6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Following yesterday's announcement that the NBA has suspended its season following yesterday's scheduled games, the NHL has suspended its entire season. Also, MLB has suspended spring training indefinitely according to the Los Angeles Times.

Update: The MLB regular season will be “delayed” by two weeks.

Labels: angels, dodgers

Matt Welch recently tweeted something about the 2019 Angels that grabbed my attention in a sad and disturbing way:

The Angels today fired their pitching coach, a day after firing their manager. How bad was the team's pitching in 2019? This bad: By Wins Above Average, the Angels' rotation (at -6.5) and overall staff (-9.4) were the worst in all of baseball. Yet there's a much crazier stat.

— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) October 2, 2019

The team leader in innings pitched in 2019 was Trevor Cahill, with 102.1. Respectfully, I don't think you fully realize how bonkers that number is.

— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) October 2, 2019

Remember the strike-aborted season of 1994, when teams played around 114 games? The lowest IP total from a team leader that year was 130, from Greg Harris, in the second-ever season of the Colorado Rockies.

— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) October 2, 2019

How about strike-disfigured 1981, when teams averaged 107 games? The low total from a team leader then was 130.1, by Seattle’s Glenn Abbott.

I think it’s likely that Trevor Cahill’s 102.1 IP is the lowest team-leading total in modern baseball history.

— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) October 2, 2019

This got me updating my Lahman database for the first time this year. (Note to Sean: why hasn't there been a MySQL/MariaDB-compatible schema available for two years now?) After a good bit of SQL detective work, it turns out there are only four team innings-pitched leaders with less than the measely 102.1 Mr. Cahill managed:

Year	Team	Pitcher	IP
1872	Washington Olympics*	Asa Brainard	79.0
1873	Baltimore Marylands*	Ed Stratton	27.0
1884	St. Paul White Caps	Jim Brown	36.0
1891	Milwaukee Brewers	GeorgeDavies	102.0

All of them are 19th century teams, and two (those denoted with an asterisk [*]) were National Association teams. In other words, we are talking about some of the sketchiest professional teams ever assembled in the earliest days of the sport. For context, here's a graph of lowest team innings pitched leaders throughout history:

Unsurprisingly, the number settles down right about at the turn of the 20th century, and has drifted down ever since. While the current trend certainly projects that eventually, Trevor Cahill won't be such an outlier, for now, he is more than 40 innings off last year's low-high champion, Toronto's Marco Estrada (143.2 IP). In the last decade, his nearest competition is Jeff Francis on the 2012 Rockies, whose 113 IP was the lowest in the 21st century, and lower than any 20th century IP team leader.

This is obviously awful; as Matt goes on to observe, "The Angels gave a mind-numbing 492 innings to pitchers who had a season ERA+ of under 80." The Halos now have a losing record for four consecutive years for the first time since they lost seven straight years from 1971 to 1977. They have no depth, poor roster construction, and absolutely no idea how to get out of this pit.

Labels: angels

I read with no surprise, sadly, that the Angels had just barely missed the postseason (old news), and that Jerry Dipoto resigned after years of arguing with Mike Scioscia (even older news) to be replaced, temporarily, with Bill Stoneman, GM emeritus, returning to that role. So when former also-ran and Yankee front office product Billy Eppler won the job, it took me a bit to realize something fairly important: Eppler is now the fifth general manager the Angels have had in the Arte Moreno era (fourth if you count Stoneman's two terms as one). You think the Gene Autry era was tumultuous, what with its loud personalities and poor decision-making skills? The worst they managed was three GMs in as many years, from 1991 through 1993. Arte's got a problem, and whether it's in the mirror, or the field manager having too much power, or both, the echoes of the old, bad teams from the early 1990's are impossible to ignore.

Labels: angels, front office

I confess, thanks to lingering and intractable login problems on my main computer, I had largely stopped reading Halos Heaven, but they've got a good Halolinks piece today citing something I really think needs emphasis: Josh Hamilton is a raging jerk. He blames the Angels for a lack of an accountability partner (when he was the one to cut that cord). He didn't thank his Angels teammates, and of course there was his childish refusal to take accountability for anything.

It's ironic, perhaps, that this episode had the side effect of Mat Gleason's exiting Halos Heaven. Nobody knows this but me, him, and Tyler Bleszinski, but Blez offered me the job of running the HH blog before it started; I basically turned him down, and it went to Mat. Nobody was more surprised than me at the time, but I think Blez made the right choice. Halos Heaven is the success it is in large part because of Mat's dedication to the task; irascible, tendentious, and pugilistic, Mat was always interesting to read, and he kept going through some awful seasons. (This blog, as you know, has largely gone dormant after 2010.) I haven't spoken with Jim Gardner and don't know him; shortly after the news broke yesterday, he wrote a piece introducing himself and announcing his new position as interim ringmaster; one of the comments therein suggests Mat wrote a goodbye letter, which was subsequently yanked. I briefly spoke with Mat yesterday via e-mail, encouraging him about the situation. He was characteristically incendiary. I still think he was right, though.

Labels: angels, blogs, drugs, rangers, trades

What I choose to write about here surprises even me sometimes. I was utterly amazed to see that Mat Gleason has been fired resigned as the head blog-runner at Halos Heaven in the wake of his intemperate comments about Josh Hamilton. Irascible, tendentious, and pugilistic, he was never dull. He did a good job with that blog for years. The Halosphere will be diminished for the absence of someone willing to post with vigor and candor.

Labels: angels, blogs

So, Josh Hamilton said things:

Josh Hamilton took strong exception to Angels owner Arte Moreno’s comments suggesting that Hamilton lacked "accountability" by suffering a substance-abuse relapse that ultimately led to the troubled outfielder getting traded to the Texas Rangers on Monday.

“I have no clue what he’s talking about,” Hamilton said during a news  conference at Globe Life Park in Texas, his first comments since he reported his relapse to Major League Baseball in early February. “I showed up every day and played hard when I was there. I hadn’t been the player they wanted me to be, I know I haven’t been, but I worked my butt off this winter to be that player.

“They just didn’t want that to happen for some reason. It doesn’t hurt my feelings or make me mad, but I prepared. [Moreno] knew what the deal was when he signed me. Hands down, he knew what he was getting. He knew what the risks were. He knew all those things. Under the [joint drug agreement], it is what it is.”

Those defending Josh Hamilton as a product of addiction have a certain limited point about the nature of that disease and the risks therewith; but "he knew what he was getting" sounds disturbingly like an excuse. In the end, character matters. Josh Hamilton did not have it, but he will have a very large fraction of the remainder of $83 million, paid by the Angels. Having recently gone through it with someone who is a genuine addict myself — and shockingly, with a friend who came disturbingly close to enabling behavior — I cannot help but see this as smirking arrogance. As Mat Gleason wrote,

Josh, when you finally die of a drug related matter it won't be Arte Moreno's fault. It won't be the fault of the good fans in Anaheim who figured out your little game. They might have Donnie Moore's karma on them but they won't have yours. As much as I would like to say the blame for your future fate lies with the enabling national media and coddling players union, I think of Steve Howe's face crushed against his truck's windshield on a lonely interstate highway with crystal meth in his bloodstream and I know that all the blame will be on you, all of it, as it was with Howe. I can only hope that when you do yourself in, which you will, that, mercifully like Howe, you take nobody else with you.

Amen.

Update 4/28: It appears I am in the minority in endorsing the Rev's words above, because they have since been taken down.  The vituperation against it on Twitter seems to be pretty close to unanimous, if my feed is any indication. I have known Mat for a number of  years now, and hyperbolic, tendentious opinion is his schtick (viz. his reaction to the news that Hamilton wouldn't appear at spring training), but it has not always been thus; once upon a time he offered a much more conciliatory tone, writing:

Perhaps this is just an issue with his surgery, many fans would be relieved by some drug test going wrong because of modern medicine. The benefit of the doubt should go to the man, a suffering human being deserving of our compassion. But the likelihood that he used and is owning up to it seems to be the razor truth of the matter.

Say a prayer for Josh Hamilton, the man. We can determine what this means for the team at another time. For now, be thankful your demons are not dragging you into a goldfish-bowl-shaped hell.

In the end, I suspect Mat's own personal wrestling with the demons of addiction informed his more recent rant. Temperance of any kind isn't easy to achieve with consistency.

Labels: angels, buh bye, drugs, scumbags

Michael McCann at Sports Illustrated claims that Josh Hamilton could be gone "in [a] matter of days", and even his salary. The basis for this is language in the Uniform Player Contract:

Some of the relevant language can be found in the UPC’s Loyalty Clause:

Loyalty
3.(a) The Player agrees to perform his services hereunder diligently and faithfully, to keep himself in first-class physical condition and to obey the Club’s training rules, and pledges himself to the American public and to the Club to conform to high standards of personal conduct, fair play and good sportsmanship.

The Angels, it would seem, could persuasively argue that Hamilton’s relapse constitutes a failure to render services “diligently and faithfully,” as well as a failure to “keep himself in first-class condition and to obey the Club’s training rules.” A drug and alcohol relapse, moreover, could be viewed as evidence that Hamilton breached his contractual duty to “pledge himself to the American public and to the Club to confirm to the high standards of personal conduct ... and good sportsmanship.”

It has been occasionally tried in the past, most recently by the Padres with Lamarr Hoyt, but unsuccessfully; also, the Rockies ended up buying out 80% of Denny Neagle's contract when that team tried to invoke the "personal conduct" clause to sever ties.

None of this language, however, will authorize the Angels to terminate Hamilton’s contract. Through the grievance process, the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA) has aggressively prevented teams from attempting to use the aforementioned language to terminate guaranteed player contracts. The MLBPA is most concerned with preventing the creation of a precedent whereby teams can readily convert guaranteed contracts into non-guaranteed contracts.

More:

If anything, the Angels—rather than Hamilton—might have run afoul of the Program by issuing remarkably harsh and unsympathetic statements following the arbitrator’s award. For instance, a spokesman on behalf of Angels president John Carpino bluntly remarked, “It defies logic that Josh's reported behavior is not a violation of his drug program.” Note that the Program bars teams from issuing “public statements which undermine the integrity and/or credibility of the Program.” While Carpino’s statement and others like it likely will not lead to any consequences for the Angels, it’s a reminder that Hamilton’s conduct is not the only one at issue in this controversy.

 Well, we'll see, but I'm still not hopeful. For the record, I'm somewhat opposed to the tenor of Craig Calcaterra's observations a while back that Arte is being craven or greedy here:

But really, that’s what’s going on with the Hamilton stuff. People are disapproving of Hamilton’s acts, which are borne of addiction and not malice, yet they will nod at Moreno’s efforts to not pay Hamilton, which are borne out of greed and, maybe, a side of brains.

Is there room in this discussion for mentioning personal integrity and how Hamilton exhibits very little? I mean, I agree that Arte's also failing at it (per the functional gag order mentioned above), but it's hard to root for either side in this mess.

Update 3:43 PM: Bill Shaikin of the Times has an update on the situation:

The Angels are in talks with Josh Hamilton that could result in the troubled outfielder leaving the team within 72 hours, according to a person familiar with the matter who is not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Angels General Manager Jerry Dipoto was in negotiations with Hamilton's representatives Friday.

Although the Angels had announced a plan to send Hamilton to their Arizona training facility as soon as this week to prepare for a comeback, Hamilton balked at the plan. It is believed Hamilton would like to play for a club close to his Texas home.

It's important to remember that the Angels have apparently operated in bad faith throughout this story, so we should be very careful not to read too much into the "Hamilton balked at the plan" part of this. Still, it's not entirely implausible.

Update 7:35 PM: Apparently it's a done deal:

 The Angels agreed Friday to trade Hamilton to the Texas Rangers, without getting a player in return, according to a person briefed on the deal but not authorized to discuss it. Instead, the Rangers will assume a very small portion of the $83 million left on Hamilton's contract, one that might well end up as the worst in Angels history.

Although the Angels had announced a plan to send Hamilton to their Arizona training facility as soon as this week to prepare for a comeback, Hamilton balked at the plan and told them he wanted to play in Texas. Hamilton, who has four children and filed for divorce in February, makes his off-season home in Texas.

Update 8:01 PM: Jeff Passan writes the Angels will eat $68M of the remaining $83M on Hamilton's contract. Yow.

Labels: angels, drugs

A report yesterday from the Times says Josh Hamilton is selling his Newport Beach home for $16.5 million. Josh Hamilton apparently filed for divorce around the time his relapse went public, according to the Dallas Morning News. After the fracas with the Angels in which Arte Moreno refused to commit to Hamilton again playing with the team, it seems like there's more, not less, chaos in Hamilton's life going forward.

Update: Looks like I missed the part where his wife has an ongoing affair, who is forbidden to stay at their shared (for now) home (emboldening mine):

Hamilton outlined 34 requests in the petition. Among the requests: prohibit her from using the Maserati and 1972 Chevrolet Blazer in his possession; prohibit her from “hiding” the children from him; prohibit her from making disparaging remarks against him or his family; prohibit someone who has an intimate relationship with her from staying in the same home as the children overnight.

Labels: angels, drugs

We don't know why Josh Hamilton is in New York to face an MLB disciplinary hearing, but it sure sounds bad. If Ken Rosenthal's surmise that the charges are worse than PED use, it suggests he's fallen off the wagon again.

Update:  It appears the issue is a relapse with drugs (cocaine, at least) and/or alcohol. Bill Shaikin thinks it "unlikely" he would be treated as a first-time offender if this is the case.

Labels: angels, drugs

Many thanks to Halos Heaven for pointing me at the story that Josh Hamilton will miss 6-8 weeks for shoulder surgery. Probably the best-case scenario for the Angels is retirement, as the Rev says. It sounds like side effects of arthritis, which at least rules out rotator cuff problems. But it also lowers our expectations from his ability when he does return, if he returns.

Labels: angels, injuries

I know, I haven't said much about the many bigger deals — the Angels picking up Andrew Heaney from the Dodgers was likely more important to 2015 — but this one is such a puzzler that even I can't make heads or tails of it. The Angels traded Kevin Jepsen to the Rays for left-handed-hitting outfielder Matt Joyce. Joyce has typically manned the corners for the Rays, and has never surpassed 20 home runs, though he has some decent pop (.383 SLG in 2014, career .441). As expected, he hits righties well (career .261/.356/.463) but is largely powerless against lefties (.189/.258/.316). It seems likely he'll spell Josh Hamilton when he gets injured or is otherwise unable to play.

What's puzzling about this deal is why the Halos would do it when they possess both C.J. Cron and Cole Calhoun. Calhoun, especially, looks superficially like a younger version of Joyce, who still has three years of team control ahead of him and is putting up similar numbers. I expect this means Calhoun may be trade bait, or Cron will find himself optioned back to Salt Lake, whence he will return if Hamilton or Calhoun find themselves on the DL. Depth in the outfield is nice to have, but dropping pitching that has been a mainstay of the bullpen seems like a poor choice.

Labels: angels, rays, trades

• Yesterday was so intense — all of it — that I can only say I believe it was the craziest 24 hours of any offseason in my memory. Jonah Keri's piece at Grantland mostly encapsulates my at-the-moment take on the deals as well:
  • Matt Kemp:

    L.A. may well have sold Kemp at exactly the right time. Friedman and GM Farhan Zaidi aren’t slaves to the recency effect, recognizing that Kemp’s strong finish in 2014 didn’t really change any of the other factors that had led to the longtime trade rumors, including the outfield logjam and his hefty contract. Instead of viewing Kemp’s elite .311/.372/.561 performance over the final 99 games of the season as a sign of rebirth, they viewed it as a boost in trade value that would allow them to more easily move a guy still owed $21 million–plus a year for five seasons.

  • Dee Gordon:

    Gordon is a fun guy to watch, but comparing his projections to, say, Emilio Bonifacio’s should help assure Dodgers fans that they might not be giving up all that much.

  • Howie Kendrick:

    Kendrick is one of the best second basemen in baseball, and he’ll make the Dodgers significantly better in 2015. ... To get Kendrick, of course, the Dodgers had to give up Heaney, whom they possessed for a nanosecond before flipping him to the Angels. Though Kendrick should be a big gain, Heaney could prove to be an even bigger loss, as he has a chance to be good … really good.

    Here, I'm relying on Keri's prospect smarts, but it's a rare case of getting a quality prospect for an established veteran with only limited control. It's important to note this kind of deal rarely happens anymore.
  • Jimmy Rollins:

    Like Kendrick, Rollins offers the Dodgers only one year of guaranteed team control. But in this case, the lone year is a feature rather than a bug, since L.A. has 20-year-old top shortstop prospect Corey Seager not far from the Show.

  • Brandon McCarthy:

    McCarthy is the riskiest of all the moves, considering the length of his contract and his past health concerns.

  Read. It. All. I'm a big fan of moving Kemp, even with the big salary ditch; it strikes me as an example of Branch Rickey's maxim that it's better to move a player a year too early than a year too late.
• No comment on the Angels moves as of yet, but I generally find myself in agreement. My comments on Kemp? Apply equally to Howie.
• I cleaned out a mess of stale sidebar links; if your blog hasn't been updated in two years, or if you aren't named Tommy Lasorda, you don't get special consideration. I practically don't update this one, but I'm the king of this here domain. Angels blogs especially took a lot of hits; it seems generally that blogs are an affectation of the 2000's, to vanish in this decade. My heart haz a sad.

If I don't see y'all until next year, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Labels: administrivia, angels, dodgers, trades

Everything but baseball these days seems interesting. T.J. Simers is retiring from the Register/, which should make sense if you were thinking about how likely it was the Register's plan was likely to work out. Of the two sports pages columnists in the LAT, he was the less objectionable, but only just; I think someone needs to write a retrospective of his material from that time. It's been almost a decade since Matt Welch tore him and Bill Plaschke a new one over their terrible coverage, but if we no longer have Simers to kick around, it may soon be the case that we have no one covering the Angels and Dodgers, save for house organs at mlb.com.

Labels: angels, dodgers, newspapers, retirements

It's been a long offseason, and I've felt little to nothing newsworthy to write about; the Angels moves are largely an afterthought of two consecutive offseasons of disaster, between the Pujols and Hamilton contracts, with only the former ending before the decade does. Whether, as Matt Welch intimated in his writeup in this year's Baseball Prospectus, this is the fault of owner Arte Moreno or of GM Jerry Dipoto, the contracts are now inked and indisputable and due, sunk costs. It is not insignificant that the Angels have two of Grantland's 15 worst contracts in MLB.

But it is now Go time for the Dodgers. If the Angels have bad player deals, it is because their shiny new Fox Sports contract enabled them to spend stupidly and big. The Dodgers decided they needed to one-up the Angels, and in an effort to do so, launched their own cable TV network. In this, they followed the Yankees, who created YES Network in 1999. But, as happened in San Diego (also this), and to a lesser degree, Houston, the Dodgers now find their own greed locking them away from the fans they claimed they wanted to reach.

The cable operator is optimistic that it will have wide distribution by the time the Dodgers' regular season starts March 22.

"We're coming off a tremendous season and interest in Dodger baseball is at an all-time high," Time Warner Cable Sports President David Rone said.

But that may be wishful thinking.

Many distributors are upset about being pressured to carry a new sports network in a region that already has several similar channels, including not only Prime Ticket but also Fox Sports West, Pac-12 Los Angeles and Time Warner Cable's SportsNet and Deportes.

"It is really hard to understand why everyone needs their own channel when they didn't need one before," said Andy Albert, senior vice president of content acquisition for Cox Communications.

Those channels, along with ESPN, cost customers as much as $20 a month whether they watch them or not. The Dodgers channel threatens to dramatically increase that figure.

I will not be surprised to learn there is a considerable amount of pushback among the cable operators, who weary of downside cable-cutting should prices escalate too high. And there are signs that we have reached the moment of collapse.

Joe Kennedy, the bootlegger and patriarch of that political family, famously got out of the stock market when even cabbies and shoeshine boys started giving him stock tips. So we begin to suspect the jig is up on cable TV networks when the likes of icon YES Network sells itself to Fox. Why might they do such a thing?

One of the next things on the YES Network's to-do list is to negotiate a new carriage contract with Time Warner Cable, one of the largest cable operators in the New York metro region. Time Warner Cable has said the channel's distribution agreement is about to expire.

Some have speculated that the negotiation process could be ticklish because Fox and Time Warner Cable have clashed in the past. Fox lost the rights to televise L.A. Lakers and Dodgers games after Time Warner Cable agreed to pay the teams substantially more than Fox had been paying.

In other words, the Yankees still get the benefits of operating a RSN without the headaches of having to extract revenue from cable operators. This, to me, is the rats leaving the sinking ship -- with the Dodgers viewing such a ship as their salvation. One expects one of those views will prevail, and it isn't the Dodgers'. Well, it wouldn't be the first time the Bombers proved better than the Bums.

Labels: angels, astros, dodgers, padres, tv, yankees

The blithe details of the game belie the kind of team I believe the Angels now are, one directly reflected in the current standings. Only a half game ahead of the hapless Astros, they would be in last place in the 2012 AL West. As then, once more they find ways to lose. While the prior losses that mostly got us to this state were close, this one wasn't, embarrassingly handed to the team by last year's division winning A's. I haven't paid much attention to spring training, owing to an extended vacation in New Zealand virtually all of February that quenched any desire I had to leave home for any reason whatsoever, but what I did see of the Angels in Arizona was disheartening, the bullpen especially.

C.J. Wilson's annoying habit of exploding one inning of every single start continued, and right away with the first, in which he surrendered three runs in a horrid mess of walks and singles, as a drunk man might keep retching long after disgorging the contents of his stomach. But then — and only after surrendering a solo homer to Coco Crisp to start the second — he settled down, and actually managed to outpitch the A's starter, Jarrod Parker, the latter only lasting 3.1 innings.

Usually when you can chase the other team's starter, it's a pretty good sign you've got a shot at a win. But by this point, the Halos were still down 4-2. They eventually turned that around in the sixth to make it 5-4 in an inning that saw the dubiously hired Josh Hamilton make his lone contribution, a sac fly to tie the game.

So the end of hope. The Angels held the A's at bay through two outs of the seventh, with Scott Downs — who has been dreadful this year, mostly — posting a very respectable inning, to give way to Kevin Jepson, who had been doing fairly well. As it happened, that was a horrible mistake, for as the Register's Jeff Fletcher tweeted, pinch hitter John Jaso hits righties better over his career by about .250 points of OBP (.789 vs. .539). While it wasn't exactly predictable that Jaso would homer, he did, and so, later, did Brandon Moss, who uncharacteristically hit 21 last year. A lesson, perhaps made starker by the enthusiastic boos that accompanied Jepson when he slunk back into the dugout after finally retiring DH Nate Freiman, four batters after his entrance into the game.

The game featured a mess in the offense, too, as the Angels stranded thirteen base runners, and headliner Josh Hamilton went 0-for-4 with a sac fly as duly noted before. Not a propitious start for the homestand, or the season. It is the sort of thing that makes you wonder whether the owner can be fired.

---

Various observations:

• The sudden Dodger Stadium-length concession lines at the park that I expected were a Freeway Series, early season anomaly continued unabated. People I know at certain concession stands who were competent and fast (the bartender Chet at the tequila stand in my section, 530 or thereabouts) are gone, replaced by someone I do not know who is vastly his inferior. And everywhere, long, long, slow lines.
• Verizon data is finally slow and awful during the game. My 4G LTE WiFi card is next to useless during the game, constantly downshifting to 3G, though AT&T is scarcely better.
• I haven't done a thorough look-see at the concessions, but the Chronic Taco in the Pavilion section is woefully understaffed and painfully (and to my eye, unnecessarily) slow. That's too bad, because it's probably the best food in the house at the moment. I recommend their same-branded stand in the third base entryway.
• In case you missed it: Jered Weaver will be out 4-6 weeks thanks to a comebacker in his last start that nailed his elbow. I wonder, given how badly he pitched Sunday in Texas, whether it wasn't a stress fracture worsened by impact. Update 4/11: Duh, injury was to his non-pitching elbow.

ESPN Box

Labels: angels, athletics, recaps

Reuniting old Cal State Long Beach teammate Jered Weaver, the Mariners have traded Jason Vargas for fifth wheel DH Kendrys Morales. Morales couldn't really hit lefties in 2012 (.229/.289/.471), though he did manage to do better earlier (career .250/.286/.416). On a typical late Scioscia-era team full of DH candidates who will need to rotate into that spot as a "day off" position, this move makes a ton of sense; it gives the Angels some much needed rotation depth, if mothing else, and makes someone like a Jerome Williams (is he even still in the picture?) at least superfluous so far as the starting staff is concerned.

Vargas was better at striking out righties than lefties, but lefties hit him worse last year than righties. A big red flag, though was his home and away splits, where he earned a 2.74 ERA in Safeco but a 4.78 ERA on the road, almost twice as high. Still, I can grit my teeth through the road if his 2.27 career ERA at Angel Stadium is any indication of how he'll pitch. Welcome aboard, and go Dirtbags!

Update: Weird paragraph from this Alden Gonzalez piece at MLB.com:

The Angels used the flexibility afforded to them with the Josh Hamilton signing, sending switch-hitting designated hitter Kendrys Morales to the Mariners on Wednesday in exchange for left-handed starting pitcher Jason Vargas.

Usually when one discusses "flexibility", the word "payroll" is in the same sentence. While the Dodgers have gotten all the press for the spendy spendy, Jerry Dipoto hasn't exactly taken his foot of the fiscal gas pedal, either.

Labels: angels, hot stove, mariners, trades, transactions

If I told you the Josh Hamilton deal was really, really bad, you wouldn't be surprised, right? BPro's Ben Lindbergh, at ESPN Insider:

Because Hamilton doesn't add any value via the walk, most of his offensive performance hinges on what happens when he makes contact. The outcome of a batted ball is dependent on two things: speed and quality of contact. The early 30s are when bat speed starts to slip and reaction time suffers. If Hamilton had better command of the strike zone, his ability to take walks could compensate for his inevitable declines in other areas. As it is, his offensive value is closely tied to skills that soon start to fade in free agents of a certain age.

Which is to say, yes, very, very bad. He's like buying into Vlad Guerrero with more off-the-field problems, way lower walk rate, and starting with his age 32 season. Or maybe Vernon Wells would be a better comp, at least on the field. Regardless, Hamilton's on schedule for a 3.4 WARP season in 2013 according to PECOTA, which figures to be a pretty lousy bet for the kind of money the Angels are throwing at the problem. The always readable Sam Miller exits thusly:

Jerry Dipoto has been the Angels’ general manager for 13 months, and he has now made a whopping 13 moves at the big-league level. He has shown two skills that can make for a great GM: he’s great at picking up small pieces (especially in the bullpen) for cheap, and he’s great at making the big deal happen, which can be as easy as but also much more difficult than "offer the most money." Those big ones are the moves that get GMs into trouble. From a surplus-value calculation, the Albert Pujols deal alone threatens to undo all the other small, savvy moves Dipoto has made. Yes, the Angels have the money to outrun that mistake, and they have the money to outrun the Josh Hamilton mistake, if it is one. But avoiding the mistake in the first place would be best.

That, from his track record thus far, seems unlikely.

Labels: angels, hot stove, transactions

$125M/5 years, no I can't.

WTF ARTE IS WRONG WITH YOU???

Labels: angels, hot stove, transactions

Pointed out to me lately by Bleed Cubbie Blue's Al Yellon, a fascinating look at old baseball stadiums, and stadiums proposed but never built. Of particular interest among the latter here:

• Wrigley Field (Los Angeles) expansion that would have extended the outfield and upper deck to wrap all the way around the park. The Dodgers instead elected to play temporarily at the Coliseum.
• The Buckminster Fuller-inspired Brooklyn Dome, which would have been the first of its kind.
• A different Angels Stadium that would have been situated in the abandoned Baldwin Hills Dam site.
• Here's one that sounds like an Irwin Allen movie waiting to happen: a stadium floating in Mission Bay in San Diego.

For a different take on old baseball parks, here's my Space Ghosts (AL) and NL editions.

Labels: angels, dodgers, history

Per MLB.com and countless other media, though the first mention I can find so far (cribbed from Halos Heaven) is a Jon Heyman tweet from CBS Sports. Hanson has been said to have lost considerable zip on his fastball, which dipped below 90 MPH for the first time on a regular basis this year. Fangraphs is first out of the post with analysis, and it basically matches my own thinking:

The question, then, is exactly how much better Tommy Hanson makes them. He makes them at least a little better, because he’s a fifth starting pitcher on the roster. Previously there was no one in that slot. But there’s a reason the Braves didn’t have Hanson in their projected rotation, and there’s a reason the Braves gave him up for a reliever, even though he’s under team control another three years. The Tommy Hanson that exists now is similar in many ways to the Tommy Hanson that used to exist before, but when it comes to pitching, there are alarming differences.

For my money, and given the Angels' dire situation with the bullpen early in the 2012 season, sending Jordan away is no small matter. I don't like recent acquisition Ryan Madson's inability to stay healthy. Madson had Tommy John surgery this year, so he's going to be back at some point in the 2013 season, though just when that might happen is still an open question. Even though my rule of thumb for UCL repairs is 18 months, that number is now down to a year, but we'll see how it goes. Even then, there's no guarantees, and while I didn't like Jordan's lack of movement — he could throw hard but not fool anybody — it seems we are deeply into "devil you don't know" territory here.

I'm okay with getting rid of Ervin Santana — the Brandon Sisk deal was exactly the sort of thing you can do, though it was risky exercising his option and then trading him. On the other hand, Santana showed an elbow ligament tear on an offseason, post-trade MRI, so this could easily have been the beginning of his own Tommy John surgery and perhaps a shot at redemption. But that won't be in the Angels rotation. Likewise, I'm fine with the prospect of Haren going away, and Greinke (though the jury is still out on whether that happens, the Dodgers are apparently the lead team there). For this to work, we have to believe that Hanson is at least going to fill out the fifth starter role effectively, and I'm not entirely sold on that.

Labels: angels, braves, royals, trades, transactions