Grigori

How can anyone say the Angels offense is "on par" with the Rangers when the Angels have scored 32 fewer runs this year, and the Rangers offense is better than at the start of the season?  And the difference between the Rangers 4.35 ERA and Angels 4.59 is significant. The Rangers have already added pitching and are getting Holland and, possibly, Lewis back before long. Darvish, Hamels, Holland, Lewis, Perez and Griffin are a lot for the Rangers to work with next year.
My advice is to simply fill out the Angels roster the next two years as cheaply as possible, get a couple of good drafts, then trade off any players not needed in 2020 for players who can contribute then.  That's how long it will take the Angels to recover from all their mistakes and be a contender again. Get rid of some of these expensive contracts, and save for 2020 or so. This is a rebuild from scratch.
 

I would not call those Astros AAA.  They've gone 13-3 lately. I realize a lot of that was playing the Angels, but they are a good major-league team with a bright future.

One could argue that our injured talent might not be as good as theirs. Heaney and Skaggs are not even proven commodities yet. And, they may never be.

Really odd that Angels fans are moping and whining about injuries. The Rangers have far more injuries and you don't see Rangers fans throwing in the towel. We're playing without our ace (Darvish), number three starting pitcher (Griffin), closer-of-the-future (Kela), two star outfielders (Choo and Hamilton) and our starting catcher (Chirinos). The only difference is our guys on the DL are more talented. Simmons? What's he batting now, .190?  Please... cry me a river.
 

AJ, they put all the OECD countries on a splatter graph, the X axis GDP growth and Y, the percent of GDP that is government spending. The more spending, the less economic growth. It was a 40-year study done during the Clinton administration. I've seen updates, and that still holds true today. There has been more studies done that show the same thing. It is simply a matter of economic FACT that the larger government is, the slow the economic growth is.
 
Yes, Sweden is an outlier.  Norway sometimes is, but not always. Denmark has high taxes and high government spending and very slow economic growth. Denmark fits the overall pattern of how a high spending government wrecks their chances of achieving significant economic growth.
 
In Norway's case, they have tons of oil and gas, get all their electricity from dams on fiords, so don't need the oil and gas. They make huge profits on their oil and gas. That is why they are sometimes an exception to the general rule.
 
So, I don't know what you are talking about. You are clueless, and have no real data to back you up. Big government means slow growth.
 
As far as these billionaires go, countries that make a lot of money have a lot of billionaires. So what?  The poor do better, too. Zimbabwe has few billionaires. Do you want to be like them? We have a lot of billionaires. Our poor are better off than the middle class in most of Europe.
 
 
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First off, this is pure fiction. All you have to do to know it is totally false is go to Forbes list of richest Americans, add up the top 20's wealth and divide it by the trillions of dollars of wealth in this country.  It's a very small percent.
 
Second, China is minting more billionaires at a faster pace than the US.  Their economy is growing at 6-7% per year, too.  We can't even achieve 2% these days with the crushing burden of an oversized and overspending government. America devotes 39% of GDP to government and China only 29% at all levels. They are more capitalist than we are. Tens of millions of Chinese are moving out of the country where they lived in abject poverty into the cities where they are joining the middle class. It's a growing thriving country now, while ours is deteriorating under the thumb of the Obama government and atrocious economic policy designed by Pelosi and Reid. The point is, the creation of billionaires is an adjunct of a successful, vibrant, growing economy. 'If your economy is growing, like China's, billionaires are created, but everyone is benefitting.
 
People like AJ want to envision the world as this stagnant pie of wealth you have to divide up among the people so everyone can eat. That is not how it works. You can make the pie bigger, and billionaires simply by aggregating wealth for investment help with that. No, it's not all "trickle down," but that does not hurt. A lot of it is creativity and hard work. The billionaire is not a drag on the economy, nor does the billionaire deny others opportunity to make money.
 
AJ would do go do read Adam Smith, Bastiat and other great economists than to regurgitate this leftist garbage designed specifically to appeal to the greed and envy of people and make them feel dissatisfied. And, why do they do that? Power. They want to take money belonging to others and use it to increase their political power.
 
That is not what investors in our economy do. They hire people, create jobs, expand the size of the pie, and give people opportunity to improve their own lives and expand the pie themselves without depending upon government... small investors and large investors alike. Every save and investor in our country does way more for America than the greedy politicians in DC selling envy. You can't eat envy. You can eat food you buy with a paying job that produces even more for others.
 
The question is whether you want a job and create your own goals and opportunity, or do you want to be dependent on the idiots in Washington, DC, to make your life decisions? Economic freedom or economic dependence?
 
I choose freedom.

First off, this is pure fiction. All you have to do to know it is totally false is go to Forbes list of richest Americans, add up the top 20's wealth and divide it by the trillions of dollars of wealth in this country.  It's a very small percent.
 
Second, China is minting more billionaires at a faster pace than the US.  Their economy is growing at 6-7% per year, too.  We can't even achieve 2% these days with the crushing burden of an oversized and overspending government. America devotes 39% of GDP to government and China only 29% at all levels. They are more capitalist than we are. Tens of millions of Chinese are moving out of the country where they lived in abject poverty into the cities where they are joining the middle class. It's a growing thriving country now, while ours is deteriorating under the thumb of the Obama government and atrocious economic policy designed by Pelosi and Reid. The point is, the creation of billionaires is an adjunct of a successful, vibrant, growing economy. 'If your economy is growing, like China's, billionaires are created, but everyone is benefitting.
 
People like AJ want to envision the world as this stagnant pie of wealth you have to divide up among the people so everyone can eat. That is not how it works. You can make the pie bigger, and billionaires simply by aggregating wealth for investment help with that. No, it's not all "trickle down," but that does not hurt. A lot of it is creativity and hard work. The billionaire is not a drag on the economy, nor does the billionaire deny others opportunity to make money.
 
AJ would do go do read Adam Smith, Bastiat and other great economists than to regurgitate this leftist garbage designed specifically to appeal to the greed and envy of people and make them feel dissatisfied. And, why do they do that? Power. They want to take money belonging to others and use it to increase their political power.
 
That is not what investors in our economy do. They hire people, create jobs, expand the size of the pie, and give people opportunity to improve their own lives and expand the pie themselves without depending upon government... small investors and large investors alike. Every save and investor in our country does way more for America than the greedy politicians in DC selling envy. You can't eat envy. You can eat food you buy with a paying job that produces even more for others.
 
The question is whether you want a job and create your own goals and opportunity, or do you want to be dependent on the idiots in Washington, DC, to make your life decisions? Economic freedom or economic dependence?
 
I choose freedom.

First off, this is pure fiction. All you have to do to know it is totally false is go to Forbes list of richest Americans, add up the top 20's wealth and divide it by the trillions of dollars of wealth in this country.  It's a very small percent.
 
Second, China is minting more billionaires at a faster pace than the US.  Their economy is growing at 6-7% per year, too.  We can't even achieve 2% these days with the crushing burden of an oversized and overspending government. America devotes 39% of GDP to government and China only 29% at all levels. They are more capitalist than we are. Tens of millions of Chinese are moving out of the country where they lived in abject poverty into the cities where they are joining the middle class. It's a growing thriving country now, while ours is deteriorating under the thumb of the Obama government and atrocious economic policy designed by Pelosi and Reid. The point is, the creation of billionaires is an adjunct of a successful, vibrant, growing economy. 'If your economy is growing, like China's, billionaires are created, but everyone is benefitting.
 
People like AJ want to envision the world as this stagnant pie of wealth you have to divide up among the people so everyone can eat. That is not how it works. You can make the pie bigger, and billionaires simply by aggregating wealth for investment help with that. No, it's not all "trickle down," but that does not hurt. A lot of it is creativity and hard work. The billionaire is not a drag on the economy, nor does the billionaire deny others opportunity to make money.
 
AJ would do go do read Adam Smith, Bastiat and other great economists than to regurgitate this leftist garbage designed specifically to appeal to the greed and envy of people and make them feel dissatisfied. And, why do they do that? Power. They want to take money belonging to others and use it to increase their political power.
 
That is not what investors in our economy do. They hire people, create jobs, expand the size of the pie, and give people opportunity to improve their own lives and expand the pie themselves without depending upon government... small investors and large investors alike. Every save and investor in our country does way more for America than the greedy politicians in DC selling envy. You can't eat envy. You can eat food you buy with a paying job that produces even more for others.
 
The question is whether you want a job and create your own goals and opportunity, or do you want to be dependent on the idiots in Washington, DC, to make your life decisions? Economic freedom or economic dependence?
 
I choose freedom.

As a Rangers fan I'm optimistic about the Angels.

Gutsy move for them to report.  With Pujols out for the season, you'd think they might give up.  I can't see the Angels finishing higher than last place, if that.

Great post, AJ.  If the teams with sustained success have something in common I think it is that they address every aspect of building a great team... scouting, player development, trades, free agency, coaching, international signings and so on. To be so good in all those aspects, they have to have great organizations from the bottom all the way to the top. 
 
Something they all seem to do is make course corrections during the season, something the Giants have been successful at doing. They always seem to have the resources to make those corrections.
Because they have an "all-of-the-above" approach, if one thing goes wrong, something else always seems to go right to make up for it.
 
I think the Angels problem has been to spend a lot on free agency with little emphasis on player development. As a consequence when a weakness arises they can only drain an already weak farm system or spend more money.  There is no pipeline of good players coming up that helps them keep costs under control.  It's pretty simple, really. 
 
Scott Servais was trying to fix all that, but about the time he and Dipoto were getting the ball rolling, they were chased away.  That's a real problem--no long-term outlook, little organizational consistency and ownership commitment to sustainability. Maybe the groundwork Servais laid to get their Latin America efforts back on track will help--that is, if they don't gut those efforts.  

He's been a real adventure out there, hasn't he? 
 
It's either a no-hit left-fielder like Stubbs or a no-field left-fielder in Napoli for the Rangers right now.  Well... Gallo, but he strikes out a lot. A whole lot.  And he's not a very good outfielder, anyway, just better than Napoli.  So, go with Stubbs and pinch hit for him with Napoli once, or give Napoli three at-bats to start the game and use Stubbs as the defensive replacement? There are some other options on the bench, but they aren't any better, really.   Venable, Strausborger...Hamilton is still hobbling around and "hopes" he can bat soon without requiring a pinch-runner. Fielding is probably out of the question for Hamilton after having his knee cleaned up.
 
I think the Rangers are just trying to get on the board early and hope the ball does not go towards Napoli.  It's a very nice batting lineup now with him in it. 

We'll probably finish with about 83 wins. 
 
Meanwhile, the AL West goes head to head between the Astros and Rangers. Then on the final day of the season, Hamilton hits the division winning HR against the Angels. 

If your not including the Rangers in the race ... then you're just as bad as ESPN.

For a Ranger fan, this is one of my favorite Angelswin threads... Angel fans on the brink of tears, giving up on their team, front office drama, thread drama, Brokeback Mountain quotes... gotta love it. Here, have a Kleenex. Wipe your tears. See if your team can win any games against my Rangers this week. 

I'm not sure I can take it any more of reading this thread, Troll Daddy.  I think the funniest line was "We had a chance to build something lasting and special."  Boo-hoo.
 
Second most hilarious had to be the Brokeback Mountain quote that was soooooo emo, then we had this latest one: "We bitch because we care." LOL. Really? Is that why?
 
I mean, c'mon, you lost your GM, not your boyfriends.  Go get your nails done or something and forget about it.       

For a Ranger fan, this is one of my favorite Angelswin threads... Angel fans on the brink of tears, giving up on their team, front office drama, thread drama, Brokeback Mountain quotes... gotta love it. Here, have a Kleenex. Wipe your tears. See if your team can win any games against my Rangers this week. 

At least Stoneman and Scioscia are on the same page.
 
 

 

If anyone thinks this was about MS's unwillingness to use advanced metrics then the big picture has been missed.  
 
I actually think MS will use certain metrics and it's clear he's implemented some of this into his style.  
 
This was about the fact that Dipoto wanted to run the show and he was handcuffed in several directions.  He even said that he wasn't able to help the club the way he wanted to.  
 
his budget was pulled out from under him by the pujols and hamilton signings
he was forced to use a pre-existing manager and coaching staff
his farm director wasn't of his choosing
he tried to provide data to the team to help them win and it wasn't implemented to his liking
 
so every little thing he did was a battle.  he was constantly forced to compromise the way he wanted to do things.  
 
Not only did that wear on him (clearly), but it undermined his authority and bred a lack of respect and trust for what he was trying to do.  It was an accumulation of headaches that shouldn't have been.  He was constantly asking permission to do things he shouldn't have needed to.  
 
When your owner effectively brings in big named players
and your manager gets to pick and choose the which of your ideas he wants to implement 
and you have to ask supposed subordinates if its ok to do certain things
 
then who are the guys on the field accountable to?  
 
this organization set him up to not receive the respect he was entitled to based on his position.  
 
and when he held a meeting with his coaches and manager indicating 'this is how I want things done' he got inappropriate resistance from someone who should have been keeping their mouth shut for fear of losing their job but that persons job wasn't accountable to Jerry. 
and when he held another meeting with the players indicating 'this is how I want things done' he got inappropriate backlash from someone because that someone is more accountable to the owner and manager than the gm.  
 
and like that.....he's gone.  

I wonder how long he can pitch under water holding his breath like that.

I wonder how long he can pitch under water holding his breath like that.

ESPN's new pages is just another example of adding a lot of glitz where it's not really needed or wanted.  I like simple pages that load fast, like Drudge Report and Baseball Reference.  So do most people.  Google became popular with its single line first page back when AltaVista was a better search engine. Web designers are always shooting themselves in the foot trying to be too clever.  

ESPN's new pages is just another example of adding a lot of glitz where it's not really needed or wanted.  I like simple pages that load fast, like Drudge Report and Baseball Reference.  So do most people.  Google became popular with its single line first page back when AltaVista was a better search engine. Web designers are always shooting themselves in the foot trying to be too clever.  

ESPN's new pages is just another example of adding a lot of glitz where it's not really needed or wanted.  I like simple pages that load fast, like Drudge Report and Baseball Reference.  So do most people.  Google became popular with its single line first page back when AltaVista was a better search engine. Web designers are always shooting themselves in the foot trying to be too clever.  

ESPN's new pages is just another example of adding a lot of glitz where it's not really needed or wanted.  I like simple pages that load fast, like Drudge Report and Baseball Reference.  So do most people.  Google became popular with its single line first page back when AltaVista was a better search engine. Web designers are always shooting themselves in the foot trying to be too clever.