Pancake Bear

I like Maddon’s approach: Fun and numbers. 

I thought the presser was a showcase for many of his best skills, like effective communication, his experience, his fearless nature, personality, and love for the game.  It appears to be a perfect fit. 

I like Maddon’s approach: Fun and numbers. 

winning is pretty damn fun 

Cole hasn't openly said anything. His teammates did. And Fletcher did.

This is NOT a thread to talk about how the Angels can acquire deGrom. Rather, I find him an interesting player in how his career has unfolded, and had a question I wanted to cast out to AW; I was going to post this in the prospects thread, but thought I'd open it up a bit.
DeGrom is interesting because of being a late-bloomer, becoming one of the best pitchers in baseball in his early 30s. But le's go back.
DeGrom wasn't even selected out of high school. He was exclusively a shortstop during his first two years of college at Stetson, but due to weak hitting became a SS/RP in his junior year. After excelling, he was inserted into the rotation midseason, making 12 starts. 12 starts in college - that's it! Fun fact: he hit his only HR of the 2009 season against Chris Sale.
DeGrom was taken by the Mets in the 9th round in the 2010 draft, with a $95,000 signing bonus. He pitched 6 games for the Mets' Rookie team with a 5.19 ERA, but missed all of 2011 due to Tommy John Surgery. When he came back in 2012, he was a different pitcher; he had a 2.43 ERA in A/A+, although at 24, pretty old for that level. His 2013 wasn't as good, a 4.51 ERA across three levels (A+/AA/AAA), but with good peripherals (46-120 BB-K in 147.2 IP); he was dominant in 7 AAA starts in 2014 before being called up to the Mets, and has been excellent to great since.
While deGrom didn't become an elite pitcher until 2018, he was good as soon as he arrived in the majors. In 2014, his rookie year, he started 22 games with a 2.69 ERA, winning the NL Rookie of the Year at the age of 26 (his first start was at age 25, but it was his age 26 season). For his first four years, 2014-17, he was 13th in the majors with a 15.5 fWAR, or an average of 3.9 per year. That was his age 26-29 seasons.
In 2018, at the age of 30, he become one of the best pitchers in baseball - one of maybe half a dozen true aces, winning the NL Cy Young. In fact, you could argue that he's the best pitcher in baseball right now, leading all pitchers in both fWAR (16.0) and ERA (2.05) over the last two seasons.
Here's his ERA and fWAR from 2014-19:
ERA: 2.69, 2.54, 3.04, 3.53, 1.70, 2.43 (career 2.62)
fWAR: 3.6, 4.9, 2.9, 4.1, 9.0, 7.0 (career 31.5)
His career Adjusted ERA (or ERA+) is 148, tied with Lefty Grove for 5th all-time among pitchers with at least 1000 IP.
So here's the question(s): How does a 9th rounder who barely pitches in college andd doesn't reach the majors until he's 26 years old turn into one of the best starters in baseball? And how to spot guys like this in the minors, and in college? Any other similar cases you can think of?

...and go to another PR disaster like Anaheim. 

I’d bet a lot of money if you put up a poll here the Astros aren’t even in the top three most hated teams to the Angels.

Ok, I did not see the Nats bats coming out so hot. Especially against Cole. Either he’s off or they did a remarkable job staying hungry with a week off. Kudos to them. 

"Scherzer has survived this because he's a grinder" ......    I never want to hear people complain about Gubi after hearing that steaming pile of analysis... Lol...

When you see you’ve been marked with troll reaction by three members On a single post, then see it’s Gritty, Az and Trolldaddy, I must have made a valid point.  

It was time for him to leave. He’d been here too long. He was a good manager, but it’s hard to stay effective for that many years in the same place. 

...and go to another PR disaster like Anaheim. 

It was time for him to leave. He’d been here too long. He was a good manager, but it’s hard to stay effective for that many years in the same place. 

Most teams weren’t as bad off as the Angels. They had the worst farm system in modern history (by multiple accounts), Arte was unwilling to tank, and we had little to nothing that we could or would sell, and we were hamstrung with multiple bad contracts. That isn’t a standard 3 year fix. 
Thats not even accounting for the Astros being one of the best teams in recent memory this season. They are literally stacked from top to bottom. 
Blaming Eppler for any of that is ludicrous. 
Dombrowski got canned because, championship aside, their future outlook is really bad. Their farm isn’t great, they have bad contracts, they’re about to lose their good players like Betts and JD, and the owner is talking about reducing their budget. He went all in and effed them over. 

Why would the Sox trade Giolito? Aren't they planning to contend? I don't know why they would make that trade. 

And yet people are begging Arte to hire him as Eppler's boss.

In his post game interview on Saturday, Cole just mentioned Trout in his answer without prompting. Today, in a pregame interview for tonight, he did it again. 
Somebody's got Mike Trout on the brain.

He couldn't satisfy his wife. Imagine how much he'll disappoint Halo fans

In his post game interview on Saturday, Cole just mentioned Trout in his answer without prompting. Today, in a pregame interview for tonight, he did it again. 
Somebody's got Mike Trout on the brain.

Just comparisons to last offseason. Corbin signed relatively early for 6/140. That’s obviously quite a bit less than what Cole will get. Cole is the same age but has a much better track record than Corbin. I can’t see him getting much more than the record (and I doubt that’s a sure thing) - 7y, 210. The market seems to have run off a bit.
I would imagine Boras looks for 7 years, 245m as a starter (although, it being Boras, who knows). Teams may want to counter with 6 years, but it seems clear to me it’ll take 7 to get the deal done. I suppose Boras may push for 8, but that seems unlikely to me. I don’t think Cole’s track record is quite at that level that anyone would want to go 8. 7 years is risky enough. 
180m seems like the floor. I can’t see anyone offering less as a serious offer. Obviously that’s a wide gap between 180 and 245, but my prediction was 7/224. Maybe I’m high, or maybe I’m low. I don’t have all the info. But I don’t feel like there’s a much variance in how Cole is valued as there was with Harper and Machado. I could easily be wrong. You’re more in the know than I am. 

He’s better than a lot of guys, but he’s nowhere close to perfect. 

Wait, I didn't think BK made mistakes?

Guys sign late when they aren’t getting the offers they expect. Boras tends to overvalue his clients. Machado and Harper signed late because their market was slower than expected. Corbin signed earlier. I think Cole’s market value is pretty well set. I’m dubious that Boras asks for 8 years 35m aav, but I could be wrong. I think he signs at latest in early January. Most likely in December. I think the Winter Meetings is possible, but could also be a bit after that.