OCT. 30, 6:07pm: Brewers assistant GM Matt Arnold has also interviewed with the Angels, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Arnold was a candidate for Pittsburgh’s GM vacancy last winter, but that position went to Ben Cherington.
3:47pm: Ricciardi is not a candidate, Fletcher tweets. Former Giants GM Bobby Evans has received an interview, though, and Mariners assistant GM Justin Hollander (formerly with the Angels) is also in the mix, according to Fletcher. Additionally, they’ve reached out to Eddie Bane, their former scouting director, to gauge his interest in the GM job, Robert Murray reports.
OCT. 29, 11:01pm; Former Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill, Nationals special assistant to the GM Dan Jennings and Cubs VP of player personnel Jason McLeod are also in the running, according to Kiley McDaniel of ESPN.
10:28pm: The Angels have moved slowly to find a new general since firing Billy Eppler at the end of September, but at least a few names have emerged for the job, per reports from Robert Murray, Jon Heyman of MLB Network, Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register, Maria Torres of the Los Angeles Times and Mike Puma of the New York Post.
According to the aforementioned group of reporters, Diamondbacks assistant general managers Jared Porter and Amiel Sawdaye, Athletics assistant Billy Owens and Padres senior advisor Logan White have all interviewed for the job in Anaheim. Giants special advisor J.P. Ricciardi, once the Blue Jays’ GM, is also in the running. The Angels also contacted Cubs vice president of scouting Dan Kantrovitz to gauge his interest in the position, but he’s not a candidate. Kantrovitz turned down the Angels’ overtures and will stay with the Cubs in 2021, Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic reports.
While both Porter and Sawdaye received new contracts with the Diamondbacks just over a year ago, perhaps they’re amenable to taking over another team’s baseball operations. Owens just finished his 19th season in the A’s front office, though he may be open to a change with executive VP Billy Beane possibly set to pursue other interests. And then there’s White, who previously worked for the Dodgers but has been with the Padres since before 2015.
Of course, anyone succeeding Eppler will be taking over a fairly appealing situation. The Angels have missed the postseason six times in a row, but they have the game’s best player, center fielder Mike Trout, as well as a great complement in third baseman Anthony Rendon. Infielder David Fletcher, two-way player Shohei Ohtani, young outfielder Jo Adell and starters Dylan Bundy and Andrew Heaney are also on hand. Plus, owner Arte Moreno has typically been willing to spend, so the budget shouldn’t be a hindrance for the club’s next GM.
Really hope they hire Logan White.
Get real! Mutiny in two years! What they need is a new list of candidates! Haven’t they learned from the last 3 GM’s or are they Ok watching the playoffs from home!
All the guys they are interviewing have a strong reputation with scouting/developing players. I say that’s a great start..
White is the only one in the list that has a strong reputation, don’t kid yourself
I totally agree. Logan White would be my choice. Mutiny? Hardly. He kept his extremely productive scouting staff in tact when he was the Scouting Director in LA. His drafts were still paying dividends when LA won the World Series a few days ago. He was also heavily involved with their International program. Now twke a hard look at where San Diego’s farm system ranked coming into the season They are a very formable foe for the Dodgers next year and beyond. Both LA and SD have had success with trades and low investment free agents. So what boxes doesn’t he check?
Of the bunch Logan white is the clear choice. Seeing hinch get hired makes you wonder if luhnow is a possibility, terrible person great gm.
Whoever gets hired needs to stand up to Arte and sign some actual pitching. This team could be bloody excellent with real honest-to-goodness pitchers on the mound. No more dumpster diving. Stop wasting Trout (and Rendon and Fletcher!)
All due respect and courtesy but why do people say Arte doesn’t want pitching? The Halos went hard after Cole and Wheeler last year and they both signed elsewhere. The next guy on “the list” was Anthony Rendon, the best free agent (and class act) other than a pitcher available. This long time halo guy is thrilled to have him and his skills…I agree, we need pitching badly but to say Arte didn’t is disingenuous and incorrect.
That’s true, the Angels did strike out in their attempt to land Wheeler and Cole. However, I think the real problem here is that they always seem to go after the big name guys and that’s it. Look at their bullpen this year: it was bad. Also, they needed more than just one starting pitcher, so spending $290 million on Cole(reportedly the Angels final offer) would certainly improve their pitching, but Cole couldn’t fix it by himself.
It just the tired narrative some Angel fans and fans of other teams like to follow. Arte wants a championship badly. Sure he’s stumbled along the way. But let’s hope they found whats cannibalizing the organization. They have a good core of young talent. Like you said they went hard after Cole and Wheeler. But some like to gloss over that. As many of said they need to pour money into development. Who wouldn’t want play for the Angels. The weather. Great fan support Trout,Rendon and Fletcher. And young talent in Adell, Marsh and Walsh.
“…they went hard after Cole and Wheeler.”
I’d say they went after Cole and Wheeler, but not hard. In my experience, Moreno goes after guys he should but doesn’t necessarily want with low ball offers just to say he was “in” on them. I know players have teams they dream of playing for, but we have missed out on numerous pitchers in the last few years because of low ball offers. Not all of them simply wanted to play elsewhere.
Moreno needs to make serious competitive offers for top end pitching.
They went after Cole hard, they didn’t go after Wheeler.
Wheeler wanted to play on the east coast. Cole wanted to play for the Yankees and used everyone else to increase the Yankees offer. Cole got overpaid.
Whole heartedly agree. You can’t say Arte hasn’t spent money trying to make the team better. If you offer Cole 300M and he rejects it, you can’t say he didn’t try.
I agree with you on Cole after seeing the numbers. I think he’s the exception.
Im horrified that it seems like the Angels might not mess this up. As an Angel fan, the second you start believing it falls apart. If they make this person equal to the President I might faint.
Bonk, I’m not sure it can fall apart any more than it has already. They can’t even crack .500 with three of the game’s best hitters (Trout, Rendon, Fletcher) in the lineup. I guess we’re about to find out if the problem really was Eppler’s poor eye for pitching….
Eppler went after numerous pitchers in free agency and they all decided to sign elsewhere
@angels fan 100 percent! People act like they didn’t try, barren farm and an owner who only wants to sign big aging bats. It’s tough to rebuild in such a tough situation
Disagree 100%. They got outbid, period. It wasn’t some simple choice to go elsewhere. Philly and NY wanted them more and after one year at least have reaped the benefits
@seth3120 no one cares about your take. Simply put your wrong the narrative that angels didn’t try is false and the players mentioned opted to take larger deals with other teams. Worked out real well though phillies missed playoffs and Yankees knocked out in first round. Be gone troll
Eppler went after pitching hard last winter but his draft record is pretty abysmal. He’s taken tons of boom or bust high school athletes and left college pitchers, many who would be helping about now, on the board.
Most teams are able to cobble together at least the back of their rotation and a decent amount of their bullpen with players they drafted and developed. In 4 years, Eppler has Canning (who fell due to medicals) and Detmers to show for it. That’s it.
There’s a lack of quality pitching at each and every level of the organization.
Tatsumaki
“…Yankees knocked out in first round. Be gone troll”
Coming up short in the postseason is not a knock on one deal (Cole). It’s a knock on the rest of the pitching staff and hitters who came up short. Cole did his job. It’s no reflection on the Cole deal at all. And I’m one who found the Cole deal too rich by $50MM; that’s just where the bidding went and Hal decided to stick with it to the end.
@morivera Yankees were hailed as 2020 champs prior to start of season, cole preformed well bellow his time with stros and looked more like the pirates version at times. While this deal looks decent now paying 36 million per season for a pitcher on the wrong side of 30 is never a good proposition let alone pitching till he is 39….handcuffing themselves with several holes makes little sense.
Yankees have to find 2/3 Quality starters in thin market and little in terms of cap space all while resigning judge, Torres and dj seems impossible. All while paying 60 million to stanton and cole for the next 7 years.
They lost Severino for the season. They lost Tanaka for 5 weeks. They lost Paxton for 5-6 weeks. That’s 3/5 of the rotation. They lost Chapman for 5-6 weeks. They lost Britton for 2 weeks. They lost Kahnle for 6 weeks. That’s #’s 1, 2 and 3 from the pen. They lost 7 of 8 starting position players to the IL. Judge for over a month, Stanton for nearly two. And Voit, who played, was injured pretty much the entire season. It was a bloodbath.
Cole had nothing to do with their in-season or postseason problems. In-season it was injuries, pure and simple. Postseason I already covered.
It seems to me like the Angels have some good candidates for GM. The Padres guy and the Athletics guy would probably be the best options. Not sure if you would want two guys from the Diamondbacks, especially considering that they have only been around for a year and Arizona has really struggled this past year. The Angels absolutely cannot mess this signing up, as they desperately need to get Mike Trout to the postseason.
I normally would say hire literally anyone in the Rays organization but I don’t know now after game 6
What effect does a GM have on in-game management decisions? That’s the manager’s job.
Not anymore – the front office makes more ‘game’ decisions than you’ll ever know.
What does the strategy of one game have to do which GM you here?
Hoping for Billy Owens but know deep down it’ll be Ricciardi
Just say no to JP Ricciardi who was the worst GM in the World. Remember Vernon Wells contract? He passed on drafting Troy Tulowitzki in the draft for SS because he previously drafted Russ Adams (who?). He turned down trading for David Wright in low minors for Jose Cruz Jr. Run for the Hills boys!
0 for 2, pick again!
hire rays’ gm as president of baseball op.
They’ll hire whoever won’t complain about Moreno making all the moves
It’s going to take an extremely innovative GM/POBO to turn the Angels around in short order. They remind me of the Phillies: Some good pieces on the roster, but little in the way of depth or a complete roster.
One thing both Philadelphia and Anaheim have undervalued is that on literally every World Series winner or runner-up stands a homegrown core that was brought up in that club’s organization or was acquired as a prospect/young talent. Sure, you’ve got to spend and make MLB trades to supplement that, but unless you’ve got a solid core, it’s just so hard to consistently win outside of getting lucky with a Wild Card berth every five years or so.
Pretty good analysis, however, I believe that this year it will be much easier for teams to build a roster given the Covid concerns. The market is going to be flooded with good players that are going to be released this year and I think that any competent GM would be able to succeed for the Angels, given the top-end talent they already have on the roster.
Homegrown Core? You mean like Trout, Fletcher, Adell, Marsh, Walsh… Heaney*, Canning, Detmers…
Just one offseason, just ONE, they need to focus on elite PITCHING (free agents) maybe more pitching via trade to WIN NOW in (2021-23) and definitely focus on pitching in the early rounds of the drafts the next few years to WIN LATER (2023…)
Love to see McLeod get the job. An incredibly smart baseball mind.
It just the tired narrative some Angel fans and fans of other teams like to follow. Arte wants a championship badly. Sure he’s stumbled along the way. But let’s hope they found whats cannibalizing the organization. They have a good core of young talent. Like you said they went hard after Cole and Wheeler. But some like to gloss over that. As many of said they need to pour money into development. Who wouldn’t want play for the Angels. The weather. Great fan support Trout,Rendon and Fletcher. And young talent in Adell, Marsh and Walsh.
What can a new GM even really do there with Maddon already in place for the foreseeable future, a meddlesome owner and a few monstrous contracts that significantly limit flexibility?
Well, if the new GM can fix the bullpen and find a couple starters, the Angels will be a very good team. There are plenty of good players that will be released this year, so I don’t think it will be that hard.
Sign 2 pitchers and a shortstop is what the new GM can do for starters.
Changed- Why do you think Maddon is a issue? A lot of owners who meddled have won.
Arte Moreno shouldn’t be in the baseball business
Didn’t Dan Jennings manage the Marlins for a season after being in their front office?
That’s the same Dan Jennings, who also now has a few years of hands-on experience under Mike Rizzo (and a WS ring). Jennings is actually a lot like Rizzo. Similar pro careers and years of scouting and front office experience. Jennings has the advantage of having worked under good and bad owners on both ends of the luxury tax spectrum. He has a scout’s background but more than a decade of experience incorporating advanced stats. He isn’t the sexiest name on the list, but if I were an Angels fan, he would be my pick.
Call up Dave Dombrowski and go all out for a World Series.
Joe Maddon should know who the best minds are in the Rays and Cubs organizations.d
I look to poach the Rays particularly so impressed with their scouting, trading and development.
How about Mike Scioscia?
I think they are a few years away from getting to the World Series.
Give the angels pitching and they would be a playoff team
This winter will provide a unique opportunity for large market teams that have under-performed to get competitive quickly. All it’s going to take is money, signing the flood of Free Agents and Non-Tenders. So teams like LAA, Boston and Detroit should make quantum leaps in their talent base.
(Sorry, KC and Pittsburgh; the money just isn’t there).
And no, developing your own talent and adding to your major league roster aren’t polarities; it’s not either/or, it’s both/and. You can do both, again, especially this year.
There’s some good choices out there; Logan White’s been ahead of the curve for quite a bit. And there’s some really poor ones; J.P. Richardi (along with his errand boy, Keith Law) are disasters waiting to happen. If Arte wants it “NOW!”, Dombrowski wouldn’t be bad.
As a Padre fan I’d hate to see Logan White leave, but he’s probably the best candidate. I completely agree that the big-market teams will have a massive advantage this year, it will be interesting to see which teams go all out this offseason.
In the year 2020 I can’t believe there isn’t a female or a man of color being interview. I mean I think females are just as capable of running a baseball team as the next man
The Angels have had a black GM… has your team. The Angels have had a female owner, has your team?
Big deal, why does gender/color make a difference! It’s more about the person/abilities
Billy Owens and Michael Hill are both Black…
are they good? that’s all that matters!
I agree. I was just responding to the other guy’s inaccurate characterization of the candidates.
But the general lack of diversity in baseball, particularly within front offices, is concerning and may be evidence of some systemic biases throughout the league
very true!
Eppler did a lot of good reimaging a depleted system caused by Moreno (worrying too much about major league talent and not development) & Dipoto (taking low risk low reward college players in his drafts). Eppler had a philosophy to take the team to the promise land. He Sold Trout and Ohtani on that vision and philosophy. He just had so many terrible breaks on the pitching side, whiffing on 1 year deals that most people praised upon the siging, the death of a pitcher mid season, countless TJ surgerys to talented pitchers, missing out on the bigger name deals he was allowed to go after.
White does have a very similar background to Eppler and I believe he would carry a similar philosophy over. I really hope they choose him and get a deal done. Bad breaks mostly did Eppler in. It wasn’t that he had an incorrect philosophy of building up the farm system to sustain long term competitiveness. He had to skirt the window of doing that while also winning now and thats risky. He was able to succeed on the major league side.
There are GM’s who are better at drafting and developing, and GM’s who can take a team to the next level. Eppler is the former, much like Bill Bavasi, and the next GM needs to the latter, like Bill Stoneman was after replacing Bavasi.
Love the development resumes of both Owens and White. White has brought in the bigger names but Owens has fed a consistent stream of talent into Oakland. Would love either one in a GM capacity.
Of course their systems only work with autonomy and considerable investment in scouting and player development, things Arte has thus far been unwilling to do.
Eddie Bane would ruffle feathers but he definitely has an eye for talent. Intriguing idea.
Eddie Bane. I like that idea.
I like Eddie Bane in some compacity
It goes to show they have no clue, Since they have interviewed 1/2 of baseball. Just throw a dart against the wall and see who the next GM will be. Will probably follow the last 3 and be out by 24!!!
Changed- Why do you think Maddon is a issue? A lot of owners who meddled have won.
A consensus from Angels fans for a return of Eddie Bane in some capacity. Totally agree.
he, allegedly, was fired for either taking a portion of latin american signees’ signing bonuses. or f0r not reporting the scouts’ getting cuts from those said players. allegedly, of course.
Is there a curse? I’ve read that folks believe that we’ve had bad luck ever since Bane’s firing. Bringing him back home could help. But honestly, what’s the key common denominator here? The owner is what is absolutely wrong with the team. Arte, either hire a brain trust that will run the team without your meddling (in a manner that employs the best of the concepts from both the modern analytics side as well as the old school small ball aspects) or do us all a favor and sell our team! You aren’t a fan or even a local…the team is just a business opportunity and or a tax expense. Do better or do well by us and sell!
i think arte is very smart in making money. but that doesn’t always translate to success on the field.
Arte has been meddling ever since the Angels signed Vladdy and Bartolo Colon in 2004. Eddie Bane was a big reason they kept bringing up good young players that helped them continue their run through 2009. It was good drafting and good international signings. That can be done regardless of Arte’s meddling. Billy Eppler improved the organization’s drafting quite a bit and now the Angels have a better youthful core than they’ve had in 10 years. But I think Eppler is more like Billy Bavasi was. He can develop their youth, but he can’t take them to the next level. That’s where the the new GM comes in, much like Bill Stoneman. The Angels are set up to take that next step. They just have to continue drafting better and making better international signings. Then they can supplement their core with that in the future, as well as off the open market currently with a new GM. But overall, I think Arte should just skyrocket the payroll like the Dodgers did, and remain competitive that way while continuing to rebuild underneath that.
I like Eddie Bane. I never understood why they got rid of him in the first place
I think that was a Tony Reagins thing. Politics, and it was a bad move on his part.