Tony Reagins Off-Season Report Card

for not landing Doc Haliday…
But we won’t count that on his report card as everyone in the class but the cute chick in the front row from Philly failed that test…

Tell me you’re not a little bummed we couldn’t pick up arguably the best pitcher in baseball

walks and patience age well. free swinging does not. vlad is an easy out who GIDPs too much by overswinging. matsui makes pitchers work like abreu.

•Designated Hitter: Matsui vs. Guerrero – C, No improvement
•Starting Pitcher: Lackey vs. Pineiro (& Kazmir) – B, The 5 man is slightly improved
•Relief Pitcher: Oliver vs. Rodney and Stokes B+, I predict Oliver retires at the All Star break
•Third Base: Figgins vs. Wood – B, Inevitable transition, we need those dollars to improve elsewhere
•Right Field: Abreu (5M) vs. Abreu (18M), B+, He earned the renewal and makes those around him better. Plus, the deal increases our chances of making him our hitting coach one day.

If players like Milton Bradley and GMJ can command 10 mill a season, Abreu is sure worth whatever he is getting this season.

At what Lackey and Vlad contributed last year, 11-8, 3.89 ERA from Big John and .295 with 15 home runs from Vlad, It seems very likely that Matsui and Kazmir and / or Pineiro will give us a significant improvement in both home runs and wins respectively. Then the fact that Kaz/Pineiro and Matsui combined cost less then Lackey would alone over the length of their contracts, I call this an A

If Omar found a throwing star wrapped up in a Del Taco wrapper on his desk this morning…..

“Time Will Tell”

the ninja’s moves this off-season are an F.
But it don’t mean shit. What will matter is what happens on the diamond this upcoming season. There are a boatload of unanswered questions. What we signed vs. what we had looks like 2 steps backwards.
It is going to be very weird this coming season not seeing big John, Vlad, and Figgy.

like archangel outlined, he took care of the team. we picked up a bit more depth in the pen, we picked up a fifth starter that is actually good enough to be in a Major League rotation, and we took out a slow contact DH for a slow power DH. wood finally gets his shot and someone else can overpay for figgins, who is a very good player but has to start regressing this year or next and, to be honest, really tried to kill us this postseason with his absent bat.

kasmir + pineiro > lackey for sure.

i think the angels are the third-best team in the AL as it stands, but we’re a real threat.

I still think the Matsui move was nothing more than a publicity stunt sham. There has got to be a bat somewhere that has a batter with knees left on him. That being said, I think one of his very good moves was the GMJ for Stokes trade, and not because of the player value of Stokes, but because of the message it sends to the future free agents in the league that we may be courting. If your not happy with your situation or playing time with the Angels, they will try and trade you to a situation you will be happy with without dragging your name through the mud and hurting your rep. GMJ handled himself with class even though his production was way off, and the Angels helped him into a new situation where he gats a chance to play everyday while eating a huge chunk of his contract. MLB players will be watching this move and liking what they see, they see a team treating a player under contract with respect and dignity. It just may help get us a few future free agents if the money is close to the same between a few teams.

Without getting into UZR’s and groundball ratios…lets just step back and look at some simple things….

1. All of our FIVE starters have the potential to win 15 games and have proven this by doing it before.

2. Do you find a younger staff out there with as much of a positive track record? How many teams have only ONE pitcher over 30 and still have a staff that includes 3 all-stars and four 15+ game winners? This staff is young as hell and probably will only get better.

3. Think about big competitors…They rely on two or three pitchers and fill in the rest with question marks and fingers-crossed. Sure, it worked for the Skanks last year and hell, it worked for us in 2002. That being said, I think we have a lot less question marks than the M’s. Imagine if Felix or Lee went down…who do they rely on? What if Beckett, Lester or Lackey goes down…the Sux are right back to where they started the 2009 off-season. It would take at least two Angels starters to go down at the same time before we got into “Oh Shit” territory and even then, as proven last year, we still can pull through….

4. SOS is a badass and will fill in if Pinata or one of the others goes down.

Considering that Arte is generous but likes to stay on budget I think the Ninja did a good job. I think the best move was when the ninja sneaked past Boras and maneuvered a 4 mil contract for Weaver. Now my grade has a lot to do with the fact that we are hopeful for a big off season next year and the ninja didn’t tie all of our money up.

So he gets an A but if we have a similar off season next year I will have to correct his grade and slap a big fat F next to it.

Ninja don’t let us down and go Morales 2.0

That move is going to blow up. I see him as a AAAA player. But, I hope I’m wrong.

He made one mistake – not offering Oliver arbitration. Othewrwise, he’d get an “A”

Everything else I’m OK with.
I’ll miss Vlad.
Lackey? Not so much.

And I’m all in favor of giving Wood 3B, it’s about time.

I thought he was renamed “The Turtle” right after Black Monday.

He has failed to do anything to maintain that title. Yes, getting rid of GMJ was a good move, Matthews was a cancer and that surgery should have been performed last-season. You can say nobody would eat the contract, but we are still paying a goodly portion as it is and we suffered with GMJ’s presence all last season. If Reagins were truly a “Ninj a” we would have made this happen.

Also, I hardly call signing Fernando Rodney, Matsui and Pineiro worth of being called “Ninja.”

I can’t believe so many people are giving this guy an “A.” I think a “C” at best or barely a passing grade. Saving Arte money doesn’t earn one an “A” in my book. Putting a highly competitive, Championship caliber team on the field in 2010 does. Reagins did not do that. To be fair however, he can only work within restrictions Arte has given him.

Still, he hasn’t been earning his previous moniker lately.

1) Figgy: I see this as a major loss. I think time will prove me right on this one. Others have stated in this forum that you’re basically trading OBP and runs scored for SLG and RBI. I think the production of Figgy in 2010 is a much more bankable commodity than the so-called SLG and RBI from Wood. In fact, I think expecting big numbers from Wood is unrealistically optimistic. Is it possible: yes. Is it bankable, no. Let’s say Wood plays between 120-130 games next season, and he hits .270-.280 (highly dubious based on recent performance) with 20 HR and say 70-80 rbi,. If we compare that to a conservative number for Figgy, say, .290 with 90-100 runs scored,with probably an OBP in the .360-370 range (this of course would be assuming a drop-off from last years numbers) and Gold Glove caliber defenisve at 3B have you really helped yourself?

Also, remember, by moving Aybar up to leadoff we will in all likelihood significantly weaken the bottom of our order. Having good hitting at the bottom of the order has been a hallmark of the recently very good Scioscia teams, but that looks to change this year.

2) Lackey: Many people have mentioned Lackey’s recent injury issues as a reason not to re-sign him. But, remember, Kazmir hasn’t had a clean injury history himself. It is also true (at least through my observations) that Kazmir has lost velocity on his once very good fastball. Will he ever return to his form of 2007? Again, this is highly dubious since his ERA has gone up every year since 2007. And Kazmir has never won more than 13 games in a season.

But I think the real key when comparing Lackey to Kazmir and Pineiro is the post-season.
Since I think most Angel fans would measure success by post-season success (or lack thereof), I think it is fair to focus on relative performance in the post-season. Take a look:

Career Post Season ERA :

 Lackey : 3.12 (78.0 IP)

 Kazmir : 5.20 (36.0 IP)

Pineiro : 7.50 (6.0 IP)

What stands out here? Well, we can give Pineiro a break since his ugly 7.50 ERA is with a very small sample size of six innings pitched. But Kazmir can’t use that excuse. Lackey clearly superior here. Since Halo success is now measured in the post-season (not the regular season) I think you’d have to say we have clearly been weakened by the loss of Lackey. Coupled with failing to get Halladay, the loss of Lackey gives Reagins an “F” in my book for starting pitching in the off-season.

3) Bullpen: Wouldn’t we just have been better off paying Frankie instead of paying Fuentes AND Fernando Rodney???? I think our bullpen is much weaker now then it was two seasons ago in 2007. I think Reagins deserves at least some of the blame if not much of it. In short, what was once a team strength has now become a weakness. One which arguably cost us a birth in the WS in 2009.

4) Matsui vs. Vlad: Most folks call this a “wash.” I think that is probably fair. Of course, this ultimately will probably come down to who misses more games due to injury. I happen to believe that playing games in Texas will help Vlads numbers. I would not be surprised to see Vladdy put up 25 HR and 85-90 RBI. I do think his AVG. will drop and probably Matsui beats him in OBP’ but I think Vlad ’s power numbers will be better. Admittedly, only time will tell on this move.

5) GMJ: I think this was a good move. But again, as I stated in comment above it was WAY too late. Matthews should have been dumped long ago, even if it cost the Halos/Arte even more money. Scioscia clubs have always had good team chemistry and keeping GMJ around so long went against club philosophy.

He really worked his butt off and he certainly deserves an A for effort. Only time will tell how well the moves pan out, of course. If Pineiro’s new “one-seamer” works as well this year as it did last, and if Godzilla mashes the way I know he can (barring injuries), he gets the A. I definitely don’t agree that Matsui for Vladdy is “a wash.” I love Vladdy but he is not the same hitter he was at all, and was rarely the clutch power hitter we needed and that’s one factor Matsui definitely brings to the table. I don’t stats—sorry—but I’ve watched and listened to a lot of baseball and I can’t remember how many times Vlad just couldn’t deliver in the final 2 innings for us, while Hideki has been far more successful in late inning and bifg game clutchness-the 6 ribbies in the final WS game against the Phillies was no abberration, but symbolic of his baseball career.

You are right about Halliday, of course; we were going to give away many of our young promising players but the Jays liked the Phillies package better. So I have to give the Phillies and the Mariners’ GM’s the ’A’s’ for acquiring Doc and Lee, respectively. Or perhaps they get A+’s and Reagins gets the A/A-. Like many of us, I felt that a pitcher of Halliday’s caliber was the missing ingrediant o take us to the promised land (see Sabathia, Hershieser, Beckett, Big Unit, Koufax, etc.) But, it’s true, Reagins busted his ass to try and broker the deal and it just wasn’t in the cards.

(BTW, did you ever wish you could take back an ill-advised email, texting, or posting (like on this site)? I hate it when that happens…)

He maintains about the same payroll for a team that lost money last year, he acquires two quality starters during the last six months, tries to get Halladay who wasn’t going to a West Coast team, doesn’t decimate the farm system, offers fair contract offers to Lackey and Figgins, the team can hold the line on ticket prices in tough economic times, and the Angels are still the team to beat in the West.

Could anyone else do better than that?