Richard Brandon Wood (teehee "Dick" Wood)

It’s been awhile, but I’m finally updating this. I’ve had a ton of other stuff going on. Anyway…

The return of Brandon Wood! Is this the time when he finally gets a fair shot? We’ve got middle infielders dropping like flies. Izturis is done for the season. Kendrick hurt his hamstring AGAIN, and if you remember, he was out for a long time earlier this season. There’s a distinct possibility that he’ll be out until the playoffs roll around. Aybar hurt his hamstring as well, but we don’t know how bad it is. He might just be day-to-day.

So what are our options? Sean Rodriguez can play second, but he looks out of his element at the plate. I didn’t think I’d ever see someone swing farther over breaking balls than Jeff Mathis, but Rodriguez can do it. If Aybar is healthy, I say put Aybar at second. If not, put Figgins there and let Quinlan play third. Rodriguez needs to calm down before he can hit major league pitching.

So what about shortstop? Enter Mr. Wood. The guy’s hit 31 HR’s in the AAA this season. He’s OPSed .970. Unlike Rodriguez, whose minor league career has been pretty up and down, Wood has hit at every level, just with a ton of strikeouts. According to Physioc, Hatcher’s been working with him on his pitch recognition, and even though it’s a miniscule sample size, his at bats did look better last night than I’ve seen in the past. His defense isn’t spectacular, but scouts have said he has great instincts to make up for his subpar range.

The bottom line? There’s absolutely no downside to starting Wood, at least while Kendrick is out. You get the chance to rest Aybar if he needs it. You get the chance to see what he can do on a daily basis. The Angels have been criticized for their handling of him to this point, and I think it’s a very fair criticism. With a guy like Wood, you have to put him in the lineup every day for a month and see what he can do against major league pitching. Starting him every third game isn’t going to help him at all. The Angels have a 16 game lead and one player doesn’t make THAT much of a difference, especially considering the other options the Angels could throw out there.

Scioscia: Start Brandon Wood. Start him every day for the next 3 weeks. There’s always the chance that he plays so well, he earns a spot on the October lineup. This lineup (assuming Wood is hitting well) looks pretty darn good to me:

1 Figgins
2 Kendrick
3 Teixeira
4 Vladdy
5 Hunter
6 Anderson
7 Wood
8 Rivera
9 Napoli

You’re looking at a lineup where seven guys have the pop to hit 20 HR’s in a season. The other two? Figgins is an OBP machine and Kendrick hits so many doubles, it doesn’t matter than he doesn’t hit homeruns. Let him play, Sosh.

Ugh...

More bullpen issues. I don't know about anyone else, but it seems like the late inning losses where the bullpen blows the lead are the worst. It's one thing if you get down early and make a comeback but just don't get all the way there (like the Angels did on Monday). You chalk it up to a subpar game from your starter and you move on.

But when the bullpen completely implodes like it did last night, that hurts. Shields was AWFUL. He wasn't even close. It's not like he was nibbling and just missing the corners. He threw at least 4 pitches that were more than 2 feet away from being strikes. Then Oliver came in and was almost as bad. Compounding the bullpen issues were all the missed opportunities to score earlier in the game. Those come back to bite you in the rear.

I can't realistically be worried about making the playoffs, but the Angels need to get these guys straight before October, and the sooner the better. More importantly, I don't like watching these types of games, and the Angels owe it to me to fix their problems. Yeah, that's right, I said it.

Deal or No Deal?

Came across this article (courtesy of Rob Neyer). It’s a long interview with the Nats’ GM, Jim Bowden, about why they didn’t sign their top pick from this year’s draft, Aaron Crow. I think it’s pretty interesting, but if you don’t want to read it, here’s the basic gist: The Nationals offered a major league contract to Crow contingent upon Crow getting an MRI on his arm, which he did not do. The Nationals then made an offer of about $2 million and adjusted that offer upward to an eventual $3.5 million as time went on and it was apparent his market value was higher. In the end, Crow’s agents wanted $9 million until the last minute when they dropped their asking price to $4.4 million and ultimately to $4 million.

It’s easy to read this and be totally on Bowden’s side. He puts excellent spin on the whole thing to make the Nationals seem like victims. Keith Law argues (Insider Only) that it was common knowledge how much money Crow wanted and if the Nationals weren’t willing to pay that much, they should have drafted someone almost as good who was cheaper. Now they almost completely wasted a year of development for a top player in their system, which isn’t all that great to begin with.

The message boards on the Nats’ website have people on both sides of the coin. Some of them are obviously frustrated with how their team could let such a valuable asset as Crow walk away over a difference of $500k. For them, the young guys are the only ones worth getting excited about since the major league team is so bad. Some think Bowden made the best effort he could and that's just the way it goes.

It’s hard for me to side with the player on this one. At the end of the day, you have a 21-year-old who turned down $3.5 million. Was he worth more? Maybe. But someone is paying you $3.5 million to play baseball. And remember, he’s a pitcher, a position that is notorious for seeing young players flame out with injuries. So now he’s going to play in the independent leagues for awhile, then go back to school for his senior year and get drafted again next June (EDIT: Apparently since he's used an advisor, he is no longer eligible to go back to school and play, but I'm pretty sure he still goes back in the draft even though he signed with an independent league team). Who knows what can happen in the meantime. It’s like Deal or No Deal. You get offered $3.5 million, but you see a $4.5 million and a $5.5 million still on the board. You also see a $300k, a $500k, a $150k, and a $1 on the board, but those big ones are too much to pass up! You’ve got the agents playing your friends, jumping up and down and vehemently yelling, “No Deal!” You’ve got your father in the audience, looking nervous about the whole thing, and seeming like he’d rather it just be over. Well, now Crow has to wait 10 months to open his next suitcase. It’s a dangerous game.

I’m not letting the Nats off the hook. If they had an idea of what it would take to sign him, knew they wouldn’t go that high, and drafted him anyway – they messed up. But as far as the negotiation itself goes? I know that MLB is a different reality – I’m not good enough at ANYTHING to get offered $3.5 million to do it for a few years, and can’t even fathom such an offer. So I’m coming from completely out of context. Still, with how volatile pitching is, I can’t help but think Crow may regret letting his agents pass up that much money.

Update on the 'Pen

Well, we saw some of my suggestions put into action this weekend with mixed results.

Speier pitched a few important innings. He looked good in 1.2 innings on Friday and looked bad again on Sunday when he entered in a tie game. Although the run he gave up scored on a bloop single, Sal Fasano (!!) hit one off the top of the wall to the opposite field. I'm going to go ahead and say he's not past the homerun problems.

Arredondo finally had that bad game on Friday and boy was it bad. Speier actually bailed him out so he only gave up one run, but one hit and 3 walks without getting an out isn't pretty. K-Rod got a save on Saturday, but looked shaky doing it.

The Angels went 1-2 over the weekend and are now only...15.5 games up. So they could throw Gary Matthews Jr. out in the bullpen and not really be risking much. Keep giving Speier tough innings and keep testing Arredondo. Give K-Rod and Shields more time off. Hopefully it pays dividends in October.

To Go or Not to Go

Interesting quandary here. Joe Posnanski posted about a decision he’s trying to make. Here are the facts of the case:

- Joe is in Beijing covering the Olympics.
- When he flies back next Sunday, he will have been there for three weeks.
- Joe has a wife and two children (ages 6 and 8 I think), whom he will not have seen for those three weeks.
- There is a Bruce Springsteen concert in his hometown the night that he arrives.
- This is the last stop on the tour and Springsteen is old (the implication being that there may not be another tour).

So what do you do? Do you go to the concert or do you stay home with the family? Joe put it to his readers and the vote is 58% - 42% in favor of going to the concert. This surprised me, although I’m not sure if it should have. I got into a little thing with someone on the message boards over there about the merits of family, but I didn’t want to continue that, so I thought I’d pose the question over here.

My vote, as you can probably guess, was to stay home with the wife and kids. Maybe I just don’t “get” Springsteen, but then again, I can’t think of ANY band that would make that decision difficult for me. Is Springsteen that transcendental? So I tried to think of something comparable that might make this decision difficult and be apropos to my reader(s). (There is more than one, I think.)

Let’s say the Angels (substitute your favorite team here) are playing game 7 of the World Series the night you get home from a 3-week business trip. What are your options (assume that money isn’t that big of an issue and you could get tickets that would be worth the price)?
1. Stay home and hang out with the wife (and kids in my case)
2. Try to find a babysitter and take my wife to the game, or take the whole family
3. Go to the game by myself or with other friends

Now a baseball game is slightly different from a concert in that I could record the game at home and watch it at my leisure once the kids have gone to bed. So let’s take that option away – if you don’t go to the game, you can’t see it (for whatever reason, just play along with me here) and the closest you’ll get is seeing highlights or reading about it in the paper.

If I didn’t have kids, the obvious choice would be to bring my wife to the game. My wife enjoys baseball enough that she would go to the WS with me so we could spend time together. But my kids are too young to appreciate the World Series and would probably just be scared by the huge, raucous crowd. Even if they were older, it’s hard to spend quality time with your children when you’re in the midst of a tense, loud group of 45,000 other people. Going to the game without my family wouldn’t be an option.

I would pick number one. Am I missing a once in a lifetime opportunity? Maybe – but we don’t know for sure. They could be back in the series next year. And the bottom line is that this is entertainment. This isn’t real life. Missing a game won’t cause anyone any harm. There are no negative ramifications of not being at a World Series game.

Would there be negative ramifications of not spending time with my family after three weeks away? Aside from the obvious lack of, ahem, “relations” that would probably occur, it sends a message that family is not my priority, which it should be. And the other thing is that I have fun with my family. Spending time with them is not some punishment – I love hanging out with my wife and kids. My two-year-old is doing new things every day, and after three weeks away, I can’t imagine how exciting it would be to see all those new things. Heck, I’m amazed when I come home from work!

Would it make anyone a bad husband/father if they decided to go? Not necessarily; I just don’t see how anyone really committed to being a good husband/father could make that choice. To each his own, I suppose.

The Angels Bullpen

Well, it’s been awhile, but I’m back. Sorry for you folks (all two of you) who have been waiting patiently for a new post. I kinda disappeared off the face of the earth. I’ve been really busy at work and then went to Las Vegas for the weekend. Not that those are excuses. Well, actually, they are excuses. So there.

Anyway, the Angels are cruising. 15.5 games up with 43 left to play – seems like as insurmountable a lead as it gets, especially when the teams chasing them are very, very flawed. The Rangers have no pitching (when you score 17 runs in a game and lose, it’s time to take a hard look in the mirror and try not to vomit). The A’s have decided that they really aren’t as good as they seemed earlier in the year. So for all intents and purposes, the Angels have the West wrapped up.

But they can’t act like it. Scioscia preaches the whole “one game at a time” mantra, which is just as clichéd as it sounds, but has some merit. To a certain extent, they can’t put this thing in neutral and coast to the finish line. There is a definite advantage to finishing with the best record in the AL. Even though they’re as good on the road as they are at home this year, home field advantage is magnified during the playoffs when your home crowd is raucous. They also need the team to be sharp heading into October, and a month and a half of loafing might hinder that.

On the other hand, Scioscia really needs to get guys rest. He’s done a good job of rotating Vlad, Anderson, and Rivera in and out of the DH spot, even throwing Hunter in that mix. I think now is the time you get Gary Matthews a start a week to keep him involved and have a glimmer of hope of getting him back on track (whatever track that is) before the playoffs. I’m not all that worried about the offense, though. Nor am I worried about the starting pitching, which has been consistently good all year.

It’s the bullpen I’m concerned about. Let’s go through the key members

Here are Scot Shields’s monthly splits in ERA for his career:
March/April: 2.31
May: 2.20
June: 2.62
July: 2.45
August: 4.68 (yikes)
Sept/Oct: 3.28

So he does recover a little bit in September, but he seems to go through this swoon near the end of the season. He went through it last year and he had lost nearly all his confidence come playoff time. That can’t happen this year. Do you pitch him through it, or give him extra days off? Shields seems to be a guy who thrives on the workload, but that is an awfully risky gamble to make.

Darren Oliver? He’s been fantastic this year. Probably the biggest surprise bullpen guy of the season. His control has been great (8 walks in 52 innings) and he’s only given up 3 homeruns. He’s actually been better against righties than lefties, but that could be a sample size issue. He’s been used judiciously to this point (remember he was their long reliever last year and was a starter not that long ago). I’m not worried about Oliver.

Justin Speier is in trouble. He gave up ANOTHER homerun on Wednesday, which has been his problem all season. He doesn’t seem to have lost anything on his stuff (I’m not a scout, so take that for what it is), so I’m guessing he’s just lost command of his pitches. Just last year he was excellent in a 6th/7th inning, tight game role. He even picked up the slack for Shields when he lost it. At this point, I would NOT trust Speier to pitch a meaningful inning in October.

Darren O’Day and Shane Loux (or whoever they have down there) are mop up guys. They’re not great, but you’re not going to put them in unless the game is out of reach one way or the other.

Jose Arredondo has been a pleasant surprise. But there’s concern here too. The last few games, he’s had control issues. He’s still only walked 13 guys in 39 innings, which isn’t terrible, but it’s not great either. He’s also a rookie who has never been in a pennant race. You can dismiss that as one of those “intangibles” that don’t mean anything, but there are plenty of examples of young kids tensing up in the playoffs. There are also plenty of examples of kids pitching well, so we don’t know for sure. But I know that he’s been pitching having some trouble getting through innings lately and his ERA seems fortunate to be at 0.95. I’m not sure if I want him to have a bad game to get it out of the way, or if I want him to keep putting zeroes on the board to keep his confidence up. I just know that having a bad game in the playoffs could be devastating to the Angels and to his mentality for the rest of October.

Lastly, we have K-Rod. I blogged about him awhile ago, but here’s an update. He seems to have lost even more of his pure stuff. He was at 89 – 91 against the Mariners on Wed. He didn’t seem to trust his slider, which is odd, since that’s his go-to pitch when he’s in trouble. He couldn’t locate his changeup. He’s not on pace to throw significantly more innings than prior years, even though he’ll get into more games. His K rate is way down (9.8 versus 12.0 from last year). His walks are up. He’s had numerous innings where he’s been lucky to get through unscathed. I know he’s going for the saves record, but it seems fairly obvious to me that he needs to recharge. And that’s way more important than the record. K-Rod being who he is though, I’m not sure he’ll take kindly to that. He seems to want this record. Also, you know he doesn’t want to show any sign of weakness in the months prior to his huge payday.

So what is Scioscia’s action plan? Here are my suggestions:
1. Give Shields a break in the next few weeks. Let Speier pitch some of his innings. The Angels have a big enough lead that if Speier is still bad, they’re not completely killing themselves. The upside is that Shields gets to rest during his typical bad month and Speier might get on track. If Scioscia can have confidence throwing Speier out there in the 7th inning of a playoff game, that’s HUGE.
2. Keep throwing Arredondo out there in the 7th, but maybe give him a .
3. Rest K-Rod. Even if that means keeping him out of some save situations, rest the guy. Boy do the Angels need him in October. This is the move that I don’t see happening at all, but I think it’s the most vital. Who steps in for Rodriguez if he starts getting shelled? I don’t really want to think about it, but it’s a sobering proposition.
I think you do all these things at the end of next week, for about 3 weeks, so that you can work everyone back into their regular roles at the end of September. I’m not Scioscia, so I don’t have nearly as good a read on the ‘pen, but these are my observations. The Angels need these guys in October. We’ll see what happens.

Gary Matthews Jr is the Embodiment of Evil

Or at least the embodiment of bad baseball.

Yesterday's Angels-Yankees game was ugly as sin, at least for the last two full innings. It had the potential to be a classic offensive slugfest, except the Angels took all the fun out of it by making 4 bad errors in the 7th and 8th to fuel the Yankees comeback. 9 of the Yankees 14 runs were unearned. We can debate the merit of earned versus unearned runs all day long (such as whether or not Xavier Nady's homerun should be earned because even though an error occured, it had no direct impact on his at bat, since he would have had one eventually anyway), but the fact remains that this was some ugly defense. I didn't get to see most of this game, but I've seen the highlights (lowlights?) and the play-by-play.

Aybar blew a ground ball in the 8th that by some accounts would have been a double play, but by all accounts should have at least gotten one out. Mathis threw a ball away (he's done that WAY too much this year) which directly allowed a run to score. This tied the game up. A couple of walks and a groundout later, Shields got A-Rod to ground into a tailor-made double play ball to Figgins. The Angels would have been out of the inning and still been tied (and remember they punked Mariano on Friday for the game winning run in this situation) but Figgins booted it and everyone was safe. 4 runs later and the game was out of reach. Mark Teixeira's grand slam, which SHOULD have been the focus, is left by the wayside. (Seriously, an eighth inning grand slam as your first homerun for your new team in Yankee Stadium to put your team up by one? That's movie stuff right there.)

More egregious to the folks over at Halos Heaven was the error by GMJ in the 7th, which directly allowed the tying run to get on base, and indirectly led to the 3-run homerun by Nady, which was hit with two outs. So they're calling for Gary's head on a stick sharpened at both ends (in other words, designate him for assignment).

Is that the proper move or is it just fan reactionism based on one bad play?

Here are the facts:

1. Gary will make another $43 million (including this year's salary) over the next 4 years. So he's making roughly $11 million per year for his age 33 - 36 seasons, taking him through 2011.

2. There is a no trade clause in his contract that extends through the 2009 season.

3. Gary has had one good full season in his career, which happened to occur right before the offseason in which the Angels needed a centerfielder. Nice timing there.

4. According to a metric at Baseball Prospectus based on how many plays he makes relative to other players at that position, Gary is 1.7 runs above average in CF, 4.2 runs BELOW average in LF, and, here's the kicker, 7.8 runs below average in RF (the only right fielders with more than 200 innings there who've been worse are Jose Guillen and Bobby Abreu). Add all that up and it equals extreme fielding suckitude.

5. Gary has been awful at the plate this year (70 OPS+).

So what does this tell us? Gary's 2006 season was most likely a fluke and his production will most likely continue to decline. From the Angels' perspective, this is what is called around the business world as a "bad decision." So what do they do going forward?

They sit him on the bench. If they let him go (or try to get him to waive his no-trade clause), they will have to fill his position from within. Who are the options in the minors? There are a few guys who are hitting pretty well down there: Sean Rodriguez (2B), Brandon Wood (3B), Kendry Morales (1B), Matt Brown (3B), Adam Pavkovich (OF). The first three of those guys are relatively young prospects who the Angels are still trying to develop (and they're infielders). The Halo's have been roundly criticized for their handling of Wood already, the consensus being to either bring him up and play him everyday or keep him in the minors to work on the numerous holes in his swing. Morales and Rodriguez have both struggled with the bat in stints at the major league level. Matt Brown is almost 26, so he's not really a prospect any more, but he also struggled mightily in his brief time with the Angels earlier in the season.

Pavkovich is interesting because I've never heard anything about him. He's 28, so the Angels don't have to worry about screwing up his development, but he's also never hit for this kind of power in the minors before (21 HR's this season versus 2 all of last season). If the Angels think this guy might have a chance to outproduce Matthews...

But why make that call? The Angels know what Gary does. There are no mysteries there. He'll hit poorly, walk a little bit, play decent defense in center, and steal a base or two. Matthews has value as their 6th OF. The Angels should either DH Rivera with Garret in left, or play Willits in left and DH Garret. Matthews can be a late game pinch hitting option if you need a platoon matchup. He's also a better baserunner than Rivera or Anderson if you need that (assuming Willits has already been used and Gary's knee is okay).

Is Matthews overpaid? Wildly. But they won't get squat (figuratively) back for him in trade (assuming he'd waive the clause), and they won't get squat (literally) back for him by outright DFA'ing him. If he stays? The Angels won't have to hurt the development of their youngsters by bringing them up and sitting them on the bench, and they won't have to worry about playing a complete unknown like Pavkovich in a pennant race. As bad as that dropped ball was, it wasn't bad enough to eat $30 million worth of contract when Matthews could have some value if used in the proper manner.

If the Angels maintain a 10+ game lead in the division, I would expect Gary to get a start every week to provide some rest for Anderson, Hunter, and Vlad. This could pay some big dividends come playoff time if those guys are well-rested. If the Angels start to slip, I would expect Gary to get maybe 2 - 3 innings a week as a defensive replacement/pinch runner for Rivera or Anderson. Upon no circumstances will Gary get ANY playing time in October unless Willits gets his legs stuck in a combine or something. If Scioscia has the authority (and self control) to use him this way, I don't see the wisdom in cutting him.

Saruman Invades the Shire

Actually, according to the Bend Bulletin, the government has invaded the Shire. I thought this development was really cool when I first saw it. I don't know if I would like to live in a place like that year round (at least not until I retire and the kids have moved on, which is a LOOOONG way away), but I think it would be fun to own as a vacation home that you could rent out the rest of the year to other Tolkein-ites.

That being said, I can't imagine too many lenders are excited about niche real estate development these days, even if the prospective buyers of these types of places probably weren't hit quite as hard as others.

Too bad. I guess my family's dream of eventually living in a hobbit hole will have to be realized some other way.

Other Stuff

My wife reminded me today that I promised I'd post "other stuff" on here, and not just baseball stuff. So here goes.

I love fishing. I'm not a good fisherman by any stretch. I've basically been catching rainbow trout with marshmallows or some weird smelling concoction called Powerbait for the last 25 years. But it's still my ideal vacation.

Why is it ideal? It's so versatile. It's everything I would want a vacation to be. It's outdoors, which is always a plus, and usually it's in an outdoors area that's very scenic, serene, fresh, etc. It's relaxing to do alone, or it's fun to do in a group. It does take some skill, although you don't have to be skilled to enjoy it. There's nothing quite like feeling the tug on your line when you hook one - it's similar to hitting a nice line drive with guys on base (sorry, baseball reference). And it's such a satisfying feeling to land a good sized fish, knowing I'm going to grill it up later.

It's just awesome. Even for someone like me, who loves being connected to the sports world, it's great to disconnect for awhile and just commune with nature (whatever the heck that means - peeing in the bushes, I guess). My son got to reel in his first fish on our recent trip, which was fun to watch. My wife and I landed a nice 3.5 lb rainbow, which is pretty big for most of those mountain lakes. It was a good trip.

I know this doesn't mean a lot to most of you, but I really recommend it. If you've never been on a decent fishing trip, go to a lake with some family/friends and enjoy being away from the daily grind. It's totally worth it.