redoctober2002

3 minutes ago, jsnpritchett said:

Even with Joyce's struggles at Rocket City, I do think he'll be up by July, if not sooner.

My guess is that they'll keep sending Estevez out there as the closer for as long as they can, if for no other reason than to hope he rights himself and retains some semblance of trade value.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I have a feeling the perception of his value might be diminished if he's moved out of the closer role, even if he pitches a little better in another role.  I know that's illogical, but still have a feeling it probably has some bearing on their decision.

I've started to think the opposite, where if you move someone else to the closer role and they do well that could really up there value. It comes down to whether you think the odds are better that Estevez can turn it around or one of the other relievers in the bullpen pitches well in the closer role. I'm not sure how easily Estevez can get his value back considering his struggles the second half of last year.

28 minutes ago, BTH said:

I wouldn't be surprised if once Terry Smith retires, the Angels just have the TV broadcast simulcasted to the radio.

It's a shame that this seems to be the direction teams are taking. Baseball is the perfect sport for radio and when you're listening in to a TV broadcast you just miss certain details cause you don't have the visuals.

28 minutes ago, CaliAngel said:

Man I love listening to that dude. 

I enjoy listening to the radio broadcasts when I'm out doing yardwork, or chores around the house.

Probably not anymore because we suck...but what's all this talk about pumping in crowd noises?

Is this at the actual game like @AngelsLakersFan mentioned, or is it happening only on the radio broadcasts?

I don't recall anything feeling off with the crowd noise during the TV feeds.

Pretty sure it's during radio broadcasts when the team is away. Since the radio team doesn't actually travel with the team they have a sound guy just pump sound effects into the broadcast to simulate stadium noise.

It's ridiculous when you think about it, cause you basically have two guys watching TV and then explaining to you what they see on TV. If they're away, I typically just listen to the home town broadcast. This gives the added benefit of getting to know the other team/players a bit better plus some of the teams have some really good radio personalities.

1 minute ago, No Roles said:

how many 2 out hrs has this club given up this year...such a back breaker

11 not including tonight which is tied for 5th most in the league. White Sox lead with 18.

Is Sano good enough to eat a couple innings tonight?

Adell giveth Adell taketh away.

Atta boy Adell

Lol... New York felt bad and considers this a make up call for the other day.

1 minute ago, No Roles said:

I wonder if the angels will win another series this year?

They will in September. They'll be on pace for a top 5 pick, go on hot streak and end up with the 10-12 range.

Very tight zone apparently.

2 hours ago, Inside Pitch said:

He's had all of two injuries in his life, unfortunately both those injuries require long rehabs

I would push back a bit on this, because if your continually having setbacks you due to an inability to get healthy you could consider that setback an injury despite it not showing up in the transaction report. Also last year, one of his setbacks was due to his back even though he was rehabbing from shoulder surgery.  I would consider that a different injury.

2 hours ago, Inside Pitch said:

But I'm glad you'd rather have a crappy pitcher in AAA than someone with actual talent.

Hey, as long as your happy, I'm happy. On a serious note, my point was that having a guy who can pitch 2-3 innings in blowouts whenever needed or make a spot start on demand can be more valuable than a guy who's has showed an inability to stay healthy for any considerable amount of time in a 7 year career.

2 hours ago, Inside Pitch said:

Meanwhile the team that was playing in the World Series had no second thoughts about claiming him.

He's not even on their 40 man so it's not like they're that high on them. Also as if to almost prove a point, the Reno Aces just placed him on the 7-day DL. I can't find any details yet but his transaction log on MILB.com shows the move. Page here: https://www.mlb.com/player/chris-rodriguez-669735

8 hours ago, Inside Pitch said:

He's been hurt since 5th grade.  Meanwhile you know who's made 7 appearances throwing 11.2 IP while putting up a 1.54 ERA at altitude?  Chris Rodriguez.  Glad they kept Herget over him.

Let's wait and see if Rodriguez is still pitching in June or July before we start having any remorse on that. His issue has never been talent, but more of how long his body holds up. I'd rather have a crap pitcher in AAA that can eat innings over one who's going to be good for two months and then be unavailable for like a year and a half. 

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.

18 hours ago, jsnpritchett said:

He's at it again. 7 IP tonight, 1 ER, 3 H, 2 BB, 6K. Now has a 0.92 WHIP and a 0.72 ERA in 25 IP.

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

2 hours ago, Inside Pitch said:

And people were upset the Angels didn't throw a boatload of money and a draft pick to get him?

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

1 hour ago, Stradling said:

I guess I better phrase would have been it isn’t unheard of to include options like this. Either way it isn’t anything new or it isn’t in the contract because he was damaged goods. Common sense tells you that you aren’t giving $33 million to a guy who you think has an elbow injury. 

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.

7 hours ago, Stradling said:

It’s fairly common to have these types of stipulations in contracts these days.

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.

7 minutes ago, Ron Mexico said:

So they had to have known something was wrong for this to be in his contract

Was about to post this same thing. I can't think of too many players with injury options in their contracts.

11 minutes ago, jsnpritchett said:

It's still amazing to me that the bullpen is seemingly a problem every single year.  At some point, it seems like just sheer dumb luck would give them a good year overall, but, nope, not recently.

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.

2 hours ago, ThisismineScios said:

Moniak you can see starting to make better swing decisions.

Moniak has shown a huge improvement so far. His swing % outside of the zone has dropped about 20 points compared to last year.

2 hours ago, ThisismineScios said:

He continues to be puzzling in his ability to crush the ball, show incredible speed...and then make a really awful play that hurts the team. 

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.

29 minutes ago, totdprods said:

Hasn’t translated to HRs yet but he’s hitting the bar insanely hard (maybe best in baseball?) and not chasing

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.

6 hours ago, Angelsjunky said:

He needs to focus on making contact and getting on base, and not worry about hitting for power. 

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.

28 minutes ago, ettin said:

I should clarify that I should have used the word "statistically" instead of "traditionally". It has statistically been proven to be a poor run-producing spot in the order. You normally want to place a good power hitting, higher-strikeout player in that spot with the ability to take a walk when able, ideally.

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.