Ariamus

And another thing, that's probably one less potential landing place for Bauer.

I for one am thankful for this. I have long maintained that giving Strohman a big contract will have proved to be a mistake. So I'm glad the Angels aren't the ones who get to make that mistake.

"Angels won't spend as much as you think". In other breaking news, water is wet.

Also, Stroman will be a bust as a high-price free agent acquisition.

If it's all the same to you, I'll forget about Bauer the moment he officially signs with another club.

no

Cleveland will probably want too much for the Halos to make a deal. And if the cost is gutting the farm system, then I'd rather they did that for front-line pitching than another bat. Lindor is a fantastic player but I'd rather they offered Simmons a three-year, $45 million deal to shore up the middle of the infield for the next handful of years and use their big bullets to get pitchers.

Mr Morgan is the sixth inductee of the Baseball Hall of Fame to die this year and the fifth in five weeks.

Don Mattingly and Derek Jeter...there, I'm done. Do I get a prize?

The Reds in the '70s won a lot of games with #3 starters (and worse) Yes, but they had four Hall of Famers on the club: Bench, Rose, Morgan, and Perez. And they had three other perennial all-stars as well: Concepcion, Foster, and Griffey. Not counting Pujols, who is a husk of what he was, we have one certain Hall of Famer and one other player we can claim the "perennial all-star" label for at this time. So yeah...that.

I realize it's not realistic but it would be really good if the Halos could somehow convince Albert to bow out gracefully. They'd still pay him, mind you so he wouldn't lose an cash out of it. But at least he wouldn't be taking the place of someone who could factor into the future of the club. Besides, what does he have left to play for? He's fifth (third if you don't count cheaters) all-time in homers but he's not going to move up beyond that. 700 is also out of the question now. And there are no other significant milestones left that he can reach. As for the matter of a "farewell tour", his luck is rotten but that's not going to be happen either. It's a fair bet that a significant portion of 2021 will be played without fans in the seats and a stone-cold certainty that no parks will have full occupancy allowed for most of the season if not all of it. So it sucks for him but the end of his career just so happens to coincide with a global health crisis. Like I said, rotten luck...

How would I proceed? I'd eat it with Pujols' contract and the luxury tax for the single year and spend $65 million instead to get Bauer, Realmuto, and an elite reliever.

I'd love to see Ohtani succeed as a two-way player but I'm concerned he ever will. I do think they should give him another shot in spring training to be a pitcher but I have my doubts. His velocity issues in the handful of starts he made this year are a cause for concern. An arm injury immediately following a return from Tommy John surgery is much more so. I wonder if the best thing might be to give him a first-baseman's or corner outfielder's glove and turn him into a full-time position player.

2017 and 2019 he was so much better than you are giving him credit for. I'm not giving him credit for 2017 or 2019...I'm giving him credit for what he is now. I live in Jersey so I see a lot of the Blue Jays as the play the Yankees 19 times a year. I also see a lot of the Mets. And my observations compel me to conclude that some Halos fans' regard for the guy is woefully misguided. Stroman had a very good 2017; 145 ERA+ and 5.2 bWAR. It was a bonafide all-star season. His 2019 (132 & 3.2) was a borderline all-star season and he actually got picked for the game. But beyond these two seasons, he's been average at best. Also, he's only topped 200 IP twice in his career and the last time was '17. He'll be 30 early into the 2021 season so there's no reason to believe his better days are ahead of him rather than behind. Don't get me wrong...Stroman is probably still as good and perhaps better than anyone the Angels currently have. But I fear he's going to get overpaid and he is, at best, a middle of the rotation starter. If the Angels are going to overpay for a starting pitcher, how about they do so with Bauer? Oh, and one more thing...I would have no problem with the club signing Stroman. As long as they also sign Bauer.

Stroman is a #3 starter, at best...we already have a whole bunch of those guys.

My picks, for what they're worth: AL MVP - I think it should be LeMahieu but Cleveland's Ramirez is probably going to win it. NL MVP - Betts will win it in a walk and deservedly so. AL Cy Young - Bieber and he'll probably be unanimous. NL Cy Young - Bauer will probably win it because of the so-called narrative vote but I'd vote for Atlanta's Fried and Phillies' Wheeler over Bauer. AL RotY - It'll probably be Seattle's Lewis and it should be. NL RotY - I'm not keen on giving big awards to relievers but I recognize that Devin Williams will probably get it though my vote would be for Gonsolin. AL Manager - I has to be Tampa's Kevin Cash but Oakland's Bob Melvin will get a lot of votes too. NL Manager - My vote is with Mattingly and Miami but I suspect the Padres' meteoric rise will swing the vote Tingler's way.

No.

This is not the Dave Dombrowski way. If he is the guy, one should not expect this. His way is to mine the farm system for assets to use in acquiring established players and so pay for established players through free agency. DD's way worked in Miami when Wayne Huizenga let him spend stoopid money for free agents and they won a World Series. It didn't work in Detroit after that. Even though they were hugely successful for the better part of his tenure there, they fell short of winning it all and entered a period of destitution the last few years that's even worse than the Angels' own struggles. And, while he did win a title in Boston, he walked into a ready-made winner with a plethora of talented youngsters and he really didn't have to do much to crack the World Series code. So we can't expect he'll change if he does wind up being the guy. Now, it's possible that he's not the guy but I just don't see it. Moreno's hired three noobs in a row in Reagins, Dipoto, and Eppler. I can't see him going to that well one more time, especially with an old-school guy with a lot of credibility the likes of LaRussa whispering in his ear.

Exactly this is what scares me about Dombrowski. Winning is hard...extremely hard. Even when you have a rock-solid organization that's packed to the gills with talent at all levels, winning it all is hardly guaranteed. For proof, we need look no further than the club 30 miles or so up the 5. We know DD's modus operandi. He's going to trade away youth to bring in impact players to try and build a "win now" team around Trout, Rendon, and Maddon. He may succeed but chances are that he will not because, as I already said, winning is very hard. The, five years from now, he'll be fired, Trout's career will be over, and we'll all still be reminiscing about the halcyon days of 2002.

Yes, and for this reason alone, firing Eppler is justifiable... ...and this is the biggest reason the Angels have had five losing years in a row. On this, you are wrong...sorry to say it. The farm system is not marginally improved. It is GREATLY improved. It is hard to calculate the depths of the bottomless pit that was the Halos' farm system in 2015. At that time, the Angels did not have a single player in the top 100 prospects in baseball and that had never happened before. Their highest ranked prospect then was Sean Newcombe and he was gone a month or so into Eppler's tenure. Keith Law famously said that it was not only the worst farm system at the time, it was arguably the worst farm system of all time. It's not great right now; 16th according to Baseball America. But that's still huge improvement from where it was five years ago. I'm generally in the camp that Eppler is a pretty sharp guy who was hamstrung by an intrusive owner who also limited him financially for the first three years of his tenure. But I think that saying he was average with the Halos is probably a little generous. Definitely below average...

Yeah, but Rocker is going to the Pirates...which I guess means he gets traded to whatever is the up and coming contender round about 2027 and then signs with the Yankees for a bazillion dollars ahead of the 2029 season.

I think Eppler's going to be busy in the front office of some other MLB club in 2021. It won't shock me at all if he gets another high-profile job right away and it would only mildly surprise me if he actually got another GM job right away.

When Keith Law posts something positive about us I tend to listen. The reason for that is he is the one that once called us the worst farm he had ever seen. Just read in Ken Rosenthal's The Athletic piece on the firing that Baseball America has us at 16th.

MLB.com and Bleacher report?? What did the real sources have to say? Keith Law had us in the mid to high-teens in the Spring but I can't seem to find his post-draft rankings, if any. Also, I don't subscribe to Baseball America.

MLB.com had us 21st after the amateur draft. And Bleacher-Report had us 24th at the same time and 23rd after the trade deadline. So yeah, we're kind of still in the bottom 10. Eppler made improvements but not nearly enough.