Reveille1984

What could Dipoto have done that differently that would have resulted in a successful pitching staff? Greinke was overpaid by the Dogs. Free agency pitching options were terrible last offseason. We have a barren farm with zero trade pieces. Santana was atrocious last year and paying him nearly $15M was a no-go, and Haren looked (and still does look) done. Of course the Blanton deal was terrible, and nobody really understood it when it happened and it looks even worse now if that was even possible. But getting Vargas was a good swap, and Hanson was a gamble but we needed something to fill the back of the rotation. I mean, I'm not absolving the guy of all blame by any means. He's made some questionable decisions here and there. But expecting him to create a great bullpen and starting rotation in a year or two with what our pitching situation looked like is fairly ridiculous to be honest. All I hear from a lot of people here are the usual cliches: "obviously pitching wins games! Dipoto didn't do enough! He knew the bullpen was a problem and didn't fix it!" It's one thing to be aware of a problem but another thing entirely to be able to do everything you want to fix it when all you have are mediocre free agents and a terrible farm system. The only thing that can fix this team is time and solid drafting/coaching.

Realistically, Dipoto could only do so much to salvage a decent bullpen by picking up free agents. Good teams save cash and maintain flexibility by developing cheap, cost-controlled bullpen arms that have electric stuff and can miss bats. We have developed who in our current bullpen that has shown any success... Jepsen? And even he has sucked most of his time in the bigs. Downs - FA, Burnett - FA, Frieri - Trade, Madson - FA, Jerome - Reclamation Project. Kohn has some upside but is coming off TJ surgery. Richards has a 5.00+ ERA. The rest of the guys are just shit we're throwing against a wall to see if anything sticks. If you look at the teams with the best bullpens and highest BP WAR so far, you'll obviously notice they aren't spending big money on their bullpen - Giants, Twins, Rockies, A's, Rangers, Indians, etc. To blame Dipoto for not constructing a good bullpen is kind of stupid. When your farm can't develop one lights-out BP arm there's only so much you can do to salvage things.

Chances are Trout won't ever match that season again, let alone top it. The only anomaly I see in his stats is that his o-contact% is only 58% this year, compared to almost 72% last year. Basically means that he made contact with almost 3/4 of pitches he swung at outside the strike zone last year, and it's dropped about 15% this season. He's also been seeing nearly 10% more sliders/change-ups (which should be expected given his 2012 numbers). Match all that data with about a 4% higher o-swing% in 2013 and its pretty clear that pitchers have adjusted by throwing him a lot more junk, and he's swinging at a lot of it. His swing rate is up a little from last year even though he's seeing less hittable pitches. Maybe hitting in the 2-spot has changed his approach slightly, but its only been about a month so who knows. Once he makes some adjustments of his own he'll probably get even better as the year goes on.

Is this sarcasm? He's already at 1.5 WAR even with his mediocre start and is top five in the AL behind only Cabrera, Longoria, Machado and Santana. Also has the same ISO as Miggy and his BABIP is only .311 compared to a .350 career mark.

Centerfield has to make more ranging plays and cover more ground, supposedly increasing injury risk. Not sure how much data there is to back it up but it does seem like CF's get injured a lot more often than the other two OF positions. Like AZMike said as well, Trout's arm is mediocre at best while Bourjos has a plus arm. He also seems to get quicker reads off the bat and have better positioning on tougher plays. This is just my personal opinion, but that's what I've seen anyways. Anyways, Trout has been fine in LF and is playing well so who really cares at this point. He's already top 15 in WAR for 2013 despite his cold start.

Thanks Obama

Too bad when we get a decent start our offense falls asleep.

I really believe Scioscia doesn't have a voice anymore that inspires or motivates this team. It doesn't mean that he's a bad manager or that it's even his fault necessarily, just that its time for a change of scenery and for a new source of knowledge that the guys can take advantage of. Same goes for Butcher. I'm guessing there's a reason that it is far from the norm in baseball to give managers and coaches huge, mega deals. Players and teams are turning over from year to year, personalities change, the feel of the clubhouse shifts resulting in possibly new tactics that need to be used to get through to players. There's always the "these guys are pros and should have the self-initiative to make adjustments" argument, which is a big part of it obviously. But when you've had the same voice in your ear for years and years with the same old schtick, things can and do get stagnant. That's what this team has looked like and played like the past few years; a steaming pile of stagnant crap.

"Yesterdayyyy, our starting pitchers gave the lead away, our lineup's motor skills are in decay, oh I believe in yesterdayyyy"

I'm sure Hamilton doesn't care at all about how terribly he's doing.... right. Anyone with even a modicum of self-respect or competitive drive isn't going to be content with repeatedly failing, no matter what their financial situation is. All the money in the world doesn't shield the shitty feeling of being the overpaid laughingstock of your team. He's an experienced veteran with a solid track record; anyone expecting him to whine or panic openly are kidding themselves.

He's pretty much doubling his career GO/AO ratio right now, which is great and quantifies his new approach as paying some dividends early on. Still only has 4.9% BB and nearly 20% K rate though, and a massive .375 Babip which screams regression. I'll enjoy it while it lasts, I still don't think he fits long term at leadoff though.

I've never understood and still don't understand why Hamilton is batting cleanup. Instead of people pitching to Albert to avoid Hamilton, essentially the complete opposite is happening. I think we all knew this already, but it's interesting to actually see the numbers.

"There’s one other player besides Stanton whose Zone% has dropped by eight percentage points between 2012 and 2013. That player’s name is Albert Pujols, and so far in 2013 he’s been hitting in front of Josh Hamilton." http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-man-right-in-front-of-josh-hamilton/

Lol, very true. This team looks like it's in a medically induced coma.

I can't picture Scoscia ever saying "baby" in real life, LOL

Too early to worry about Trout, he's been fine despite K'ing a bit more. 1/10 Hamilton I'm slightly concerned about, but not enough to really be worried. If he's still hitting like this in June I'll hit the panic button. 3/10 Pujols I'm just concerned that he'll aggravate his injury to the point where it tears or becomes worse. His speed on the basepaths right now is almost comically slow. I feel like it almost doesn't matter if he's out of the lineup for a while since we have so many players out anyways and are playing mediocre baseball. 6/10

Well, other than those two coming back healthy what else can we hope for? Downs and Frieri look to be fine, and Burnett has been solid as well. The main problem is still starting pitching, not the bullpen. Any BP that has to pitch 3-4-5 innings every single night is going to get worn ragged even with their best guys available, unless you're the A's where it seems any nobody can come up and post a sub 2.00 ERA. If players were healthy and the starters were even league average we wouldn't be seeing guys like Carpenter, Lowe, Roth and De La Rosa having to start games and be depended upon to pitch multiple innings.

I'm actually surprised we're only 8-12 after yet another terribly slow start and a breakout of guys injured/unavailable within a three week period. Jepsen, Burnett and Madson have been unavailable, Callaspo and Aybar are still out, Weaver breaks an arm, Pujols' foot is jacked, Hanson misses his start for the bereavement list (not that I had much confidence in him vs. the Rangers anyways). I'm not saying we'll be fine; the Rangers are obviously looking like a much more complete team than us so far. Just that things really aren't that awful given what we've had to deal with. We've had 20 games and 15 have been against playoff contenders. Other than us, the Rangers have played the Astros, Cubs, Mariners seven times, and a Rays club that was ice cold at the time. Starting in early May we play nearly 30 straight games against these teams: Royals, White Sox, Astros, Mariners, Cubs. We have a chance to take advantage of a very favorable schedule and we really need to do so in order to stay in the race.

Just bring up Cron for 2 weeks

He's still showing some decent discipline (9 BB's in 60 PA's) and zone recognition at least. Like others have said I think he'll be fine with some seasoning.

We haven't had many homeruns during his broadcasts, especially to the opposite field, but yes he does still say oppo taco. And if you think announcers never make it painful to watch a game, you definitely haven't heard enough of them. Hawk Harrelson is just one example of ear rape.

At this point with how many advanced stats there are to interpret pretty much every variation in player performance, I doubt anybody would only use ERA to represent a pitcher's value. It's more like ERA is one slice of a statistical pie. Things like WHIP, BB/9, K/9, LD%, xFIP, velocity, and etc. in combination with ERA will tell a more complete story of how a pitcher is doing.

Not really, but yes pretty bad.

Not feeling good about Frieri in this spot, seems he always chokes against the Rangers