redoctober2002

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. It's pretty crazy to think that the most productive year the Angels might get out of Rendon will be the Covid year where he put up 2.2 bWAR.

Jordan Hicks has been good as well in his transition to starting.

It genuinely baffled me seeing people get upset that the Angels managed to control themselves this off season.

So one of the first contracts I looked up was Degrom's and he has a similar clause where if he misses 130 consecutive season days or 186 days in a service period the Rangers have a conditional option in 28. That option year is much more convulated though and is based on other factors like IP during the contract and medical evaluations. It seems like teams are going to be more likely to add these clauses to pitchers that have a history as a sort of insurance policy when there's enough red flags.

Is it? I'd have to go research it but I can't think of too many contracts off the top of my head that had an option like that when the deal was announced.

Was about to post this same thing. I can't think of too many players with injury options in their contracts. I think a big part of it is that the rotation has been a cluster for years now. It's hard to have a good bullpen when you constantly have to bring relievers in early in the game.

Moniak has shown a huge improvement so far. His swing % outside of the zone has dropped about 20 points compared to last year. Adell is pretty much the poster child of what happens when you draft a guy with great tools but don't have the development system to refine those tools to make a great ballplayer. If anything, this is season to really try to refine everything and hope he figures it out with the help of MLB resources and coaching.

According to baseball savant he's leading the league in average exit velocity at 100.6 with the next closest being Bobby Whitt Jr at 97.6.

Exactly. He's only 22 so power will develop naturally. Last year he sprayed the ball over the field pretty equally. That contrasts to this year where he's pulling the ball 60% of the time. Hopefully he's able to recapture what he did last year.

So it's not quite the same splits, but I went to Fangraphs and created a splits leaderboard with the following conditions: Dates: 3-1-2016 to present Inning: 8, 9, or Extras Leverage Index: High, so LI of 2 or greater. Chart for reference of Leverage Indexes Minimum of 50 plate appearances This left a total of 360 qualifying players. Trout ended up ranking 43rd in wRC+ with a value of 144 (44 percent better than average). The top player was Justin Smoak with a wRC+ of 215 followed by Kyle Tucker at 200. Some interesting names and their rankings: Name wRC+ Rank Bryce Harper 183 6 Aaron Judge 166 11 Juan Soto 163 13 Shohei Ohtani 137 55 Mookie Betts 130 72 Kyle Schwarber 17 351 Link for reference.

I question if that's still relevant in the modern game. From what I remember, the data set used to prove this was from 1952-2004. Since then, there has been a much greater emphasis on putting guys who can get on base in those first two spots rather than, fast guy hits leadoff and guy who can bunt bats second. The only team I can think of that batted their best hitter second consistently in recent years were the Yankees and even now they have Judge batting 3rd this year.

I figured if the Angels were going to get shafted by the Stephenson signing it would be due to regression from him not being on the Rays anymore. He had an elbow injury to start the season last year so it wouldn't surprise me if this ends up being kinda nasty.

What was the ump going on about? Tuned in at the tail end of it.

Canning is just sucking right now and Sandoval has had issues for at least the past two seasons. Before Sandoval it was Andrew Heaney that would be a mental case on the mound and he's from Oklahoma. So no I don't think it's an OC native issue.

Luckily, I had other things going on so had to miss this one. Only real positives out of this one is that Ward continues to mash and Rendon is still hitting (finally got the BA above the Mendoza line). Also, why is O'Hoppe still batting 8th? Is this some old school lineup thing where you just slot your catcher in at 8 or what?

This is where it starts. The best kids are playing travel ball year round and so by the time they get to that level they already have a ton of hard innings on their arm. Add in once you get to a high level pitching labs and coaches are instructing how to push your body to the limit at max effort every pitch and it's no wonder they break down. These things were being brought up years ago, but since so many are bought into the status quo nothing was done about it. Last time this was a discussion it was over the recent ban of sticky stuff. Now it's the pitch clock. In a year or two when this happens again they'll probably blame something else.

It's 3/39 but still, this was a pretty good deal considering the pitching market that year. I think the intention was to provide some stability in the middle, or worst case, back end of a 6 man rotation while providing some veteran leadership in an otherwise young rotation. That next tier of guys above him were going for $20M+ AAV, and the top tier guys going for over $30M AAV so $13M is quite a bargain. I would say if Anderson has an ERA around 4-4.5 and pitches 150+ innings the next two seasons I would feel that contract was a good deal with all said and done.

In his career, Trout has a 173wRC+ with runners in scoring position. So pretty dang good.

Truth be told, I don't think anyone is buying the pitch clock argument. Everything I've seen is it's usually a combination of max effort every pitch and year round travel ball while growing up. This trend has been going on for what, 7 years now (when did The Arm get published)? Seems like every year there's a stretch where a bunch of top tier pitchers get hurt and we have this same discussion then nothing changes.

Lame. That long 7th probably shortened the leash. Really like what I'm seeing from Anderson so far though.

Anderson at 88 pitches through 7. Love the efficiency. What are the odds they let him go 9 if he has a quick 8th?

Anderson dealing right now.

Phase two is when we ask "When's he going to stop."

Love it. Get a lead and the pitcher has a quick inning. Feels like there haven't been too many of those lately.

4 straight games with a hit from Rendon now.