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Can the Angels Contend Again in 2017?

Baseball media is a funny thing. It champions the great teams, trumpeting their arrival and building their hype, giving them World Series predictions and #1 power ranking spots. If said team has success, they get even more praise, more hype, more love, and more positivity from the media. But if they falter, even if they have a proven track record of success and an injury situation that truly is so dire that no team could cope with it, the media turns against them. It brutalizes them, predicting last place finishes, criticizing the team's direction, shredding a farm system by using rankings that are far from an exact science. The media loves to wag the finger of blame, kicking the struggling teams in baseball while they're down to get reads from bold headlines, even when these may or may not be true. As soon as baseball media can stir up a storm of positivity, they can swirl a monsoon of negativity, influencing the mindset and actions of everyone from the average fan to the front office and players. This is what has happened over the last 3 years in SoCal with our beloved Angels, and it is precisely why we need to take a step back from this tsunami of "trade Trout" and "terrible farm system" the media has created and truly look at whether or not the Halos can flip the script in the coming years.

Exhibit A: Injuries to the Rotation

Honestly speaking, the injuries to starters Garrett Richards, Andrew Heaney, Tyler Skaggs, and CJ Wilson is the premier reason for the Angels struggles this year. All 4 have proven to be anywhere from fringe Cy Young contenders to simply solid sub-4.00 ERA guys during their career, yet only the first two pitched at all in 2016, and it wasn't for very long. Its extremely hard to envision any ballclub having the ability to win without their flamethrowing ace, the plus-plus stuff behind him that Heaney and Skaggs possess, and the big-game experience of Wilson, who will most likely never be an Angel again. That being said, 2016 has allowed Matt Shoemaker to show what he can really do, and given Hector Santiago and Nick Tropeano the opportunity to display their All-Star potential if they can become more consistent. Excluding Wilson, that gives the Angels 6 quality starters for the future who could easily be the foundation of a 90+ win team if healthy. Unfourtunately, health is the precise reason the Angels 2017 season is in such doubt. Heaney will miss all of 2017 and Richards could very well follow him to another 60-day DL spot if he doesn't recover, leaving the Angels with very little wiggle room in terms of the rotation. This single factor could be the decisive one in determining how 2017 will go, as the rotation with G-Rich has much more teeth than without. These injuries are well documented, but the media would rather tell the tale of the Angels simply being bad and not factor in these injuries to garner hype for a Trout trade, even when, at full strength, the rotation has the sheer quality to easily be a top-12 group in the majors.

Exhibit B: The Offense

While the Angels may no longer be the offensive juggernaut that carried the team to the best record in baseball a couple of years ago, the offense is not to blame for the struggles this year. The Angels offense is not what one would expect out of a last place team, as they have a better team average (.265) than Toronto, Houston, and the Chicago White Sox, as well as more team RBI (394) than Houston, who is surging in an attempt to catch the Rangers. The offense is 8th in the Junior Circuit, which, while it is not setting the world on fire by any means, has been enough for teams below them to have success, such as Houston, and to some degree, Kansas City and Chicago. This leads us to the key factor for the Angels struggles this year: pitching. The banged up Angels carry a 4.42 ERA, good for 19th in baseball in that category, which proves that this aspect of the game is the key reason why the Angels haven't had success this year, pointing to success moving forward if the staff and bullpen can keep progressing both from a health and developmental standpoint. If Albert Pujols can return to form, and CJ Cron, Andrelton Simmons, and Jett Bandy keep making strides at the plate, the Angels could easily have a top-5 offense yet again, and carry the team just as they did before, which could all come together as soon as next year, especially if the team can find the answer in left field.

Exhibit C: Development

Despite the weakness of the Angels farm system, which has been as overplayed by the media as "Watch Me" by Silento at kids' birthday parties, the young talent already at the big league level has taken major strides this year, proving that they can be the core of this team moving forward. Consider how well CJ Cron had performed at the plate, truly coming into his own as a middle-of-the-order RBI guy just before the injury, racking up both runs for the Angels and fantasy points for prudent players around baseball. Additionally, once Andrelton Simmons was able to get his rhythm right at the plate after returning from his thumb injury, he finally delivered by becoming the great contact hitter we had all hoped and dreamed of, raising his average from .229 to .270 while in the midst of a career high 13 game hitting streak. Jett Bandy has been great at the plate in his first full season, winning the backup job over the more established Carlos Perez. On the pitching side of things, the development is even better. Cam Bedrosian has been stellar lately, and looks like the closer of the future as he continues to mature, having not allowed an earned run in his last 18 outings (since May 31st), while lowering his ERA to 1.09. Nick Tropeano looked like a dark horse All-Star before he went down injured (sounds familiar, huh), and could continue to rise as one of baseball's young pitching talents. And where does one even start with Matt Shoemaker? Just when everything had turned against him, just when we had all given up on him, just when he had been demoted to the minors for the first time since his stellar 2014 that saw him finish second in AL Rookie of the Year voting, he pulled off one of the most dominant stretches in baseball history, striking out 49 batters before issuing a walk, then dominating June and July, lowering his ERA from over 9 to 4.08. And if this story was a cake, he put the icing on it last night, completing his first career complete game shutout while striking out 13 against the Chicago White Sox. If these guys all keep moving in the right direction and stay healthy, this Angels team is dangerous.

To wrap up, the media is making the Angels out to be some disastrous organization in disarray, one that can't be saved unless the Angels trade Mike Trout, but the storm they are trying to create to fuel big movements in baseball isn't entirely true, as you can see. The Angels can be competitive next year, and it should be an expectation to contend in 2018, once the rotation is healthy, the offense produces to its full potential, and we see continued development from the Halos young talent. In the meantime, let's go Angels.

P.S. Two wins on the trot. Don't call it a comeback. Angels in the Outfield 2016. Year of the (Rally) Monkey.

J.C. Gonzalez

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