Reveille1984

Asking Maddon why guys are taking a long time to heal lol. Imagine being paid to ask questions like that to a guy with zero medical background. You might as well crowdsource your answers from the AW forums.

Drive home safely you sexy, halo honks!

It's more his size plus his odd delivery mechanics. The average size of the top 10 starters in baseball a few years ago was 6'3" 1/2; it's just been a natural progression in most sports that the best athletes keep getting bigger and stronger. Bigger guys have release points that are higher and closer to home plate, and the common belief is that they hold up better to wear and tear (how true that is, who knows). Like tdawg iterated, if you have two guys with the same exact stuff but one is 6'1" and the other 6'5", most orgs are gonna take the "bigger frame" since on average taller pitchers fit the profile of success more often. Verlander is 6'5" and was by far the best pitcher in his draft (2nd overall), so he had a higher pedigree than Bachman. Verlander also had a great curveball out of college, Bachman seems to be a fastball/slider guy for now.

Odd choice, as per usual with the Angels. Smaller dude with a weird arm motion. Meh.

Hard to get starters deep into games when it seems like every one of them has a 70-80 pitch limit...

This is what I don't understand. If you're going to baby a guy to this extent then why even bother using him as a starter? If he continues to suck repeatedly in the same situations then you move on, if he maybe figures something out and improve then you have a good starter who's still only 25.

Fletcher's also getting a lot more strikes thrown at him this year (over 3% higher than last season) which might somewhat explain the lower walk rate, but he just isn't doing anything dangerous with them (5% higher soft contact rate, and hard hit rate of freaking 11%!!!). Not sure if it's a mechanics issue or what since that's obviously above my pay grade. Until he starts punishing the huge amount of pitches he's getting in the zone, there's no reason to pitch around him since he never punishes mistakes.

I don't know what our deal is this year with patience at the plate, but the last two seasons we were towards the top of the league in BB% and this year we're dead last. I'm sure a massive chunk of that is Trout not being in the lineup, but Fletcher has basically halved his walk rate in 2021 compared to the last two seasons. The guy seems insistent on making contact with everything and it's totally sapping his (already below average) power and the way pitchers approach him.

Rendon's injuries aren't helping, but a lot of people expected us to be a top offensive team in the league and we're trending towards bottom third in baseball. We've basically been shit in all aspects.

I mean, they're behind other teams in scouting/infrastructure because it stems from the culture at the top. Having an emotional, hands-on owner that wants to run his team like a marketing agency is never going to be as successful as teams that do their heavy lifting behind the scenes and let their on-field product speak for itself. Arte isn't going to heavily invest in nerds and analytics while also letting the people he hires just do their jobs; that's never been his style and it never will be.

8 balls in the first 9 pitches, great start!

Instead you'd get the hard-hitting Gubi and Alex Curry interview: "Can you talk about how awesome and amazing Albert is and how he helped pick your dog's name?"

Pretty much in agreeance. He does a lot of good off the field, but he was abysmal for the vast majority of his tenure here and was always treated with kid gloves due to his legacy in St. Louis and the soft OC media market. He's basically just lucky that we haven't developed anyone that could take his place until recently, that his contract was for such a stupidly long length of time, and that the team has been mostly terrible for the majority of his tenure. If his contract was with a competitive team in a more aggressive media market he would have been riding the pine for years already. Someone made a post I though was relevant that basically said if his contract was 5 or 6 years instead of 10 he would have been out of the league a long time ago.

I don't see the shift issue being remedied unless the league does something to mitigate it. Defenders are better and more athletic than ever, and every pitcher is seemingly throwing 95 MPH heat. This is on top of the other issues mentioned about the difficulty in changing your hitting approach on the fly at the major league level. Every time I hear someone say "why don't they just hit it to the other side!? It's so obvious!" I want to slap them. It's not really surprising to see the three true outcome hitting approach getting worse every year as well. Every five minutes Gubi is shoving launch angles and exit velocity down your throat like the front office is docking his salary unless it's brought up 20 times a broadcast.

Trout's not a moron, I'm sure he sees the writing on the wall with Albert's performance. If he really cares about the team making the playoffs and starting to turn things around, he has to know that Pujols in the lineup is not part of that plan.

Probably something along those lines. I don't see the FO just releasing him unprovoked since they're paying his salary anyways and it's his farewell season. Was probably a mix of Minasian wanting to push him out of the lineup due to his abysmal play along with Albert's ego either getting in the way and/or feeling disrespected. Either way, the big league club is better off for it.

yeah, robot umps can't come soon enough. There's been at least 10 balls called strikes so far in this game.

Another year of complete garbage SP, it just never ends.

8Ks in 10 ABs, jesus christ

Rojas jersey ordered

Once we get home again and can utilize more players, I doubt we're going to see much of Mayfield. They probably figured there was a 0.01% chance he would sniff the lineup on this road trip, and then you know Angels things happened and now you have an entire fanbase saying "who the hell is this guy?"

Yes, women always come forward in groups with allegations due to that darn consensual behavior. The guy is a vile f*&#ing creep just based on that single text message. It shouldn't matter if he's good at coaching adults to help them throw a ball good.

More of the same. If this isn't a precursor to another deal or us just missing additional details, then I can't understand what we're doing here. The wall we're throwing all the shit against to see if anything sticks is pretty much coated in shit by now.

After his interview talking about a winning culture, the importance of analytics and wanting to compete for a World Series every year I doubt we're giving him much of a stiffy.