Today marks the 79th day of the owner-initiated lockout. It still remains to be seen how long the lockout will last, but whatever its length, we’re likely to see a whirlwind of a mini-offseason as soon as the league and the players come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement. While that kind of thing is fun to cover — the week before the lockout was a thrilling frenzy — there’s still quite a lot for baseball to do. So let’s roll up our sleeves, lend a hand, and find some new homes for a few of the remaining free agents. The trick here is that they actually have to make at least a lick of sense for the team signing them. But just a lick.

As we have a lot of work to do, we’ll nail down the hitters first and then divvy up the pitchers in another piece to follow.

Carlos Correa to the Angels – Seven years, $240 million

While there has been some speculation around the interwebs about Carlos Correa possibly landing a $300 million deal, I don’t think that is the likeliest result. Correa had a fabulous 2021 season, reminding people of the phenom he was when he won American League Rookie of the Year back in 2015, but there’s going to be at least some concerns about his durability. Not alarming ones, mind you, but the fact is that before 2021’s 148-game campaign, Correa hadn’t played in 120 games since ’16, a long time for a young player, and that’s even ignoring a pandemic-shortened season during which no one could play 120 games. That’s probably not going to scare teams off, but it will inevitably be priced into his offers since front offices these days are populated more by mean nerds like me than they are dewy-eyed optimists. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Tim Lincecum burned brightly but briefly. In a career that lasted just 10 major league seasons — the minimum to be included on a Hall of Fame ballot — and fewer innings than four of the eight enshrined relievers, Lincecum made four All-Star teams, pitched for three World Series winners, won two Cy Young awards, and threw two no-hitters. With his long hair, 5-foot-11, 170-pound frame, baby face, and unorthodox delivery, “The Freak” became one of the game’s most popular players, a cult hero in San Francisco and elsewhere.

Lincecum did all of this despite not pitching very well for the second half of that decade-long stretch (2007-16), though he certainly had his moments; both no-hitters and two of those World Series wins came when he was on the downslope of his brief career. What felled him wasn’t arm troubles but a degenerative condition in his hips, which compromised his range of motion and ability to generate power. Once his left hip labrum tore, he was too unstable to repeat his delivery, and his command suffered. The surprise wasn’t that his diminutive frame couldn’t withstand the physical toll of so many pitches and innings, but that he had dominated in the first place. Through it all, the Giants — and especially their fans — remained loyal to him, willing to give him a shot at recapturing the magic for just about as long as he was upright. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Torii Hunter could go get it. Fluid and graceful while patrolling center field, he was renowned for his leaping, acrobatic catches and his willingness to sacrifice his body. He made a strong enough impression upon those who watched him that he won nine Gold Gloves during his 19-year career, more than all but three center fielders, namely Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr., and Andruw Jones. Hunter earned the nickname “Spider-Man” for his ability to climb outfield walls to steal home runs — something he did more than just about anybody else during his career — though one attempt to do so at Fenway Park left him with a broken ankle, and another a concussion.

“I’ll do anything to get that little white ball. I’ll put my life on the line,” Hunter told Sports Illustrated’s Albert Chen in 2005, sounding very much like the football player he was during his high school days in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Hunter rose from difficult circumstances in Pine Bluff, including a father who was addicted to crack cocaine and friends who fell into the dead-end life of drugs, guns, and gangs. His athleticism helped him escape, though when he entered professional baseball as a first-round pick of the Twins in 1993, his talent was more raw than most. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Los Angeles Angels.

Batters

The good news: the Los Angeles Angels have Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. The bad news: the Los Angeles Angels play a sport where you have to give almost as many shots to Luc Longley and Stacey King as Jordan and Pippen. The Angels are a very star-driven team, and if something terrible happens to a star or two, it’s going to be hard to eke out first place in a division with four plausible contenders. If you can ensure that Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Anthony Rendon, and Noah Syndergaard all have full, healthy seasons, I think this is the team that can make the Astros sweat the most this summer. If not, I think the Angels’ playoff relevance will be on life support by the trade deadline. That is, assuming that Rob Manfred’s dystopian fever dream of every mediocre club getting a chance to knock off a 100-win team in the postseason by winning two of three games comes to pass. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeremiah Jackson made meaningful developmental strides this season. More mental than mechanical, they came amid an injury-interrupted campaign that saw him miss 11 weeks with a torn quad. Playing almost exclusively with the Low-A Inland Empire 66ers, the 21-year-old middle infield prospect homered 10 times while putting up a healthy 128 wRC+ over 218 plate appearances.

How satisfied was he with his performance?

“Satisfied is a word you kind of don’t use in baseball,” said Jackson, whom the Los Angeles Angels drafted 57th overall out of a Mobile, Alabama high school in 2018. “But under the circumstances, I was happy with how I played when I did play. I obviously could have been better, but I’m by no means mad. I learned a lot.”

Jackson feels that his time on the shelf — he was out from late June until early September — contributed to his education. Having more time on his hands allowed him to take a step back and study pitchers throughout the course of a game. How are they attacking certain hitters? What are they seeing that makes them want to throw a certain pitch? What are their mindsets on the mound?

Translating those observations to the batter’s box remains the objective. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Angels. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Raisel Iglesias, who ranked 24th on our annual list of the top 50 free agents, inspired one of the biggest gaps between the contract projection of Ben Clemens, who pegged him for three years and $15 million, and that of our readers, who had the same length, but a median AAV of just $10 million. Ben was right and then some: the best reliever on the market is returning to the Los Angeles Angels on a four-year, $58 million deal reached in the final days of the league’s pre-lockout free agent frenzy.

Iglesias rejected a qualifying offer from these same Angels two weeks ago, and in the end received a deal consistent with that of other elite late-inning relievers. He’s coming off his best season as a professional, combining a career-high strikeout rate with a career-low walk rate to give him a phenomenal 103-to-12 K/BB ratio over 70 innings during which he posted a 2.57 ERA and 2.83 FIP.

Iglesias’ entry into professional baseball was a difficult one. A native of Cuba, he spent his ages-20-22 seasons pitching in the Industrial League in his native country; he was able to leave Cuba in late 2013. Establishing residency can often be a struggle for Cuban players, and that was the case for Iglesias, who was ultimately forced to settle in Haiti. Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of money flowed ahead of this week’s unofficial lockout deadline, but not all of the moves involved swimming pools of cash. Among the many made were some low-key bullpen additions, usually by contenders, all of which arguably upgraded their respective bullpens. Let’s talk about some of the more interesting ones!

Michael Lorenzen to the Angels

Lorenzen signed a one-year, $6.75 million contract to head to Anaheim, a surprisingly juicy figure for a pitcher with an ERA well in excess of five for the Reds in 2021. As you may have guessed, his peripheral numbers were better. A FIP just over four isn’t going to evoke prime Craig Kimbrel, but it’s a good bit better than the rest of the disasters in Cincy’s bullpen. The drop in strikeout rate was scary, but ZiPS doesn’t think it’s real when looking at the Statcast data, estimating that you ought to have expected him to finish up with 12 more strikeouts than he actually racked up — an impressive number in only 29 innings. Among relievers, that was the second-largest negative deficit, behind only Keynan Middleton of the Mariners. Scouting can also pick up this sort of thing, which is likely one reason the Angels were so willing to drop this amount of money.

The other is that Lorenzen wants to explore being a two-way player more than he got to in recent years. The Angels are apparently happy to grant this wish, given they’re the home of arguably the best (simultaneous) two-way player ever in Shohei Ohtani.

RHP Michael Lorenzen not only wants a shot at being a starting pitcher in 2022, but also wants the opportunity to get regular at-bats as an outfielder. Wants to get on the Ohtani routine. The Rangers, Pirates, Cubs and Giants are all believed to have inquired.

— Joe Doyle (@JoeDoyleMiLB) November 28, 2021

Lorenzen’s .233/.282/.429 line doesn’t scream “spare outfielder,” but one has to remember that his at-bats have been widely scattered, hampering his offensive development. In addition, a healthy chunk of them came as a pinch-hitter, a role in which players hit considerably worse compared to games they start.
Read the rest of this entry »

Despite having the generational talents of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani anchoring their roster, the Angels entered this offseason with plenty of question marks. They’ve squandered the majority of Trout’s early career, making with just one postseason appearance since his debut in 2012 despite spending levels that were in the upper echelons of the majors for most of that time. They started this offseason with a bang, signing Noah Syndergaard to a one-year deal last week. That move comes with its fair share of risk, but the top of their rotation now projects to be much more solid. Yesterday, the Angels started addressing some of the question marks around the fringes of their roster. First, they acquired utility man Tyler Wade from the Yankees for a player to be named later or cash considerations. Then, they signed left-handed reliever Aaron Loup to a two-year, $17 million pact, including a team option for 2024 that includes a $2 million buyout.

Loup’s addition addresses a much bigger need than Wade’s. Raisel Iglesias rejected the Angels’ qualifying offer last week, becoming a free agent and leaving a significant hole in their bullpen. While Loup isn’t quite the reliever Iglesias is, he’s been remarkably effective over the past two seasons. Among all qualified relievers during that period, Loup’s park- and league-adjusted ERA ranks second in baseball, 63% better than league average. He led all qualified relievers in 2021 with a 0.95 ERA. Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels made their first splash of the offseason on Tuesday by signing Noah Syndergaard to a one-year, $21 million deal, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan. He was no. 15 on our top 50 free agent rankings despite missing all of 2020 because of Tommy John surgery on his right elbow, and though he was expected back early in 2021, a large setback in his recovery cost him just almost the entirety of that season as well. Two innings out of the bullpen in late September is all we’ve seen out of him in the last two years.

A one-year deal this winter makes a lot of sense for Syndergaard, who can rebuild his value in hopes of getting a long-term contract next offseason. It’s less of a no-brainer for the Angels, as there is no opportunity to cash in on future years in case of a bounce-back, and it’s hard to imagine Syndergaard will be in top form in 2022, given the thick layer of rust that surely needs to be knocked off of him. Most teams probably viewed signing him as a two-year project. Look no further than his 2018 season, though, to see the outcome the Angels envision. Coming off a torn lat muscle that cost him most of his 2017 campaign, he proceeded to put up a 3.03 ERA/2.80 FIP over 154.1 innings despite diminished velocity.

Read the rest of this entry »