Reviewing My Dire Predictions from December

I am tired of the revisionist history to support the constant attacks on management of this team. You do not deserve the self-congratulatory thread you started here.

1) Regarding Wood, Aybar, Figgins, and Pierre

Today you claim that management placed “too much pressure” on Brandon Wood, although you do not indicate how they could have taken that alleged “pressure” off of him. You also claim that management should have paid $10 million for a lead-off hitter like Juan Pierre “to supplement the line-up” so Erick Aybar would not be “out of position” (that is, would not be leading off).

Re-read your original post. You claimed that letting Chone Figgins go was a “good move,” because you “couldn’t stand watching him choke in the playoffs,” and because the Angels had “a clear back-up plan” in Wood. You referred to Wood as an “organization product and a guy who has star potential all over him.” You did not suggest signing another lead-off hitter. Instead, your only complaint regarding Aybar was that management let him know he was “a possible goner” in a trade for Roy Halladay. Therefore, your criticism of management’s decision to replace Figgins with Wood and thereby promote Aybar to lead-off is baseless, because you fully supported that decision at the time.

2) Regarding Pineiro, Kazmir, Lackey, Halladay, and Oswalt

You also have shifted your arguments regarding our starting pitchers.

Today you claim that you “really pushed” for “getting a Roy Halladay type player.” In fact, however, your primary complaint was that the Angels did not re-sign John Lackey. According to you, Lackey was worth the contract that he received — $82.5 million for five years — because he was “the face of our pitching staff,” was “better than [A.J.] Burnett,” and “deserved the benefit of the doubt” with regard to his injury issues. To your credit (but not your credibility), you now appear to have abandoned this claim. Lackey had spent significant time on the disabled list in consecutive years and his ERA+ had dropped from 150 in 2007 to 118 and 119 the last two seasons. So far this year, Lackey’s ERA+ is 87. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/lackejo01.shtml He thus was not worth $82.5 million, and that contract could be a major albatross for Boston in three or four years, if not sooner.

Having abandoned your prior argument regarding Lackey, you now claim that we should have acquired Roy Halladay or Roy Oswalt in place of Scott Kazmir and Joel Pineiro because Halladay ($16 million) or Oswalt ($15.5 million) would have cost the same as the combination of Kazmir ($8 million) and Pineiro ($8 million). There are two problems here. First, as noted above, Halladay and Oswalt were not free agents. In addition to paying their salary, we would have needed to trade our best and cheapest talent to acquire them. Second, under this scenario, we also would have needed to replace Kazmir or Pineiro with a AAA pitcher.

Rather than trade away the team for one player and round out the rotation with an unproven minor leaguer, management chose serviceable depth and upside without any long-term commitment. The upside would be for Kazmir to return to his form of two years ago, which he did with the Angels during the regular season last year, and for Pineiro to pitch like he did last season. If neither does so, the Angels can shed both contracts after next season.

3) Regarding Fuentes, Rodney, and K-Rod

You claim that management “wasted” $14.5 million on Brian Fuentes and Fernando Rodney when they instead could have paid $12 million to Francisco Rodriguez and $2 million “on somebody else.” This is incorrect for numerous reasons.

First, we tried to sign K-Rod for $12 million; he refused. The Angels offered K-Rod a contract of $34 million for three years ($11.3M per year), which was in the range of contracts signed that offseason by Brad Lidge ($12.5M per year for three years), Joe Nathan ($11.75M per year for four years), and Francisco Cordero ($11.5M per year for four years). K-Rod rejected that offer. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/15/sports/sp-rodriguez15 Instead, he declared for free agency reportedly seeking “a five-year contract, possibly equaling the $15 million average salary Mariano Rivera is earning from the New York Yankees.” http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/28118865/ The Angels thus decided to search for other options.

Second, K-Rod’s current contract cannot be viewed as a mere $12 million commitment. As pointed out above, you have conflated the annual cost of the contract with the total cost, thus greatly understating the long-term risk. The Mets agreed to pay K-Rod $37 million for three years, with an option of $17.5 million for 2012 that is likely to vest automatically. http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2004/12/new-york-mets.html

Third, K-Rod has not performed up to the level of that contract. To the contrary, in a pitcher’s park in the NL, K-Rod converted only 35 of 42 save opportunities (83%) last season for the worst conversion percentage of his career as a closer. His peripheral stats also reflected a career-worst year. He posted an ERA of 3.71 that was nearly a run higher than his worst year as an Angel, a WHIP that was the highest of his career, a BB/9 rate that was the highest of his career, a K/9 rate that was the lowest of his career, a HR/9 rate that was his highest since 2003, and an ERA+ of 112 that was significantly lower than his previous worst year. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rodrifr03.shtml That performance was consistent with numbers that, for the most part, had trended downward since 2006. Thus far this year, K-Rod again has blown 2 of his 10 save opportunities, and he got into a public feud with his bullpen coach over “the Mets’ heavy reliance on Rodriguez.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/sports/baseball/25mets.html?ref=baseball&loc=interstitialskip

Fourth, Fuentes performed comparably to K-Rod last year converting 48 of 55 save opportunities (87%) with an ERA+ of 116. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/f/fuentbr01.shtml Although Rodney posted a lower ERA+ of 105, he also arguably outperformed K-Rod as closer by converting 37 of 38 save opportunities (97%). http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rodnefe01.shtml

Fifth, you do not identify who we purportedly could sign for $2 million to take Rodney’s place. The average major leaguer made $3 million last season.

4) Regarding Abreu, Matsui, Rivera, Teixeira, and Bay

Here, although you point out that you originally pushed for signing Jason Bay, you now claim that our decisions with respect to the offense are “really painful” because we chose to pay Bobby Abreu, Hideki Matsui, and Juan Rivera a total of $19.25 million when Mark Teixeira costs $20 million. You thus seem to suggest that we should have signed Teixeira to play first base at $20 million, moved Morales to left field, and somehow filled two other positions (DH and RF) for free. This too is wrong.

The Angels reportedly offered Teixeira $160 million for eight years ($20M per year), but they withdrew that offer when it became apparent “that Teixeira did not intend to play for the Angels” and instead was using them “to drive up the price for the other interested clubs.” http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ti-teixeira122108 The Red Sox came to that same conclusion. Soon thereafter, Teixeira signed with the Yankees for eight years and $180 million ($22.5M per year).

Moreover, the Angels pursued and signed Rivera and Abreu only after “it became clear Mark was not going to be returning.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703574604574499543935811318.html Therefore, Teixeira at $20 million was never an option for the Angels, and your attempt to blame management for choosing Abreu and Rivera over him in December 2008 has no basis in fact. It also should be noted that those contracts — Rivera received $12.75 million for three years ($4.25M per year) and Abreu received $9 million for one year — were widely praised by analysts and fans alike.

There also was no realistic way for the Angels to sign Bay this past offseason. The Mets agreed to pay Bay $66 million for four years ($14.5M per year), and further agreed to a vesting option for a fifth year at $17 million. http://www.nj.com/mets/index.ssf/2010/01/jason_bays_contract_with_ny_me.html That was well out of the Angels’ price range, and the Angels thus decided not to pursue Bay once he declined Boston’s offer of $60 million for four years. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/10/sports/la-sp-angels-fyi10-2009dec10 Given Abreu’s consistently strong performances the last several seasons, it is absurd to fault the Angels for spending $18 million over two years on Abreu rather than as much as $80 million over five years on Bay.

This difference in price also cannot be discounted by reference to Matsui’s contract of $6 million for one season. If the Angels had signed Bay to play the outfield with Rivera and Hunter, they still would have needed to sign a DH or give the job to Mike Napoli, in which case they would have had no viable backup to Jeff Mathis at catcher.