Pancake Bear

O'Hoppe - #1 Catcher?

Aaron Judge agrees.

We don't exactly have more room for position players unless someone gets moved other than catcher.

Don't drink the kool-aid.

Not really. 1) Someone will pay him at least that much. 2) Ohtani makes them an absurd amount of money and will likely be more than worth it overall. 3) The supply/demand on pitchers next off-season is terrible, and we don't have enough in the farm to compete without supplementing from outside. 4) We are nearing the end of our window before Trout's contract potentially becomes an albatross. Unless we don't want to contend for the next ten years, this is the time to go all in. 5) Arte or whoever owns the team has more than enough money to pay him that and still field a solid team. So, no, it wouldn't be irresponsible. It would be irresponsible not to.

Exactly. Ambiguity is a weapon to generate clicks. It's not at all surprising.

OC Register: Shohei Ohtani’s agent places no deadline on negotiations with Angels MLBdotCom: Shohei Ohtani likely will elect to enter free agency at the end of the season rather than negotiate with the Angels on a long-term extension during the regular season, his agent, Nez Balelo, said Monday, but the door remains open for negotiations during Spring Training. ESPN: Shohei Ohtani's agent, Nez Balelo, has been consistently coy about his client's contract status, but he hinted Monday at something many in the industry had long assumed -- that Ohtani will probably explore free agency, even if it does ultimately result in him returning to the Los Angeles Angels. Gotta know your audience, amirite?

Reporter: So, what do you think about Nevin as a manager? Rendon: Well, all I'm saying is that he never intentionally walked in a run...

Ward Trout Ohtani Rendon (move him down a spot or two if it's Urshela) Walsh Renfroe Drury Stassi Fletcher/Rengifo

He really isn't better than the other options, though, and we'd have to trade or send Rengifo down to the minors to accommodate him. Doesn't make sense for a so-so player coming off a career year he probably can't repeat.

Somehow losing the reigning Cy Young winner and bringing in 36-year old Jose Abreu is considered a big win of an off-season.

Yes, he should just be handed the spot because he's been around a while. Paying his dues, I think they call it. Or, just maybe, you need to be good enough to deserve it.

That's excellent. Love the work ethic. Love that he's putting in the time and working on something that he was clearly well below the level he needed to be at. This part is more concerning. He had a more than solid BABIP. His slugging wasn't amazing, but it was hardly the problem. The issue was his poor batting average and on base percentage. They were really bad. The K and BB% we're also abysmal. That suggests to me the problem is not how he's hitting, but actually, y'know, hitting the ball? I don't know if that's pitch recognition, contact ability, plate discipline, or what, but that seems to me to be the obvious problem, and it's perplexing to me that he's focusing (as I read it) on hitting more bombs. Am I way off base here or missing something? Because this emphasis doesn't make sense to me, and I don't get why the team and hitting coach wouldn't be conveying to him what the real problem is unless he's just ignoring them, but the fact that he went to Driveline suggests he's coachable. I just don't get it.

I feel like fans put way too much weight on that line. It was a long time ago and the payroll level of the Angels wasn't as far off from the luxury tax level at the time. I doubt Arte even remembers saying it. That said, in his chat with Heyman, he invoked Babe Ruth leaving Boston. I think he's well aware of his legacy and is concerned about being the guy who wasted Trout's career and let Ohtani walk away. I think that's why he's approved a higher payroll and it's why I think he'll do whatever he can to convince Ohtani to stay. Whether Sho stays will come down to whether he wants to stay.

There aren't many teams that can afford to bring in one player for $50 million, and if he really doesn't want to play in the east (he was pretty firm on that five years ago), that limits the field even more. Mariners are already pinching pennies; doubt they can afford him. So, if not the Angels, it's what? Dodgers, Giants, and Padres? The Angels are one of the top spenders, so it really just comes down to whether he trusts Arte and Minasian to make the team a winner.

Bleacher Report probably.

Under on the M's, imo.

Wonder if Minasian was in on Moore *or* Britton, and now he's out on Britton. I'd assume so, since they're both lefties and I doubt we spend that much on relievers, but we'll see I guess.

Don't make much of this. Players straight up lie when asked if they're negotiating if the goal is secrecy, which in this case it likely would be. Same thing happened with Trout. I'm not saying definitely that negotiation is happening, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't, and I'm not surprised to see Ohtani essentially denying it whether it is happening or not.

Tightening the screws on balks is a kind of necessary consequence of the pitch clock.

I remember a while back one of his teammates said Ohtani actually does speak English. That leads me to believe he's at a conversational level, but for interviews he doesn't feel 100% comfortable and prefers a higher degree of precision that would take considerably more time to get to.

Need lots of BSOHL articles. Oh, and an Ohtani extension. That would be cool, too.

Caught a clip of Flipping Bats recently with Ben Verlander and Alex Curry where they were talking about the Angels. She was talking a bit about Arte in regards to how he doesn't say much publicly and she commented that Arte isn't very comfortable doing public speaking. I'd imagine that's why he avoids interviews: Because he's concerned about how he'll come across. He'd rather say nothing and let windbags like Blum whine about it all day and the rest of us speculate what he's thinking, apparently. Personally, I don't think he has to say anything. He's a billionaire. If he wants to say nothing, there's nothing in the owner regulations that require a hardball interview every year - or any public comments at all. Obviously we'd all prefer to hear from him, but at this point it's pretty obvious he has little interest in doing that.