Jeremiah

I don’t get the animosity. I imagine everyone here is pretty consistently looking for better opportunities for themselves within their respective industries. You’d be foolish not to. Why should pro athletes be any different? They can be traded at any time, and have no real control over their career for the first six years of MLB service time. The Angels had six years to get it together, to prove that they are a top-notch organization, and they didn’t. That’s on the team. There is no one here that would have said no to that deal from an organization that is consistently in contention.

Verlander starting the season on the IL with shoulder soreness. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39658632/astros-justin-verlander-begin-season-injured-list

That seems likely, but let’s not think for a moment that Eppler was the only one doing it.

Jackie Robinson was an athletic savant. He played baseball, basketball, track, and football in college. In football, he played QB and safety. Then he went and had a Hall of Fame career in baseball. Just ridiculous.

There is a lot that would need to happen before expansion can be considered. Manfred has said he’s stepping down in ‘29 when his contract is up, and that between now and then he didn’t foresee any expansion decisions to be made before then. Some of this also hinges on the resolution of the A’s situation. The city of Oakland has a lot of leverage here because the A’s have no home after the ‘24 season, and the schedule for the ‘25 season needs to be set by July. Well, the A’s don’t want to forego $70/year by leaving the Bay Are now and go play in a MiLB park for four seasons. The city can ask for the Moon right now in exchange for keeping the zombie A’s around: an expansion team that keeps the name, colors, and history of the A’s, demand that MLB force Fisher sell to someone like Joe Lacob then give Fisher an expansion team in Vegas. There could be a new team in Vegas or Oakland before any of these other sites are considered. It’s a fascinating mess right now.

I’ve never understood why people hate Boras so specifically, and agents in general. Most players who get through the initial six-years of team control and artificial limits on their earning potential, if they’re lucky, will have one shot at a big FA contract. Why shouldn’t they be able to make the most of that? Yes, they make a ton to play a game. The industry itself is also making a mind-boggling amount of money. They make that money because of the talent on the field. None of us are tuning in to see Arte and Carpino discuss marketing strategies, or to hear Perry talk about launch angles and spin rates. We want to see baseball. Those guys are the draw. Those guys should get paid commensurate with that.

It’s a bummer to see Arvy go down again. Apparently it’s week-to-week. It wasn’t an impact injury, so I wouldn’t have any idea. It does potentially make the trade deadline more important. They may need goalie depth, and now they may need to do something to cover Arvy’s absence. They’re a bit up against that cap, but they may need some more depth with Arvidsson out for an indefinite time.

That was one of the main reasons Ron Washington went to Houston to visit Rendon after he was brought on to manage. He wanted to be sure Rendon was committed to getting his body right for the season. I imagine he wouldn’t have done that if these perceptions of Rendon weren’t widely held. As I recall, Rendon disagreed with the team’s assessment of his injury and treatment last season as well.

Oh, that is 100% what would be preferred here. The Knights have been wholly embraced from the jump, and being winners right away didn’t hurt. The Raiders have had a bit more of a lukewarm warm success. It’s the NFL, so it’ll always do well, but I still see plenty of gear from other teams worn by the locals, and plenty of the folks I work with go to the games to root for the other team. There seems to be almost no interest in the A’s moving here, especially now that Adam Silver has talked about an expansion NBA team here.

Or even saves for that matter…

RBI and pitcher wins are pretty useless at telling us anything of value.

Okay! Good road trip overall. That effort in the BUF game was inexcusable, but they picked up three wins against quality teams. I hope they’re getting their early season energy back.

That would seem to be a bigger impediment to building a strong baseball ops department than anything else. Everyone has to be on the same page, from ownership to the clubhouse. Fixing this would improve the team more substantially than any FA can. Shiny start players can mask issues like this, but they don’t fix them.

Yup, and the Chiefs said they were preparing for that since training camp, while Shanahan said they didn’t even have a meeting about it during SB week. Players, including their Harvard man Kyle Juszczyk, were quoted after the game saying they didn’t know the rule. Juszczyk even said it didn’t matter that they didn’t know the rule. The hell it didn’t!

Didn’t the Chiefs just win the Super Bowl while the Niners didn’t even know about the two-year-old overtime rule? Elite athletes tend to be very focused individuals.

I loved the 80’s style of play. I loved the emphasis on speed and defense. It may not have been the most efficient way to play, but it was easily the most entertaining to watch. I miss that kind of baseball.

Same. And I’m super excited to go out and buy more Angels gear now….

That was great… They come out of the break to defeat a really good EDM team, then follow that up by completely crapping the bed against mediocre BUF, doing the same things that got them into this trouble in January. They really should have looked outside the organization for a new voice, but I’m sure ownership didn’t want to pay premium rates to two coaches at the same time…

If anyone is interested, a reporter named Brodie Brazil is covering this story pretty comprehensively on YouTube. He works for NBC Sports Bat Area. It’s been a pretty interesting saga. The locals here are lukewarm at best on the A’s maybe moving here. I feel like once our Mayor said they should stay in Oakland, that began to really kill Fisher’s leverage. They have nowhere to go until 2028 at the earliest. MLB doesn’t want them moving place to place until then. No one else has a viable stadium. Plus if they leave Oakland, they lose $70M/year in RSN money while they play in minor league ballparks. Fisher doesn’t want to lose that.

Growing up, my favorite Angels player was Devon White. I was bummed when they traded him for Junior Felix, who was pretty terrible with the Angels. Devo then went on to play for 11 more seasons.

It’s lucky that they banked so many points earlier. It seems losing Copley and Arvidsson really hurt them. They bet on lowering opponents shots on goal to help mask the weak goaltending. It hasn’t worked out Hopefully, Arvidsson will be back before much longer, though. The way McClellan and Doughty were calling out players publicly makes me wonder if McClellan may be losing the locker room. I know PLD hasn’t been what we’d hoped, but I also think they’re not using him correctly. He scored a goal against BUF, but he’s a distributor, not a wing, though I do think playing him alongside Kopi is best if they keep PLD on the wing. So, some of it is coaching (rotations, usage, message), some of it is injuries, and some of it is roster construction. If they don’t come out of this very soon, McClellan is likely gone.

I like the lists that Strad and InsidePitch put together. I think those things would be huge leaps in the right direction.

If he’s truly changed his mind, it kind of goes against the way Minasian constructed the roster and coaching staff, right? If Moreno was still long-term, I’m sure they would have looked at their managerial search differently, as well as some of the deals they made on players. To me, it feels like he didn’t get the offer he wanted, and is now waiting it out a bit. I hope this means there is a new contract for Ohtani, though.

He was the best baseball storyteller, the best to ever do it. I would usually listen to his call when the Angels played the Dodgers just to hear the way he’d call the game and the things he’d say about the Angels players.