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I had been harsh on Dexter Fowler multiple times, but I gotta give him A TON of respect. He gave it his full effort running trying to beat out a ground ball to the shortstop. To see a guy that determined get injured on the same play is just brutal. Hopefully he's OK and it's nothing too serious, but it's really scary to see a guy get carted off the field. Best wishes to Dexter.

Yeah. That especially seemed to be a factor in getting Tamin and Watson to join the Angels. I'd also imagine it was a factor in getting the guys he previously worked with, whether it was Haynes, Parker, etc.

Also, does anyone know whether the guys on the taxi squad are allowed to be in the dugout during games?

Is Peña currently traveling with the team? Or would Peña have to be on the taxi squad in order to be allowed to travel with the team? @Jeff Fletcher

FYI, I believe that Bard is already on the 60-day IL.

From what I recall, Eppler's the main people Eppler brought in to work with him when he was hired were Jonathan Strangio, Steve Martone, and Eric Chavez. For whatever it's worth, I don't believe that any of those 3 are currently employed by a major league baseball team. When they were brought in, Martone never had experience working above Director of Pro Scouting, Strangio never had experience working above Manager, Major League Operations, and Chavez was only a couple years removed from playing and had very little front office experience. Tamin, Watson, and Montgomery ha

Whenever the Angels have signed a big free agent, it appears that Arte has been heavily involved. While Eppler may be the one who handles all the official work, Arte is the one who signs off on the move and writing of the check.

I mean there's no way to quantify a front office members' value to a team, but the people Minasian have brought in: a) came from high level positions in other organizations, and... b) have gotten praise from people around baseball, be it reporters or others. A person has to be good at their job in order to get promoted, so people who are further up in an organization are presumably better at their job. Just looking at where some of the guys Minasian brought in came from: - Alex Tamin: former Braves Assistant GM and Dodgers Director, Baseball Operations.

I'm interested to see how Canning looks, especially since he's had so much time in-between starts. That could be a good thing or a bad thing.

I'd also add that Eppler did a horrible job at building up a front office staff. Now I am sure he was limited by Arte to a certain extent, but Minasian has been able to bring in a lot of quality front office members despite presumed limitations by Arte.

Full credit to Eppler for: - Simmons. - Ohtani. - Trout extension. - Bundy. - Drafting good athletes that are trending in the right direction. I'd say Arte was the driving force behind signing Rendon and bringing in Maddon. I say that with 100% confidence for Maddon and pretty good confidence with Rendon. Eppler deserves a lot of credit for the things he did right, but he also did many bad things (which other people have already mentioned), that negates some of that credit. Ultimately, it comes back to results. He inherited an 85 win team a

not sure if anyone would know this, but I'll just throw it out there: Is the Matt Spring listed in the Angels Media Guide as a Baseball Operations Analyst the same Matt Spring who has been a minor league coach with the Angels over the past few seasons? I'd assume so since Matt Spring was not announced as a coach at any of the Angels minor league affiliates, but maybe there's another Matt Spring. After all, there are two Chad Tracy's: one who played in the majors for the Angels and one who is the Angels current MiLB Field Coordinator.

True. Like you said, hopefully Maddon has enough good options that it doesn't become too much of a concern. It seems like the Angels do have more guys who are capable of being good options this year than they did last year though.

Yeah. Seeing the fight they have is great, but they can't rely on having that all season. Sooner or later, they need to get out to a lead early and cruise to a victory. I'd imagine it's just a product of starting off against 2 really good teams. Against really good teams, it's gonna be closer and you aren't gonna have many games where you cruise to a victory. So it's good to see their late-inning fight in those games.

This is something that I actually trust Maddon on very much. Last year, you could see that he figured out the best way to use his bullpen after about a month into the season. In the beginning of the season, he did seem to be putting guys in odd roles but it eventually sorted itself out. So we may just have to ride some bumpy storms and waves with the bullpen for the first month, but hopefully it should settle down for the remainder of the season after that.