Halos Heaven: FanPosts

Birthday Letter to Josh Hamilton from an Angels Fan

2013-05-21T23:33:54Z

Today you enter your 32nd year. This is your first birthday as an Angel. Happy Birthday Mr. Hamilton.

A lot has happened since your last birthday, indeed, that is the understatement of a lifetime. Since your last birthday, you secured for yourself and your family, a lifetime of financial security. You moved your family, your wife, your girls, to Southern California, and you left behind a world of memories and history in Texas.

It seemed to me, as an Angels fan, that you were pretty hurt when Texas didn't offer you a deal before last season started, correct me if I am wrong, but it seemed that way. You came out of the gates swinging in 2012, and by the Allstar Break, you had all but guaranteed yourself a great contract in the offseason. I read the news, as we all saw what we saw. You made some lifestyle changes, gave up chewing tabacco, caffeine?; I didn't follow every article at the time, but you faded down the stretch, and at the end of the year, one lousy game meant the difference between a great season, and complete failure. There was a lesson there, to be had in that 31st year, for a player, a veteran player such as yourself.

Anaheim isn't the easiest place to hit a homerun. You made a decision in the offseason, to enter this year about 15-20 lbs leaner, because, you said the Texas heat wasn't going to melt 20 lbs off you down the stretch. Well, if we look at your performance last year, your best numbers were at the heavier, buffer, stronger weight. The lesson here is, a heavier frame provides more force when you hit the ball, which is needed here. As you were very busy this offseason signing lifechanging contracts, moving your family, etc, this is really the, excuse me phase, of the package. Your routine was broken, how could you pack on 20 lbs this offseason in the gym, etc. Fine. Albert Pujols kind of screwed the pooch last season by creating a pocket of amnesty for all following superstars coming here, who suck for the first 2 months.

As of your 32nd birthday though, the excuse me phase is now over. Happy Birthday.

I have some sympathy for you, as do many Angels fans, because we must, adopt you at this point. The flawed and talented Hamilton is ours, to salvage and support. Your story is melding with our story(Angels fans), a season that seems to want to mimic your career, darkness in the beginning, and begs the question, "will this team/person ever recover from this?!"

It occurs to many, that you are indeed, in the dark valley between fan bases. The Rangers have disowned you, vanquished you, some would say. The Angels fans have been conditioned to root against you as an archrival for half a decade now. It is as if your awards and accolades are mere advertisements to us; you are a rookie now, in this Angels world.

Today you will blow out 32 candles. In 2016 and 2017, you will blow out 32 million a year from the Angels payroll. This is your transition year, your transition half of a year, to adjust, and to learn what it will take, to earn that last 64 million dollars. It might take working out every single day of the next 3 offseasons. It might take, coffee, or allergy medication...or another handler, for your first handler's needs.

I want to be a Josh Hamilton fan, I have to be. I am an Angels fan, and as a team, it behooves Angels fans to hope for the best in this situation and expect Josh Hamilton to pull together a great run this year, as your wildcard style of play seems to do at it's best, Josh. So far, you have made it very difficult for Angels fans to accept you. There has been moments of great hustle and great throws from the outfield, and there has been loafing and oafing out there as well.

Pujols needs some time off to heal his foot. He plays like a trooper right now, and he still makes hard contact, but he does it on one leg. He needs a few weeks off. In order for him to have that, the team needs some vintage Josh Hamilton to step it up before the allstar break and give this team a much needed turbo boost. Can you do that for this team Josh?

You are set for life off the field, but your work on the field is only just beginning. Be the man, not just the player. It takes more than a prayer to take this Angels team to the next level; it takes the determination to accept nothing less of yourself. Reward the faith of your fans this 32nd year of your life. Forget the money, and playball.

Happy Birthday and God speed.

Fan.

Dear Josh Hamilton,

Today you enter your 32nd year. This is your first birthday as an Angel. Happy Birthday Mr. Hamilton.

As of your 32nd birthday though, the excuse me phase is now over. Happy Birthday.

Happy Birthday and God speed.

Fan.

Are we witnessing the death of long-term free agent contracts?

2013-05-18T16:26:36Z

Are the Angels finally proving that you can't build a winner by signing expensive free agents to long term, guaranteed deals? In a word ... maybe.

As I contemplate what I'm going to do with all this newfound free time since I've given up hope for this team ... two wins forward, three wins back ... I began thinking about the core, fundamental problems with this team. Aside from the obvious, well documented and much commented issues facing this team ... abysmal bullpen, non-existent situational hitting, ill-timed hit-n-run plays, base path blunders and underperforming big names ... it's the last topic that has perplexed me most. We've talked about poor coaching (my personal pet peeve) environmental changes, habitual first pitch swinging and the pressure of big time contracts taking their toll, I think it's the pressure that is the most damaging.

The size and scope of these contracts has a cancerous effect. Whether it's to the psyche of the player, struggling to live up to the expectations, to the fans expecting great things, or to the "boat anchor effect" these deals have on the ability of the club to react; the net result is these deals wreak havoc. (Let's not also forget the too comfortable, "we'll get 'em tomorrow" attitude the money enables) Yes, one could argue that the bidding wars for the services of these FA's is what drives these contracts into the stratosphere. But perhaps GM's should take a closer look at the evidence in front of them ... the Angels' struggles over the past four years, the Yankee's struggles to perform, Boston and Miami shedding expensive free agents ... and decide it's best to pass on the big name and build your team through smart acquisition of talent and developing prospects. Perhaps they will decide it's time for a change.

It's my opinion that Arte may be doing baseball an unintentional "solid" over these past few years by proving there is almost no value in signing big name free agent players to guaranteed long term deals worth big dollars. (This goes DOUBLE for signing your manager to long term, guaranteed deals!)

Clearly I'm not saying something new here, Its often said that no one re-invents baseball. Perhaps, but we can certainly re-invent how players contracts are built. It's time baseball joined the rest of the free market and finally structured performance-based deals. The Angels have bet big on upside potential with no regard to downside risk. Everything had to click into place in just the right way for this to work. Now we've got a manager we can't fire, two big name free agents who aren't remotely living up to their "legends" and no room to make changes except to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Hope springs eternal. I sure hope we see this turnaround when we get some pitching back from the DL but I'm not encouraged. It may be a long, cold summer for a few years to come. Just my two cents.

Are the Angels finally proving that you can't build a winner by signing expensive free agents to long term, guaranteed deals? In a word ... maybe.

Hope springs eternal. I sure hope we see this turnaround when we get some pitching back from the DL but I'm not encouraged. It may be a long, cold summer for a few years to come. Just my two cents.

One Franchise's Innovative Approach to the Management of Pitchers: Is it Time for the Angels to Experiment?

2013-05-14T18:16:50Z

Back in December of this year I made the mistake of posting on Christmas Day. Predictably, my post about managing MLB pitching received scant attention. In a nutshell, I suggested that since MLB hasn't changed the basic five-man rotation supported by a cast of relievers since the mid-eighties, it is perhaps time to reconsider this default approach. Indeed, I predicted, some enterprising franchise is eventually going to come up with their own Moneyball moment, and the rest will lag behind for a few years. I ended my post with a fanciful dream of how a radical new approach might look. I'll not go into detail, but I envisioned managers and pitching coaches with powerful handheld computers (iphones) stocked with probability software to help them make in-game decisions, and so on. My ideas were met with skepticism. My own thought at the time was that the Angels wouldn't be innovators because they were too good. Desperate teams call for desperate measures, and in December of last year I figured the Angels would be far from desperate. Well, I was wrong.

I happen to live in the boonies of the midwest, and our local single A team happens to be affiliated with the Houston Astros. I attend a lot of games. The park is nice, the tickets cheap, and they sell local craft beer. I also try to pay attention to the prospects coming through, of which the Astros have many. More interesting than prospects, and germane to my topic, however, is what the Astros are doing with pitching. All through their farm system, they've come up with a fairly radical new approach that's worth our attention. Instead of a five-man, five-game rotation, they have eight starter-types on each team. (I say "types" because the franchise seems to want to get away from the distinctions between starters and relievers. These are all pitchers who can go out and potentially throw several innings.) They call the system "piggybacking," and the way it works is on a four-game rotation, with each game slotted for a pair of "starters." Example, every fourth game, a pair of starters know they're going to pitch. The "starter" is expected to get through five innings if everything goes right; the second guy pitches the last four. The next time they're up, they swap positions. The first pitcher is kept to 75 pitches, the second 60. With eight "starters" on each team, that leaves room only for three or four traditional "relievers." These guys are basically relegated to mop up duty, as the best pitchers on each team are the eight pseudo starters. As far as I can tell, this system doesn't make use of a "closer."

So far the results, according to the Astros, is good--but of course they'd say that publicaly. Really, it's far too early to tell. A couple of the benefits touted is that this system is easier on arms, and it reduces the amount of times a batter will see a single pitcher on any given day. One reason the Astros are doing this is that they're so bad, they might as well. Another reason is that their farm organization is so full of starting pitchers, that this is a way to include more guys in more games. The pitchers, at least when talking in public, have apparently bought into the system. The Astros have no immediate plans to bring this system to their MLB club, but if it proves a big enough success in the minors, I don't know why they wouldn't.

Of course, the Angels have such a thin farm system now, especially in terms of starting pitching, that such a system wouldn't work at all. But going forward, I wonder if the Angels should begin to think creatively about pitching. It certainly couldn't hurt at this point. It's nice to think our current troubles may eventually lead to better things.

Poll

The Angels organization should:

Umpire Evaluation Project, Care of Pitching Changes

2013-05-10T15:50:45Z

via yourkillinmesmalls.files.wordpress.com

Are these guys really just bad at their jobs, or is there an underlying conspiracy in Major League Baseball? My guess is the latter, but I need more evidence to prove it. What I am asking here is for 2-3 volunteers who are already watching all of the Angels games to just keep track of the missed calls both for and against the Angels. Just post in the comments if you're interested in helping.

The Astros' illegal pitching change last night would definitely fall into this category of missed calls.

There's not a ton of missed calls, I would say roughly 1-2 per week in games your team plays (roughly 15-30 across baseball, probably more this week), so this wouldn't take much time at all if you're already watching the games and noticing these things. I will provide all data and analysis at the end of the season to anyone who wants it.

Ideally I would like to be able to do this for all 30 teams over a full season, but at least I am going to try to get volunteers from 5-8 teams this year, then maybe expand to 30 next year. I'm already tracking it for the Rays since I see every game. So far, we are at 8 missed calls against and 1 for.

This would be an example of what I'm looking for:

OAK at CLE

5/8 - Rosales bats in top 9th with 2 outs, bases empty, OAK trails 4-3. Rosales hits HR about 2 feet above yellow line off railing to tie the game, ball bounces back onto field, initially ruled a double. Umpires use video replay, determine inconclusive.

Umpires involved: HP--John Tumpane. 1B--Paul Nauert. 2B--Angel Hernandez. 3B--Doug Eddings.

Other examples of incorrect calls would include: all safe/out calls, fair/foul calls down the line, tagging/re-tagging bases on fly balls, bases awarded when the pitch did not hit the batter (i.e. Jeter faking his hand hurting from pitch), balks, etc. As a rule of thumb, if you're unsure, mark it down. I should stress that we need to track both calls for and against your team to determine the balance, so you have to be unbiased as far as admitting that they got a call wrong that helped you as well as all the ones they get wrong that go against you (those are the easy ones!).

This Team Can Win, This Team Will Win.

2013-05-08T00:23:29Z

This isn't a rough start, this is getting jilted at the altar, this is getting dumped at the Prom, this is discovering the winning lottery ticket was fake. This isn't just losing on a baseball level, this is losing on a spiritual level, this is losing on a Karmic level, a Cosmic level, this isn't just losing, it's like watching a tradition die. 11-20 will do that, but it's not as bad as it seems...

In reality, this is just letting go of expectations, getting out of the way, and letting this team find itself. This team will find a way to win, to come together, and to, yes, make a serious run at the playoffs this season. It starts with this three game sweep of Houston, followed by crushing the White Sox, and coming home with some momentum.

It's way too early to give up, and blow the team up. This team hasn't even fired up the engines yet, but in the meantime, venting is necessary, so these poems are born to address the situation, please add your own:

What do we see?

We see greatness grazing in the pastures of our pastime.

We see swings getting checked, and checks getting cashed, a whole lotta zeroes, and some ugly math.

We see heads up on shoulders, dandruff and flakes, nibbling on edges, and making mistakes.

We see Scioscia and Butcher reach for the phone, with two runners on, but there's nobody home.

We see Mike risk 2, to try to win 3, ends up winning just 1 hell of a mutiny.

We can understand, this might take a few weeks, but shouldn't you oil the machine, if it squeaks?

Shouldn't you move the Ham if it squeals? Three Strikes you're out is one hell of a deal.

Shouldn't you keep the Trout in the stream, leadoff last year was more than a dream!

The best in the league told to get back in line, and do it again, batting 2nd this time?

* * * * * * *

This Astros series, nay, this entire Astros AL West addition, is a gift from above. Hopefully the Angels can turn this thing around, the patient is critical, but we do have some miraculous talent, let's hope it comes through.