire pitching staff has got a case of the ol' shit-itis

I would trade him just because we need to restock the team honestly. I love Ohtani and he's been a pleasure to watch the last six seasons, but I don't want to sign a $500M player where we're one injury away from losing both an ace and MOTO bat. That has the capacity to be a franchise crushing contract, even more so than the usual big budget FA. If this truly is the start of a Trout decline, and Ohtani walks for nothing, this team is going nowhere without some expert maneuvering from Minasian. Our lineup would be a mishmash of something like - Neto/Trout/Ward/Moniak/Adell/O'Hoppe/Drury/Walsh and sometimes Rendon. This on top of still having a bottom five farm system is going to be very rough, and keep us in perpetual mediocrity.

Just some bad luck for Adell in terms of the current major league roster. We can't keep a turd like Velazquez off the team because our entire infield gets put on the IL in a single game, while our OF has been healthy basically all year on top of Moniak finding some magic and sticking as the 4OF. I'm sure he'll get an extended look at some point before the season ends.

I feel bad for his injury, but Urshela is not even league average (93 wRC+ and a .289 xwOBA (which is awful)). His power has been nonexistent this year. His main value is defensive flexibility, which we're going to miss especially if Rendon is MIA again.