Block Arte

 Okay. So it's become clear that, as bad as the Angels have been this year, and in general under Arte Moreno, they could potentially be better next year. I don't know if Zach Neto or Reid Detmers are gonna get dealt after the season, I don't know if they're really gonna commit to a deeper rebuild, but...now that competent people are in charge, this team's bound to do something successful.

It's not that they didn't spend money in the Moreno era, they just spent money and the guys didn't play worth any of it. Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton, Anthony Rendon, C.J. Wilson, Justin Upton, Jered Weaver, they all took large paydays and then no longer had an incentive to do well for the Angels. Shohei Ohtani was the outlier, he didn't get the memo and kept playing like a champ every year til the contract wore out. But these teams, even if they could get big free agents, could never go all the way because they were never built to. The overhead in those big pieces could not spread to the depth of the team, and so it was 'why is this team with these two all-timers not winning?'. Well because that's all they have.

This year, of course, was similar. Mike Trout actually had a halfway decent, fuller season, playing in 140+ games, hitting .241 with 20 homers and 53 RBIs. This is not peak Trout, but it's better than he's been in years. This team also had Zach Neto, Nolan Schanuel, Wade Meckler and Oswald Peraza as lineup supplanters who had hero moments of their own. Neto's season, while not QUITE star making, was pretty excellent, with 26 homers and 74 RBIs, some power numbers a lot of people didn't really know he had. This is also a season where Reid Detmers struck out 204, Walbert Urena had a 2.74 ERA as a rookie, Jose Soriano had a blistering first half, and basically every other pitcher was sort of there too. The pitching was where the lack of depth killed this team, because you can't just keep throwing Ryan Johnson, Jack Kochanowicz and Grayson Rodriguez out there, all with very high ERAs, and say you're doing everything you can. That's when you get Caden Dana or Sam Aldegheri to come in and help, but they didn't want to do that at all this year.

So it was just a painful wait for Yusei Kikuchi to come back, because despite the injuries, there's someone who can actually make a start worthwhile. He's been alright since he got back, the occasional messy start but a lot more low-scoring, dominant affairs. I don't think he's Jays good anymore but he's doing the trick for the moment, which will do until Urena can properly helm this rotation. Whatever they try next year, they NEED to have a better working rotation model, because if it's 2 guys who are really good and 3 guys who can't keep runs down, you have to have a better plan of action or else it'll become clear you're just riding the season out.

I echo the cautious optimism for the Angels' new regime. Hopefully they get this team back to the postseason and erase the worries of this era. And at the very least, if they go 3-3 in this last stretch they avoid losing 100 games for the first time in the franchise's history. Wouldn't that be nice? They play the A's this week, those should be easier wins, right??

Coming Tonight: Never would have thought a trade to Denver would revitalize this guy's career but here we are.