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HaloShane
Scioscia “We’re confident we have the depth that is going to give us a championship-caliber rotation.” Really!? A championship rotation? The Angels don’t even have an Ace, a #1 starter, that shutdown guy….. They have maybe one #2 at best, and a bunch of #5’s. When your a championship rotation, the team your going against fears you, does not wanna face you. Nobody! Not one person on this staff brings that fear factor.
Travis’ Wood
They don’t have a great rotation but Richards at his best can be an ace and Skaggs and Shoemaker are both above average starters.
gmflores27
Shane I agree with you for once but you don’t know jack about the sport so stop commenting and acting like your opinion trumps all
nyy42
So True!
SamFuldsFive
You expect their Manager to say “Our rotation sucks and we will never contend.”
ryanw-2
He’s supposed to say that! Lol
66TheNumberOfTheBest
“Exactly what the names are gonna be or…”
It’s one of those nameless championship caliber rotations.
jdgoat
Richards and shoemaker can both be number 1’s
A'sfaninUK
That bullpen is maybe the worst in MLB too.
GeoKaplan
Washburn, Sele, Ortiz, Appier, Lackey.
Hardly Smoltz/Maddox/Glavine, or Halliday/Lee/Hamels, but that was good enough to win a championship in 2002.
There is a reason why the season is 162 games, and not 16 Sundays.
halosfan4ever27
I hate this guy… go away haloshane.
angelsforever
Shane, Ryan and his buddy “Chi town” share a brain. They are unable to talk objectively.
Let’s hope that Mike Trout carries the team. He is awesome
jimmyz
And all three of them (Richards, Skaggs, and Shoemaker) have injury concerns. I think the angels will be decent this year and continue to improve for the next couple years but will still be a few years away from being true world series contenders. Hope trout stays there for at least another contract, if not his whole career so he can be there when theyre really good.
cmancoley
agreed and well put
A'sfaninUK
I think the Angels entire season hinges on the defense. With plus defenders everywhere, the pitching doesnt have to be great, but even still they arent even close to being in the same conversation as the Astros, Rangers and Mariners. Their bullpen is an abject disaster too. If no injuries happen they might sniff 82-85 wins, but that’s so not happening I see .500 at best.
HaloShane
It’s refreshing to see another Angel fan/baseball fan tell it how it is. These homer Angel fans are so thin skinned and if you don’t put sugar on top of your post, they get all bent. Unfortunately it is what it is Angel fan. Getting upset at a realist, is not gonna change the Halos season.
A'sfaninUK
lol I’m not even an Angels fan, I’m a non-biased 3rd party. I’m “Just Another Fan”.
66TheNumberOfTheBest
Every time I hear someone say that the Pirates need to sign a veteran starter I think, “did you miss all of Vogelsong’s outings last year?”
He was awful and he, evidently, spent most of the year talking about how great it is to play for the Giants.
Quite the mentor for the young pitching staff.
frankthetank1985
Loney was a decent stand in for the Mets last year but I would have rather to see Flores all year at first than loney. Loney was barely league average, if that, and I wasn’t impressed with his glove at all. Him being counted on as a solid roster spot is scary for them. Just saying. Maybe the Texas homer friendly weather will help.
frankthetank1985
I have been wanting the Mets to grab Pompey for a couple years, especially this off season with all the Bruce talk. I think he can end up being the real deal and a late bloomer. Only time will tell!
stymeedone
I wouldn’t mind the Tigers taking a shot at Pompey. Of course, the only thing they know for sure is that he’s better than Gose, so I guess they don’t know much.
patborders92
He’s the same as Gose, tons of speed and no bat. He’s a future 4th OF’er
stormie
I wouldn’t go that far, his bat has at least some promise. Gose had serious issues with strikeouts from the very beginning, which is hard to fix or be productive around. Pompey’s main issue is that his power has been lacking in Buffalo the last two years, but he’s shown an ability to hit for moderate power in the past, so it’s not a pipe dream to think he could again in the future.
A'sfaninUK
Almost certain Mr. Scioscia does not know what depth actually means. Some facts:
1. Weaver, Santiago, Chacin, Tropeano, Linceum & Heaney started 93 games for the Angels last year and will not be on the 2017 team. They were replaced by Nolasco, Petit, Chavez, Norris and Lamb. This is not depth. They did not replenish, if anything they have even less depth than last year. Depth is having 10+ guys who started 15+ games the season before, or a ton of blue chip ready-now prospects with a strong 6-7 SPs who started 20+ the season before.
2. Richards, Shoemaker and Skaggs are all injury-prone.
3. Even if healthy, Richards-Nolasco-Shoemaker-Skaggs-Chavez/Petit/Norris are in no way, shape or form a championship-quality roatation. It screams middle of the road at best. Now if he wanted to put the onus on how good a defensive team they are, then that angle makes sense. Saying “Our lack of depth will hopefully get cancelled out by the great defense” is a true statement the Angels should be making.
HaloShane
Very well put Just Another Fan. “Facts are Facts”!
GeoKaplan
Except when facts aren’t facts. Unsurprisingly, you seem lost on the distinction.
Skaggs took the mound every 5th day in 2014 before he went out with TJ surgery.
Shoemaker took the mound every 5th day for three seasons until he was hit in the f’ing head by a line drive, an injury as freakish as it is horrific.
Saying that either of these two is “injury-prone” is to torture the language in a manner that would make Torquemada jealous.
It isn’t necessary to be pumped with excitement over the prospective Angels rotation, but honesty and accuracy with the facts should be expected. As stated previously, the 2002 Angels entered the season without an ace, and were 75-87 the year before. Lackey made the team as bullpen depth and was promoted to the rotation when Schoeneweis wore out his welcome. Percival was a bona fide closer, but Shields wasn’t part of the late inning solution when the season started, and Frankie didn’t join the team until the rosters expanded in September. The point is that many of the flaws seen in March work themselves out as the season plays on. Just as the 2002 Angels in March of that year were nobody’s pick to make the postseason, much less win the Series, this team likewise has opportunities we haven’t yet seen.
Being negative is easy. Making the effort to be thoughtful and knowledgeable is work.
A'sfaninUK
Ok you picked one out of 3 points to argue, and I agree, you are right about Shoemaker, he wasn’t injury prone, I was off on that one. However with TJ, it means a pitcher is scarred for life (literally) – mostly due to not having good mechanics and blowing out their arms, so I call that under the umbrella of being “injury prone” as they were never pitching the right way in the first place, so if you have TJ, you get that tag, and I will never change my mind on that.
You still didn’t provide any other arguments against my other points, so yeah, I post mostly facts in these threads, like high 90%. I was wrong about Shoemaker, but that’s it. The 2002 Angels were lightening in a bottle, you can make that straw man argument for literally every overperforming team. Bottom line is the Angels need to add two frontline SP’s and like 5 bullpen pieces to be viewed as legit contenders. They can do that by trading Trout, but refuse to do that, so they are doomed to non-contention.
GeoKaplan
Jordan Zimmermann
Adam Wainwright
AJ Burnett
Tim Hudson
Joe Nathan
John Lackey
Jose Fernandez
Jacob deGrom
All of these pitchers had TJS and returned to successful careers.
John Smoltz went on to HoF.
The idea that a player who undergoes TJS is somehow more prone to injury has no basis in fact.
The reference to 2002 Angels clearly slipped by you: That team evolved into the Series winner as the season played out, but on paper weren’t expected to crack .500 when the season began. That is why baseball is a great game, because it is a marathon instead of a sprint, and many shortcomings work themselves out, as players emerge and trades are made.
BTW, thinking trading Trout is a viable option doesn’t paint you as knowledgeable about the business of the game. No team in MLB has sufficient talent depth that it could make such a deal without crippling its own farm system, negating the value in acquiring Trout. The return the White Sox received for Sale isn’t close to what Trout would garner, and a team like the Braves and deep reserves of young talent would upend all that hard work in a single transaction.
Trading Trout is not a strategy anyone who pays attention to the game would pursue.
tdanella
1)It’s not just Petit Chavez Norris and Lamb. It’s Pounders and Wright and Meyer and Campos and Smith and Alvarez and Banuelos and the guys you list.. That’s plenty of depth. Not every team will have Red Sox level of rotation depth. Almost no one can have 6-7 bonafide MLB starters and expect to not trade one of them. Skaggs you can make a case for but he still had one injury and too many setbacks which aren’t considered injuries.
2) I wouldn’t call Shoemaker or Richards injury prone. Shoe had a rocket launched at his skull and was put on the DL. That’s the only time in his MLB career he’s been on the DL. Richards is just unlucky. He tore his tendon in his leg in 2014 then his UCL in ’16. Both aren’t correlated to call it injury prone. Injury prone would be Hamilton, someone who needs to fix something every six months and normally the same thing they just fixed.
3)Richards is the closest thing to a breakout ace there is. 2014 was stellar and he’s capable of posting those same numbers. He was on his way in 2016. Skaggs has upside to spare. He’s shown the upside in his 10 starts. He’ll be an excellent second starter. Shoemaker had a “bad” year in 2015 but still only had a 4.46 ERA. That’s respectable for a three starter. Nolasco was great after the trade to LAA. He was lights out in his final six starts. You don’t expect a 3.20 ERA out of the fourth spot, You expect a 4.15 ERA. Which is what Ricky can do.
You expect too much out of a rotation. Not every team has three Cy Young winners, two 20-game winners and the next Sandy Koufax.