Reveille1984

Yeah, I wouldn't be at all surprised to play above .500 ball the rest of the year and finish outside the top 5 pick range. Based on our Pyth/BR projections, we're anywhere from 3-5 wins below where we should be given our team stats so we've been both mediocre and one of the most unlucky teams in the league as well.

The only way we can be remotely competitive is to acquire top flight pitching this offseason. Maybe if we can pickup Bauer and draft a near MLB ready college pitcher with our inevitable top 5 pick things can flip around quickly, but we sure don't seem to like investing in SP so that's likely a pipe dream.

It's just what this team has been for about a decade now: mediocre. Pujols has been a major flop, Upton has been a major flop, Hamilton was a major flop, Wells was a major flop, and.... yeah. Trying to buy our way out of bad player development with shitty FA signings mixed with some bad luck (Skaggs, Ohtani's arm issues, TJ surgeries, etc.) and rolling out a squadron of back-end rotation guys year after year and here's where we are. Not bad enough to ever rebuild, not good enough to compete against top tier clubs.

Dumpsters gonna fire, its just what they do

I thought that said "huge complete tool" for a second, was like wow this scout isn't pulling any punches

Imagine how far up your ass that stick has to be that you'd rather have no baseball at all than having a regular season in Arizona/Florida.

Fair enough. Sure, if you want an ace (undisputable #1) then you're more likely to find them in the first few rounds and those guys likely need more "fine-tuning" than any kind of complete overhaul, no doubt. I guess my point is we aren't doing either as of late; whether it's drafting high end pitching in the first few rounds that end up being very good in the bigs or finding the turd covered diamonds and polishing them up to be mid-level rotation fill-ins.

Even amongst those aces listed, only three are top ten picks. You can find good pitching all over the place.

Then what can it be chalked up to? Let's look at some SP WAR "studs" from 2019 and their overall draft position: Cole - 1 Overall deGrom - 272 Overall Lynn - 39 Overall Scherzer - 11 Overall Verlander - 2 Overall Morton - 95 Overall Strasburg - 1 Overall Bieber - 122 Overall Giolito - 16 Overall Buehler - 22 Overall Corbin - 80 Overall Flaherty - 34 Overall There's three top-3 picks on there, mixed with a lot of guys from all over the first, second and third rounds (deGrom being an outlier). This myth that you need a top 5 pick or that you need to be the worst team in the league to draft decent pitching has no verifiable proof behind it. Hell, I'd take a 2-3 WAR guy , I'm not even looking for top 15 arms at this point.

The "picking middle of the pack" thing isn't a valid excuse anymore. There's 40 rounds in an MLB draft, and maybe a handful of guys every year are "can't miss" prospects. Other historically good MLB teams don't have the barren wasteland of pitching that we do. We just aren't good at developing young pitching. That mixed with our supreme bad luck (player deaths, surgeries, injuries, etc.) and this is what you get.

Man, that rotation seems like a wet dream right now.

Once you start talking about a guy's "joint litheness", I think it's time to hang 'em up. Nobody improves at 40.

We're in the second biggest U.S. media market with a top five valued MLB TV contract. It's not like Arte is the only potential owner of the franchise that would spend dough. His inability to step aside and let his underlings do their job is probably one of his biggest downsides, and it shows with the direction the team has gone in the past decade.

It's like another train crashing into a train wreck

Sounds about right. It'll be fun to see where the Astros end up with all of this heat on them. I think they're still a 95+ win team, but I could also see things cratering spectacularly. They lost Cole, their two best starters (while both awesome) are almost 37, McCullers is coming off TJ, and their lineup won't have the benefit of knowing what pitches they'll be seeing anymore. They're the pariah of the league and will be heckled relentlessly in every away game. I'm hoping it turns into the perfect shitstorm of awfulness for them.

Fitting that the Angels are the team that gets fucked out of all this nonsense

88-90 wins isn't going to get the second WC, the AL is super top-heavy and I don't see that changing anytime soon. The last two seasons the second WC had 96 and 97 wins.

Whatever happens, at least we should be more fun to watch this year. As it stands I don't believe we're good enough to get a wildcard spot in an the AL, but I think its close. I wouldn't be surprised if both WCs came from the AL East; the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays are all a tier to multiple tiers better than us right now. Oakland will also be hanging around as always, and the Twins/Indians are good as well. That would change with the addition of someone like Gray/Clevinger/etc., but it feels nothing like that is on the horizon.

What leads you to believe this? Just curious if he actually indicated as such, as it seems like a stretch. Trout will likely be into his 30's before Adell gets promoted, adjusts to major league pitching and meaningfully contributes to the Angels. Trout doesn't strike me as the type to get involved with personnel decisions.

I guess it's kind of a moot point with the rumor that Cleveland was looking at Adell+ for Clevinger. Nobody in their right mind would do that, especially Eppler. Like a few other posters have iterated, I'm willing to wait out the offseason a little bit to see if more opportunities present themselves. Prices are high right now in the wake of all good free agent talent being off the table along with teams looking at the Angels and smelling the desperation for high end SP talent. Look at the garbage that Cleveland got in return for Kluber from Texas (a fringe MLB OF and a reliever) in comparison to what they were asking from us, as an example. Everyone is going to try and pry Adell from us as a starting point as it's become a meme how strapped the Angels are for reliable starters. We do need a top flight starter though, and we need to get one this year. A Trout/Rendon core nearing their 30's forces our hand to a certain extent, even with how good the Astros are. Maybe if these guys were 24-25 we wouldn't be in this spot, but our only option now is a trade and the only chips we have that will realistically bring back a top arm are Marsh/Adell. One of these guys will be moved either individually or as part of a package, it's just a matter of which one. Eppler is generally patient with moves like this, but I think he knows what the expectations are (for both the team and his job stability) and that this starting staff is not going to get it done.

I'd trade anyone not named Adell for Clevinger. If it's a package around Marsh then it would have likely been done yesterday, so I doubt they're interested in that deal. No team is going to trade a 20 year old top 3 position player prospect that's nearly MLB ready for a 29 year old with 3 years of control no matter what their needs are, nor should they. If we move Adell I'm looking for premium ace material or a package including someone with a lot more years of control and some proven MLB success (Soroka, Bieber, Castillo, DeGrom), etc. I don't get the attitude though of not making a move because the Yankees/Astros are better. Who do we have in the pipeline that is projecting to be even close to what Clevinger is now anytime soon? We're going to need a better rotation eventually if we want to seriously contend, whether it's this year, next year, five years from now, whatever. With a core of Trout/Rendon at 28/29 years old, it doesn't really make sense to keep sitting on our hands hoping an ace falls in our lap while these guys move into their 30's. A guy like Clevinger would immediately anchor our staff and solve most of our rotation problems (slots Ohtani down to 2, with Heaney+Bundy+Teheran 3-5 and Canning/Suarez/Barria/Suarez as backfills).

I'd rather move a package based around Marsh for a top 50ish high upside guy who's close to the bigs (if that even exists, I'm not too familiar with other team's prospects). I think Adell has enough top tier potential that unless we're getting a guaranteed, can't miss talent we're going to regret it.

This is what is kind of baffling to me. We haven't produced any top flight pitching in years from our farm system, and there's really none of those types on the horizon either. Every pitcher signed in free agency is going to carry some level of risk, and in our situation (on the cusp of contention, Trout not getting any younger, pitching being our most glaring weakness, etc.) you would assume the front office would be willing to absorb a little more risk to potentially tip the scales from middling team to good team. If Eppler doesn't trade for pitching, this offseason is no question a failure. I love the Rendon signing, and of course team needs are not mutually exclusive. In all likelihood we'll have a top five lineup with a lot of exciting hitters. But we still have a bottom third rotation right now, if not bottom five and if this is what we go into the season with I'm going to be massively disappointed.

I don't think that package will do it, unfortunately. I'd pretty much give up anyone not named Adell/Canning for two years of Kluber. Whether it's Jones, Marsh, Rengifo, etc. Kluber is going to be a hot trade target with all of the tier 1 guys off the free agency board. Sure he's a risky acquisition, but there's no sure thing left anymore unless we go after a primo young stud.

They're just like any other talking heads, they say whatever will get a reaction and fuel fire to their low hanging fruit narrative. The 3B position has been a black hole for years in this org. We just solidified it for the next half decade or longer depending on how Rendon holds up. With some half decent pitching acquisitions, we'll definitely make some noise in the AL.