The Angels informed reporters, including Sam Blum of The Athletic and Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register, that right-hander José Marte has a stress reaction in his right elbow. He’ll be shut down for the next four weeks at least. The good news is that testing showed his ulnar collateral ligament is not damaged.
Marte, 27 in June, came over to the Angels from the Giants in the July 2021 Tony Watson trade and was selected to their roster shortly thereafter. Since then, he’s served as a frequently-optioned depth arm for the club. He’s posted an unsightly 7.80 ERA in the majors so far, though that’s in a small sample of just 15 innings. He also has a 5.73 ERA in the minors since that trade, striking out 27.6% of batters faced but giving free passes at an unfortunate 14.8% clip.
The righty wasn’t set to be the most essential piece of the bullpen in Anaheim, but it’s a hit to their optionable depth, something valuable to teams over the long haul of a season. It’s also possible that Marte could find some more upside if he can rein in the walks, as Baseball America considered him the club’s #15 prospect at this time a year ago with control the primary concern on his profile. Unfortunately, he’ll now have to wait a while before he can continue his progress.
If there’s a silver lining for the club, it’s that this may allow them to open up a roster spot. Even if Marte is healthy after his four-week shutdown period, he will then need to have a delayed spring ramp-up period to get back into game action. If the club doesn’t think he’ll be back by late May, they could move him to the 60-day injured list, thus freeing up a spot on the 40-man roster. Some of the non-roster invitees in camp include Jake Lamb, Chris Devenski and Jonathan Holder.
MoM spelled upside down is… for kiddoff
He never should have played in the WBC!! See what happens when you let MLB pitchers play in those meaningless games?
Oh, he didn’t? He was hurt in spring training? Oh, ok. Rant over.
Making those that are anti-WBC look stupid.
he is not really a mlb level pitcher, you know?
That whooshing sound is the point going over your head, aragon.
Looks like our DFA candidate once Ben Joyce makes the roster.
Fantasy baseball analyst give the best, least biased reporting about baseball situations.
I was listening to one this morning, who believes management has seen enough of Estevez and now it’s Herget’s job to lose. If true, that’s great news.
Now let Joyce make the team. And that gives the Angels two arms in the pen that I think can be somewhat trustworthy.
They need them both. And they need both from day one. Hopefully a third arm will step up.
By the looks of it the whole time, it looks like a closer by committee, with Estevez, Herget, and Moore.
BTW, don’t put to much stock in a couple bad outings in spring that blow up your numbers. It happens to the best of them. It could be as simple as working on things.
Don’t expect Joyce to see any closing any time soon, even if he breaks camp with the team. He was a middle reliever all his college career, so he’s not going to just jump to MLB closer 😉
It’s all good! You gotta think Marte was one of the next couple players to be booted off the 40 man anyway, for a player the like this spring.
I put stock in pitching plus and other predictive stats. Using last years data, the Angels only pitcher with better than 101 pitching plus indicator was Herget, and he ranked 89th.
If that doesn’t change, the Angels are going to be at a huge disadvantage the last third of every game. Every game. Joyce is likely their best RP. He needs to make the team? I would expect him to be the closer.
The Angels better hope Herzel works miracles and I hope they are smart enough that Joyce breaks with the team.
As far as committee? I feel that human beings perform better in defined roles.
Plugnplay, that is exactly what Nevin has said will happen. Closer by committee. Although he didn’t mention Moore as being part of that group.
Pitch+ takes a minimum of 400 pitches to start to be an accurate reflection of performance according to Sarris. So about 30 IP is the minimum. That is why the standard deviation on relievers is so high at nearly 7 points.
There were a number of Angels relievers that were 95 or more in Pitch+ last season so taking into account the standard deviation any of them could be good in 2023. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=10&type=36&season=2022&month=0&season1=2022&ind=0&team=1&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2022-01-01&enddate=2022-12-31&sort=13,d
Herget was also not the only Angels reliver at 100 or above and he ranked 65th, not 89th among relievers with a qualifying number of innings. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=y&type=38&season=2022&month=0&season1=2022&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2022-01-01&enddate=2022-12-31&sort=14,d&page=3_30
Also realize that Pitch+ is not the end all be all. Emilion Pagan was a 108 Pitch+ last season while putting up a 4.43 ERA and 4.21 FIP. He was just not very good and Pitch+ loved him. He is not the only one that performance didn’t follow Pitch+
Sarris said in his most recent article on The Athletic that Pitch+ has a 20.81 point projection error in 2021 and 2022 combined. Meaning that the average is being more than 20% off in their projections.
I based it on 30 innings pitched. As you noted, that’s a good indicator.
Web, I loved your post. Very thoughtful.
I’d much rather look at pitch+ than ERA. ERA is one bad outing that may or may not be all the pitchers fault. I was never a big fan of FIP or xFIP. For awhile, they were as good of a tool as anything else.
Pitch + normalizes quicker than ERA. ERA for relievers typically does normalize quickly. Heck for starters it often doesn’t normalize in a season.
And I get your 20%. And right now that may be as good as it gets. I’m always looking for something more predictive.
I’m trying to evaluate the arms in this pen, and I predict, if that pitch + number doesn’t go up, we are in trouble.. If it does go up, I think that’s going to tell us more about the pen than ERA. If an RP has one bad outing, ERA won’t normalize for a couple months..
Team Trout vs Team Ohtani tomorrow. Either way we win.
How hard was he throwing on the first day of spring training? Was he on a six week ramp up to opening day or putting max torque on his arm from the first pitch?
Dude can’t pitch in the minors so I don’t think this should affect the season at all.
Anyone but Lamb.
Is it one of the new Manfred rules that every team must have a player named Marte?
Silseth has been stinking up the mound with an ERA over 8. I’m guessing he’s not making the team out of ST.
There is no chance either was making the team. Canning also has to start in AAA to buy another year.
The problem is Tucker Davidson and Barria. The Angels don’t need both, and neither is as good as Canning. The Angels are going to get creative or release one of them, and Canning will be the sixth starter just as soon as they buy another year.
Davidson, Rengifo , Tepera and Stassi need to be packaged to a team like the White Sox, for one of their young Bullpen arms. They are looking for an every day second baseman. The Wite Sox don’t care about how many errors a player makes. So Rengifo will fit right in with that. Stassi overrated defensive numbers, might fit right in with the Wite Sox.
Note. I was wrong about canning. I misunderstood service time. He has to be down a couple months and not a couple weeks.
You want to win in the post season…you need a bullpen.
Halo11Fan, we don’t always agree on here. But I agree with you 100% on this
We both like Joyce. I think Herget can be an adequate late inning arm. They need at least one other dependable guy. And that guy needs to step up quickly.
This entire situation needs to resolve itself quickly. They can’t squander games early.