6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: In Which Stoneman Surrenders

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Monday, July 05, 2004

In Which Stoneman Surrenders

The Times today recorded the Angels' surrender of the AL West. Oh, sure, the headline read "Colon Will Remain in Rotation", but that's hardly the point. Combine it with Stoneman's earlier comment "We're getting our guys back and we're starting to play better all around" and you have a GM in denial.

This team will not take the West. Richard did the math, and the team would have to have a .654 average to get to 95 wins. Here's the problem underlying any Angels-win-the-West scenario: the team has essentially been healthy since June 10th. (Salmon came back on the June 9, and Anderson on June 10; I don't count Brendan Donnelly because he's contributed little since returning June 18.)

Since then, the team is 12-19.

Colon might not lose the remainder of his 15 or so starts, but say he loses two thirds of them, for a record of 5-23. Now, we can be pretty sure they won't let Colon lose twenty three games, but they might let him lose another ten. That would make him 5-17. That just isn't going to help.

I disagree with Richard that Washburn is an easily replaceable pitcher; he's currently got a VORP of 10.0, which puts him solidly above "replacement value". Lackey's got a similar number of 9.8, which I expect will improve in the second half.

But make no mistake: this season is over. The team is as healthy as it's gonna get. And they're playing horribly.

// posted by Rob @ 7:05 PM link // 0 comments