The Rangers have acquired third baseman Kyle Kubitza from the Angels, per an announcement from club VP of communications John Blake. Cash considerations will head back to the Halos in the deal.
Kubitza had been designated for assignment by Los Angeles as the organization continues to churn through pitching at the major league level, leading to a need for 40-man roster spots. Texas has optioned Kubitza to Triple-A.
Heading into the year, prospect watchers generally viewed Kubitza as a top-ten organizational prospect in an exceedingly thin Angels farm. The 25-year-old had been acquired before the 2015 campaign from the Braves in exchange for left-handed pitching prospect Ricardo Sanchez.
Kubitza is hitting just .253/.349/.366 over 215 plate appearances on the year at Triple-A, and struggled in a brief taste of the majors last year. But he has shown more in the past at the plate. Obviously, Texas was intrigued enough to use an open 40-man spot to add him.
Waste of a guy that can hold a bat, Angels farm is running low on them.
You mean pick up a bat and hold it. The Angels have a ton of those. Every team does.
What a poorly run team. How can a team with no minor league talent let one of their better prospects slip away like this. Yes, I get that an Angels top prospect isn’t the same as another team’s top prospect, but this is nuts.
If he was SUCH a prospect he would’ve been able to stick in the ML’s, since they’ve given every other stiff a chance to play. Maybe they got THIS one right.
Nobody is calling him an elite prospect- what they are saying is that the Angels have no minor league depth and he represents solid minor league depth as he at least possess some upside. They are an exceptionally poorly run organization.
Using the term “prospect” on Kubitza is kind of inaccurate. He’s old enough that if he was able to be a major leaguer he’d be there by now. Not a loss IMO
Thank you Angelsinthetroutfield. This is new regime
“kind of inaccurate”
you might want to buy a dictionary. Kubtiza is 1.7 years below AAA average. But the definition of prospect disregards one important thing… and that’s “That the way baseball go”
You ARE aware that there were 6 seasons between when Jose Bautista entered the league (at age 23) and when he learned how to use a bat, right?
Yeah, because Kubitza is the next JoeyBats…..
The guy isn’t a big leaguer and if this was any other organization nobody would have commented. For whatever reason it’s all the rage to bash LAA as being horribly ran when in reality this move doesn’t register as impactful one way or the other. A Kubitza lvl replacement is a dime a dozen.
Are you really that vapid? Joey Bats wasn’t Joey Bats until he was 29.
.273/.355/.442 vs .266/.355/.414
Those are Jose Bautista’s and Kyle Kubitza’s AAA slash lines. Seriously, your argument is very poor. Bautista wasn’t ANYTHING special until 2010, age 29 season, and to say that Kubitza CAN’T do the same thing is just plain ignorant, foolish, and historically wrong. A “Kubitz lvl replacement” is EXACTLY what Joey Bats was from 2004-2009
Oh, let me compare Kubitza and Bautista on a completely even playing field… Age 24 MLB season…
Kubitza OPS+ was 30
Bautista OPS+ was 9
No they’re not. They’re an organization that had the means to go for it year after year, and unfortunately came up short more often in recent years. If they’re such a poorly run organization then why haven’t they had a 90 loss season in nearly 20 years? 7 playoff appearances and a championship in the last 13 years is pretty good. They contend just about every year. And if you gave all 30 organization’s the same payroll, they’d all sign huge contracts and they’d all make big trades to get where they want to go. The Angels are just an organization with a lot of money that went for it and came up short. So what?
It’s all the rage to bash LAA because fans from about 20 or so other teams wish they had the resources the Angels have, are especially jealous that they don’t have Mile Trout on their team. And on the flip side, Angels fans whine and cry more than just about any other fan base even though they still have it pretty good watching Trout every night and having a team that contends 9 times out of 10.
Wow, that is a high opinion.
Nice way of cherry picking your seasons that mattered… sure 7 playoff appearances in 13 years is great and all, but 1 playoff appearance in the last 6 doesn’t inspire the same vote of confidence that 7 of 13 does… oh, and lets go back beyond 13 seasons… 7 playoff appearances in the last 29 seasons…
Your response still doesn’t prove the Angels are a poorly run organization. 7 playoff appearances in 29 years is pretty good compared to most of MLB. Same with 10 in the last 35 years. The Angels have put a team on the field that can easily make the playoffs almost every year since the late 1970’s. And 9 times out of 10 the results have been due to major injuries and/or some subpar performances. And in some cases, just a lot of competition within their division. None of that has anything to do with the quality of an organization. It’s just baseball. You want poorly run organizations? Lets the put the Royals and 30 years without a playoff appearance — and not even contending for most of that time period — next to the Angels. I’d say the Angels have them beat by a long shot. Again, the Angels are just an organization with a lot of money that has come up short in recent years. Big deal. All of MLB would be facing the same risk if all 30 clubs were given the same resources. And most of them would still fail. Because no matter what, the league still has to average out to 81-81 every season…
“Your response still doesn’t prove the Angels are a poorly run organization”
And your reading skills are in need of some work. I wasn’t trying to prove that they are or aren’t a poorly run organization, as you would be indicated by the lack of stance on such on each and every one of my posts on this article. I was merely showing that your cherry picked time period of success isn’t exactly fair.
The Texas Rangers are the same 7 playoff appearances in 29 years AND they were in 1st place in the ’94 strike season, so technically better than the Angels. The Astros have made 7 post seasons in that time span, the Mariners made 4, and the Athletics made 12… making the Angels average for their division…. again, not indicative on how the organization is run, just how the team performs, which is an entirely different argument.
An organization that continually signs big name free agents that vastly underperform their contracts as their primary way of improving the team is a poorly run organization. And the Angels fall into that category.
The fact that they’re DFAing their top 10 prospects is more about how unbelievably bad their farm system is, not a poor move by the front office…except the front office is why the farm is unbelievably bad in the first place.
You have to wonder if there’s a team that would take Pujols’s contract along with Trout, taking the vinegar to get to the honey, if you will. If they traded them both they would get the pick of not only prospects but current all-stars too, and have $260M in the account to spend to fill holes. You just know Boston would trade them Betts plus whoever else to land the modern legend in Trout and the Papi-replacement in Pujols and they have the money to do it. Would be the biggest story in MLB trade history if it happened, and the Angels would go from bottom feeders to contenders in a nanosecond if they had the money to spend on pitching.
Now bring on the Boston fans who will say Trout isn’t worth Betts or some nonsense….
except there is no pitching to spend money on in the foreseeable future. Have you looked at next year’s FA list?
The current front office has been around for less than a year and Kubitza was acquired by the last GM as were all the other moves you mentioned but ya they are terrible…
If you want to see something genuinely terrible just re-read your Trout trade proposal.
I don’t think it’s nearly as terrible as you put it… you’re just not looking at it right…
Pujols and Trout for Betts and “plus whoever else to land” it
so… Betts and Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr, David Price, Andrew Benintendi, Yoan Moncada for starters
25yr old should never be included in top prospect lists
This move has more to do with the domino effect all their injuries has created, as well as the good value they’ve gotten in Jefry Marte, Gregorio Petit, and Rafael Ortega. Which is pretty much the equivalent of calling on prospects to fill holes and getting production out of them. Kubitza was basically blocked, and I think this move pretty much marks him as a journeyman.
Relax, everybody… Kubitza was hitting .274 with a whopping 2 home runs in an extremely hitter – friendly league…plus, he’s already 25 and has yet to achieve anything close to blue-chip or even ML regular status. Let’s not act like they gave up on Yoan Moncada or Joey Gallo…
Anyway, I think the Angels would be better suited to giving more time to Jefry Marte to see what he could really do, or even giving Choi another shot. He was hitting over .320 with an OBP north of .400 in AAA as of about a week ago, last I checked. ..
I like Marte. Hoping the Halos sell high on Escobar and get something for Joe Smith, Salas, and a few others seeing as they have some young alternatives that could use the experience at the ML level. (namely Bedrosian and Morin)
Pretty sure this was a depth and reclamation move by the Rangers signaling that Gallo is on his way up at some point soon. A change of scenery might make this a steal by the Rangers. Here’s hoping.
If you’ve shown you’ve had a tad bit of success, change of scenery might help. Maybe He is what he is
This move makes me think Texas may be looking to deal Gallo at the deadline for pitching.
Moves like these are why Texas has a top farm system, and the Angels don’t. He is from Colleyville, Texas, and is a big, athletic, left handed hitting 3rd baseman that could play first or in the outfield. Adding these type players, who was a 3rd round pick, is like getting an extra draft pick, that someone else paid the signing bonus to, and has already invested money in. He may never make it to the bigs, but it is a wise investment on Texas part.