Oz27

Haven't posted here in years now but didn't know where else to turn. How crazily sad. Way too young, seemed like way too nice a guy as well. This is absolutely fucked. RIP Tyler.

This makes sense, when you look at how the market treated sluggers with limited positional value this offseason. At this stage it is pretty reasonable to assume we won't see substantial improvement in his walk rate, so any big value boost will probably need to come from a HR surge. That always seemed possible but really hasn't come close to eventuating yet.

Those projections are updated now, to include both ZiPS and Steamer. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/heres-where-the-projections-disagree/ The Angels are at 83 wins, so they didn't get bumped down quite as much as I thought they would. They can still change over spring training as playing time estimates become easier to make, but clearly the Fangraphs systems believe we should be slightly above .500. If the season went exactly as Fangraphs projected, we would end in a three-way tie for the second wild card spot with the Mariners and Rangers (with the Astros winning the division). http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=Standings

Looking at the lineup from Weaver's MLB debut really puts into perspective how long he was with the Angels. Dallas McPherson, Tommy Murphy and Adam Kennedy were all there and Kevin Gregg pitched in relief. Also Javy Lopez, who was about 400 years old at the time, hit cleanup for the O's. http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ANA/ANA200605270.shtml

Whether or not those things are true, there were cases in the reigns of both GMs where Moreno had an unhealthy influence.

Whatever, this really isn't an argument worth having so I've deleted the post. I still don't think it's unreasonable to respond to something someone else decided to bring up but I'll let it go. On a more important note, how has nobody mentioned/posted the greatest Weaver moment ever?

Okay, that is valid. I'll file it in the "I'll believe it when I see it" section, though. When he has clearly had too much influence with the previous two GMs, it's natural to worry (or even assume) that won't be changing.

Hasn't he always said things like this?

$3 million? Damn, Scott Boras is seriously good at his job. Good luck to Jered, anyway.

On the base runs stuff, I've done some elementary research into this to determine if there is a relationship between getting a large performance of your offense from one player and outperforming your base runs offensive expectation. The five "most concentrated" offenses in 2016 (by which I mean the teams who got the highest percentage of their wRC team total from one player) were the Braves, Angels, Reds, Astros and Blue Jays. Of those, the Angels and Reds outperformed their base runs expectation by a lot, while the Astros, Blue Jays or Braves were all very close to their base runs expectation (the Braves were under, the Blue Jays were over and the Astros met their expectation exactly). The five least concentrated offenses, by the same measure, were the Mets, Royals, Rangers, A's and Red Sox. Four of those five actually outperformed their base runs offensive expectation. Looking at one season is far from conclusive, but there is not an apparent strong relationship between having your offensive production concentrated in the way ours is and outperforming your base runs expectation There doesn't seem to be much of a pattern at all, from what I can tell. All of this has been a long-winded way of saying I think it was probably just luck and will once again be up to random chance in 2017. I don't think we're much more likely, if at all, to outperform our base run expectation by 50 runs than we are to underperform by the same margin. Anyway, on the key point, it isn't hard to see why projection systems would think our pitching will be awful again. Optimistic pitching expecations rely on breakouts (especially with the young relief guys), bounce backs (Street and Bailey are the obvious two to fit in this category) or successful returns from injury (Richards - and his layoff does impact his projections). Even with replacement level pitching, this is probably still a 70-ish win team. It seems safe to say the pitching will be above replacement level, but do I see it being 15 WAR better? Probably not. Even 10 feels a little optimistic. Overall, I think 76 might be slightly low on the over/under, and I would take the over. But I don't think it is as unreasonable as most others here think it is.

In saying "not something we can take advantage of", I meant I'm not convinced it is something we would be better at taking advantage of than anyone else. I know Trout represents a huge chunk of our offense but sequencing luck still plays a huge role on the level of impact his hits deliver. What I'm saying is I don't think outperforming base runs is something that is sustainable, or which can be counted on. We had the biggest difference between base runs W/L expectation and the pythag expectation and the gap was pretty big. We actually outperformed our pitching base runs more than our hitting base runs (we were .29 runs/game better than our base runs expectation on the pitching side and .23 better on offense). Even if the offensive out-performance was sustainable and more than luck, I would struggle to believe the pitching aspect was any more than random chance and definitely not something I would count on happening again.

And what makes you think any of these issues benefit the Angels over anyone else? Other teams have players the exact same thing could be said about too. Projection systems aren't perfect, but that path of thinking does not automatically lead to them selling the Angels short.

I'm not sure I buy that argument. Do you have time to elaborate? The evidence I've seen makes me think sequencing isn't really something you can "take advantage" of.

I'd probably take the over on it too. But it isn't the slam dunk that people here are portraying it to be, mainly because it's not that hard to imagine our pitching being horrific again.

By base runs we were a 71 win true talent team last year. And, simply, every team's fan base thinks their team is much better than it actually is. There are people thinking just like you about their team on every baseball message board on the internet.

Atlantis Casino has set our over/under win total at 76.5. Astros are at 87.5, with the Rangers at 86.5 (the under here is a great bet) and the Mariners at 85.5. http://www.espn.com.au/chalk/story/_/id/18657559/chicago-cubs-lead-way-first-nevada-sportsbook-releases-2017-mlb-win-totals

How likely is it that a scientist invents a Mike Trout cloning machine between now and opening day? That is probably what would be needed.

Good stuff, Doc. Interesting read. Those bullpen numbers are pretty damn scary, particularly Street. It is scary to think he and Bailey will combine to throw a huge percentage of our key relief areas early in the season. Hopefully some of the younger guys get a chance to impress and move past them in the depth chart early because there are some interesting relief arms in the system, on top of Bedrosian. Just a note on the Fangraphs 84 win projection. That is effectively a 'first draft' projection, based on the Steamer system. In the next few weeks they will release their final projection, which includes both the ZiPS and Steamer systems and is then adjusted based off playing time estimates. ZiPS seems to be quite a bit less optimistic about a few of our players than Steamer is, especially on the pitching side. Therefore I'm guessing Fangraphs' final projection for us will be around 80 wins.

I really enjoy Pedro Moura's work. That was a good piece. I think some here are underestimating how difficult returning from serious brain surgery would be, as well as the potential for it to not be a smooth ride along the way. Hopefully he'll come back and pick up where he left off because that would be pretty damn remarkable.

Guerra's peripherals were awful and I had little faith he would repeat his success or even come close to it. Nevertheless, this is bizarre.

Its park factor has sharply declined over the past four years or so, from strong hitters park to pitcher park. I wish I had a good explanation for that ... but I do not.

Comparing ERAs between pitching staffs operating in entirely different environments is worthless and no other stat backs up that point. Astros starters were 13th in MLB in fWAR last year, while the Angels were 28th. The Astros' starters were 11th by xFIP, the Angels were 30th. Also, your claim that PECOTA is saying many of the Astros young players will take a step forward is wrong. It predicts a 3.8 WARP season for Altuve when he was worth 6.1 WARP last year. It also projects Correa, Gattis, Aoki, Reddick, Beltran, McCullers, Keuchel, Fiers and McHugh to be worse than they were last year. It expects a breakout from Bregman and marginal improvement from Springer. When you look at the Altuve, Keuchel and Correa projections in particular, it is actually possible the system is being more pessimistic about the Astros than it should be.

The good news is that MLB finally seems to recognize we need to do something to make the sport more interesting to the masses. Games are taking too long and there isn't enough action. But the bad news is the solutions so far will all either have minimal impact or are just bad ideas. If we're going to actually address the problem, pace-of-play adjustments like limiting mound visits and limiting time between pitches will help to an extent. But in an extreme strikeout era, games are always going to take forever and involve a heap of strikeouts which aren't all that interesting for casual observers. Doing something to reduce the number of strikeouts, creating more balls in play and fewer deep counts, is the obvious path forward in my opinion.

Seriously, how do you not look at Houston's lineup, rotation and bullpen and reach the conclusion that they are a hell of a lot better than us? They were 10 games better than the Angels last year in the raw standings and 98 runs (or 11 wins) better than us by base runs. They have plenty of scope to be much better than they were last year, too. They should be one of the best teams in baseball. The Angels, well, not so much.

Don't forget "dehydration".