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Yeehaw! We made it.
Camp TrOhtani is open for business. Before we settle into the slow drone of baseball action, let’s scramble like mad with happy frenzy as Tempe opens the fields to pitchers, catchers, and early position players reporting.
Welcome-To-Spring-Training-Links:
A Little Bit of Angels News
This may come as a shock, so brace yourself. A lot of the potential for success in Anaheim this year will depend on the starting rotation. Thank you Mike Digiovanna. Deeper in the article there are some comments from Billy Eppler about rotation plans in 2018. “...’We’ve run a lot of different permutations. We’ve crossed off a lot of them and have two real models we’re looking at.’.....Do both involve six-man rotations?.....’I’m not gonna go any farther than that, but we definitely have looked at a six-man rotation.’...“
[Well, I am running permutations, too. I have run a lot of options for a 5 man/6 man flipping rotation through to the All-Star Break. I am ready to post that work and will do in a separate article. I still have to run the scenarios for a straight 6-man rotation and then for a straight 5-man rotation - both including Ohtani - for the sake of comparison. It is my belief that we need to have these others for context. It’s just that it is a large volume of information and needs to be broken up so that it can be digested............]
Your starting pitcher candidates are run through here..........If you get yourself a subscription to The Athletic, here is another look at a 6-man rotation option, from Pedro Moura..........(And you should do that subscription, now that The Athletic has the Angels surrounded with their Padres/Dodgers-centric coverage. They are aggressively expanding still. Jessica should get a call any minute now. Anyway, there is now a chance we get some Angels coverage from a national online pub, since a bit of that talent will sniff around Anaheim when something forces their hand).........
Blockbuster trades always cause quite a bit of angst at the time. In hindsight, with perspective, they mostly get looked up on ‘meh’. So it is with the Zack Greinke for Jean Segura/Johnny Hellweg/Ariel Pena deal with the Brewers back in 2012.............
You want Arte to sign Mike Trout to a contract extension, don’t you? Well, one pro-player point of view suggests that guys like Mike need to take one for the union, and not do that. because that will force owners to spend a lot of stupid money again. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? If guys like Arte are not blowing wads of capital on guys like Josh Hamilton, then the solution is to prevent guys like Arte from committing wads of capital on guys like Mike Trout. Genius. Why didn’t I think of that?..........Or, you know, the players could just admit that they screwed everything up by wanting all those creature comforts and hosing all those minor league and international players, and just strike to get their way. And that will win over the public because we are not going to be having as much fun as we would have had Arte spent even more money on Josh Hamilton..........
Everywhere In Baseball
BOOM! goes the baseball season. Folks, we have a new PEDs drama on our hand. One Juan Carlos Nunez has sued the ACES agency (Seth and Sam Levinson) of cheating him out of commissions and expenses. And his lawsuit is accusing the defendants of paying clients under the table and feeding them banned substances. That ACES has been associated with an abnormally high number off PEDs players is not news. The news is that an insider is willing to spill the beans on all that actually was going on..........
Former MLB pitcher Esteban Loaiza was busted for smuggled narcotics down in San Diego. Sheesh. Here are the sordid details. How much of this is going on that a guy who made more than $40 million in his pro career is running around SoCal as a coke mule?..........And the guy was running drugs from his home next door to a pre-school?............
It used to be that a franchise reached a point where they had to decide how to keep open their window of title hopes. Recently that decision point became whether to try to keep that window propped open, or choose to slam it shut yourself. But now, what with all the teams already racing to the bottom a team like Cleveland needs to figure out how to keep their window propped open long enough to wait out the current tanking teams so that they can more safely slam that window shut on their own fingers and tank with fewer competing bottom feeders..........
Pace of play is not a new concern. Didn’t you ever wonder why a failed bunt attempt with two strikes resulted in an out?..........
Don’t blame Mike Trout, Josh Donaldson or Jose Altuve for recent MVP’s not keeping up with the career of Manny Ramirez. Blame shitty-assed BBWAA voters and Boston pharmacology............
The Sporting News ranks The Five Best Bullpens in Baseball. Looking forward and not backward, I suppose, since LAA is not mentioned. And the LAA bullpen was a Top 5 Bullpen just a few months ago..........
Something to think about: all those teams now in tank mode are lining themselves up to make a run at future prospects that do not appear to be particularly brilliant. There is no Harper/Trout/Guerrero/Ohtani in our near future..........
I need to retire. I can remember the excitement when Three River Stadium opened. It was used for 30 years. It’s now been 17 years since it was blown up...........
Derek Jeter has a master plan. The Golden State Warriors know how to win championships, so go hire one of their guys. Next up, Jim Rutherford of the Pittsburgh Penguins..........
Long form alert: how Babe Ruth became a cancer treatment trailblazer..........
Hot Stove
The Cards took Bud “Inning Eater” Norris off our hands. I know that Norris was not an ace by any stretch of the imagination (he was more like a Greg Holland), but last year would have been catastrophic beyond embarrassing without him.............
With Darvish off the table, like yesterday we now shift our focus to whither shall go Arrieta? And what happens to all the other teams now? Even more focused, what happens now in Milwaukee? See, this is the real reason for so much lamentation this offseason. MSM scribes need something to write about and they get whiny when MLB fails to feed them. Now they have a subject upon which to focus. For sure, let’s not go blaming it on Scott Boras tactics or any such thing. Not when we find out that the Cubs tried to sign Arrieta first and had to settle for a non-Boras client.......
Grant Brisbee see the Darvish deal and still thinks that teams are playing on the cheap. The comments following his essay do all the work for me in trashing his thesis, especially this one that leads with showing the math that Darvish is getting paid right about what he should be worth (and remember Yu has an opt-out real fast should he end up being worth a lot more). Except for one small thing. Invoking the Dodgers as any sort of benchmark for how teams used to behave in a manner that rewarded the players is off base. Recall that the Dodgers ownership came into baseball on a clear mission to burn cash out the nose initially to restore the marquee value of the franchise while they worked the talent pipeline magic to restock the farm system and wait for that farm to mature. That was s short-term, once-in-a-lifetime window and certainly NOT to be used as any status quo..........
The Duffle Bag
Spring Training will not be as colorful this year, what with Goose Gossage not around to shake his fist at passing clouds..............Blue Jays waste zero days showing some respect and honor for the late Roy Halladay. Compare with the piddle that Arte and company demonstrated after the death of Jim Fregosi. (Speaking of which, I lost the emails of those of you who requested patches late last year. Please resend!)..........The problem with classic baseball radio broadcasts is that the Angels are not old-timey enough to get featured..........Need a job? Good at Sales? Baseball Info Solutions is looking for somebody to move to Pennsylvania and sell analytics tools to baseball type folks..........