Archive for Los Angeles Angels

Financially, being on the Angels roster is a plus for Taylor Featherston. The major league minimum is $507,500 and he’d be making a fraction of that down on the farm. Developmentally, it’s a different story. Being in Anaheim is a minus for the 25-year-old infielder.

Featherston is languishing on the end of Mike Scioscia’s bench. He has just 31 plate appearances on the season. That’s what happens when you can’t be sent to the minors without first passing through waivers and being offered back to your old club. A fifth round pick by the Rockies in 2011, the former TCU Horned Frog was claimed by the Cubs in last December’s Rule 5 draft and subsequently swapped to the Angels for cash considerations.

“For 30 minutes I thought I was going to be a Cub,” said Featherston, who had 53 extra-base hits last year for Colorado’s Double-A afilliate. “My phone was blowing up. I was working out, and my trainer was yelling at me to put it down and focus on my lift. I had hundreds of texts and calls saying, ‘Congratulations, Chicago.’ The next thing I know, the script was flipped and I was in LA. It’s been a fun ride.”

It’s also been an exercise in frustration. Featherston has but a lone base knock in 27 at bats. It’s easy to picture him removing splinters from his backside when Scioscia calls his name. To his credit, he’s taking a glass-is-half-full approach. Read the rest of this entry »

Cla Meredith’s MLB debut was inauspicious. Actually, it was an abomination. Called up to Boston less than a year after being drafted out of Virginia Commonwealth University, Meredith came out of the Fenway Park bullpen in the seventh inning of a tie game. The Seattle Mariners had one on and two out.

He walked Randy Winn. Then he walked Adrian Beltre. The third batter he faced, Richie Sexson, hit a fly ball to right field.

“When the ball left the bat, I took a few steps toward the dugout,” remembers Meredith, who threw the fateful pitch on May 8, 2005. “I thought I was out of the jam, but the ball just kept drifting and drifting, and pushing and pushing, and doink, it went right off the foul pole.”

Grand slam. The fact that it was a wind-blown fly ball that traveled little more than 320 feet was of scant consolation to the shell-shocked rookie.

“I wanted to dig a hole and climb in, man,” Meredith told me. “I felt overwhelmed. The weird part was, on any other day, with the weather different, and in any other ballpark, it’s a can of sh__ in Trot Nixon’s glove. If that ball is caught, it probably changes my career.” Read the rest of this entry »

As an MLB team, it’s awful hard to reduce your payroll. All those long-term contracts you agreed to years ago come equipped with incremental annual raises, and then the free agent market inflates every year in the meantime. Cutting payroll can’t happen by accident: it’s a shift in organizational direction across all tiers of the operation.

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Ellis Valentine knows what Josh Hamilton is going through. Valentine battled substance abuse during his playing days, in the 1970s and 1980s, and now works as a certified drug counselor. Hamilton – assuming the reports are true – recently suffered a relapse in his own struggles with addiction.

Valentine has been clean for nearly three decades, and he’s been helping others fight their demons for nearly as long. He’s offered to help the troubled Angels’ slugger, but Hamilton’s handlers have kept him at arm’s length.

“People come to me all the time and ask, ‘Why don’t you work with Josh Hamilton?’ Valentine told me. “I say, ‘I’d love to try — I have tried — but I can’t get close to him.’ I have a lot of compassion for Josh, but the people surrounding him don’t want me around.”

Valentine works out of Dallas and tried reaching out to Hamilton multiple times when the outfielder played for the Texas Rangers. Repeatedly rebuffed, Valentine actually wrote a letter to himself, in 2010, chronicling his failed attempts to lend assistance.

If Hamilton were to allow Valentine the opportunity, he’d receive some tough love. The erstwhile Expo – he represented Montreal in the 1977 All-Star game — was passionate when offering an opinion on what Hamilton has to do. The advice was shaped by personal experience as well as clinical training.

“Somewhere along the line, Josh Hamilton has to grow up,” said Valentine. “I was 31 years old before I filled out my first tax form. I was making hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I had attorneys, my agent – I had all these people to do things for me, so I was allowed to just go out and get high and be in la-la land. Read the rest of this entry »

Rico Brogna’s primary role with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim is to see if statistical data passes the eye test. His official title is Quality Control Coach, and he’s well-suited for the job. Brogna played nine big-league seasons and has scouted and managed in the minor leagues. He knows how to break down what happens on the field.

The 2014 season was Brogna’s first with the Angels, although he and general manager Jerry DiPoto go way back. They were teammates with the Mets in the 1990s and later worked together in the Diamondbacks organization.

Brogna began the year as a special assistant to the general manager, writing reports on players inside and outside the Angels’ system. He moved into his current role when Rick Eckstein, the club’s inaugural Quality Control Coach, departed in August for a job at the University of Kentucky.

According to the analytical Brogna, his day-to-day duties varied, but the focus remained the same. Read the rest of this entry »

“He’s quietly grown from a kid who was a senior sign out of Arizona State to one of the best lead-off hitters in baseball. He doesn’t get a lot of fanfare compared to other guys on our team, but he’s been an essential component to what we’ve done this year.”

Those words were spoken by Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim manager Mike Scioscia, who I asked about Kole Calhoun. I knew right away that I had my lede. A more accurate and concise description of the overshadowed outfielder might not be possible.

Calhoun has been a catalyst. In 112 games – an early-season ankle injury cost him five weeks – he’s hitting .287/.338/.473 with 28 doubles and 16 home runs. On a team with no shortage of star power, he ranks second in wRC+ and third in WAR.

Despite his low profile, the production is par for the course. Calhoun hit .320 with a .948 OPS in the minors, and last year he logged a .282/.347/.462 slash line in 222 plate appearances as a 25-year-old rookie.

The performance has surpassed the projection. The 2010 eighth-round pick came into last season as the No. 11 prospect in an Angels system that Baseball America ranked dead last among the 30 teams. His writeup in the Prospect Handbook said “Calhoun’s tools are uninspiring.”

The skeptics weren’t wholly irrational in their reasoning. Calhoun is 5-foot-11 and his shiny stats on the farm came in the homer-friendly Pioneer, California and Pacific Coast Leagues. In the opinion of the lefty swinger, the venues were an afterthought. All he cared about was growing his game.

“Even if you’re in a good hitting environment, there are still going to be slumps,” said Calhoun. “The places I was at were definitely good places to hit, and that helps you gain confidence, but I still had my ups and downs. Plus, it didn’t really affect what I was trying to do. I’ve never been a huge power hitter. I’ve just been a hitter.”

Calhoun feels he performs better when keep things simple. The trick is figuring out how to stay consistent over the course of a long season. It’s not always easy.

“It’s a constant battle, to get to where you feel you can walk into that box and beat the guy on the mound,” said Calhoun. “There are days when you’re on top of the world and there are days when you’re not. When you’re not, you have to find a way. You need that feeling, which is why you work so hard in the cage. You want to get to a point where it’s, ‘I feel good, I feel good.’”

There have been plenty of good feelings in the Angels dugout this summer. No team in baseball has scored as many runs, and a lot of the credit goes to the player at the top of the order. When leading off an inning, Calhoun is getting on base at a .385 clip. As often as not, he’s the one jump-starting the Angels offense.

“Hitting is contagious,” opined Calhoun. “If you’re on a good team with good hitters, everybody is talking hitting and everybody is enjoying hitting. When you have that going, everybody hits. This is an awesome offense I’m part of.”

Going into Saturday night, the Angels had scored 88 runs over their last nine games, all of which went into the Win column. Not coincidentally, Calhoun was 15 for 42 over that stretch. His OPS in games won by the Angels this year is .944. In losses it is .566.

Hitting is contagious, but is the same true for slumps? If a few guys begin scuffling, is there a snowball effect?

“There can be,” admitted Calhoun. “That’s the name of the game, man. It’s baseball. There are going to be ups and downs and we all try to avoid the downs. But the fact of the matter is, everybody on this team can hit. With an offense like this, there are going to be more ups, and the ups are definitely a lot more fun.”

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Dalton Pompey has to pinch himself when he wakes up in the morning. The 21-year-old native of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada began the year in High-A. Now he’s in Toronto, suiting up for his hometown Blue Jays.

It’s been a whirlwind season for the switch-hitting outfielder. A 16th round pick in 2010, Pompey has catapulted himself from promising prospect to star-in-the-making faster than you can say Lloyd Moseby. Hopscotching through Dunedin, New Hampshire and Buffalo he hit a combined .317/.392/.469 and stole 43 bases. Since his call-up, he’s made four pinch-running appearances and driven in a run with a ground out in his only at bat,

Pompey is well-grounded. Humble to a fault, he admits he’s far exceeded his own expectations this summer. His goals were to reach Double-A and to be placed on the 40-man roster in order to not be subject to the Rule 5 draft.

You might expect Pompey’s head to be spinning given his rapid ascent, but it’s not. A big reason his results caught up to his talent was that he learned how to slow the game down. Steve Springer, who the Blue Jays employ as a “performance coach” deserves much of the credit.

“I call him every week and he helps me with the mental side of the game,” explained Pompey. “He’s helped me learn to focus on controlling the things I can control. We’ve been talking since I was drafted, but I feel I’ve really bought into that approach this year. The mental side of the game is huge. It can shield you from reaching your full potential. So much of this game is in your head.”

Pompey admitted he’s always been hard on himself, and in many ways still is. He feels the difference is that he’s now “picking spots when to be critical” rather than letting every bad game get him down. An 0-for-4 is no longer a trigger for self-doubt, but rather an opportunity to learn from what just transpired. He feels there are positives to take from every experience, regardless of the result.

Learning how to deal with failure is necessary for any young player, and Pompey has passed that test with flying colors. Not that he’s a fan of the word.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really failed,” said Pompey. “That’s not how I’d put it. “It’s more that I’ve never lived up to the expectations I have of myself. This year I had expectations and I exceeded those expectations. I’m proud of myself.”

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Mauricio Dubon wants to be known as a nice guy. He also wants to be a big-league shortstop, which is a lofty goal for a skinny kid from Honduras. It may well happen down the road.

Dubon debuted in the Gulf Coast League last year after being drafted by the Red Sox in the 26h round. Two years earlier, he moved from his Central America homeland to Sacramento, California, to pursue his dream. His path to pro ball was a mission in more ways than one.

“I was blessed to come here,” explained Dubon. “Impact International Baseball Academy comes and gives baseball equipment to kids, and also talk about God. They saw me play and asked me to come back to California with them. I said, ‘Of course.’ It was a chance I’d been waiting for my whole life.”

Dubon grew up playing soccer and baseball, and the latter was his love. Youth tournaments took him to Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala and the Bronx, New York, but his future in the game loomed a long shot. Scouts said “too skinny” and were skeptical he could handle the rigors of professional baseball. After hitting over .500 in two seasons of high school ball in the States, he’s proceeding to prove them wrong.

Dubon is now 19 years old, and still just 165 pounds soaking wet, but he’s definitely handing pro ball. He was named to the New York-Penn League all-star team this summer after hitting .320/.337/.395 for the Lowell Spinners. There’s not much pop, but there’s plenty of glove. Defensively, he’s a water bug with a strong arm. One longtime Spinners observer compared his glove favorably to Deven Marrero’s at the same level.

Dubon describes his style as “kind of simple but sometimes flashy.” When I talked to him in August, he said he sometimes makes “the Jeter throw, the jump throw from the hole.” As luck would have it, I saw him make that exact play, in spectacular fashion, the same night.

The youngster doesn’t take his God-given skills for granted. His further explanation of what he brings to the table is ample proof.

“Some people say I’m talented and some people say I’m skilled,” said Dubon. “I think there’s a difference. Skill is like you practice every day to try to perfect it. Talent is what comes naturally, and when talent fails, skill can step in and kind of take over. I’m trying to be more skilled than talented. I’ve been working very hard to perfect my defense.”

He’s also striving to be a good teammate and human being, and by all accounts the personable infielder practices what he preaches.

“I want to be known as a good person,” said Dubon. “I’d rather people say, ‘He’s a nice guy,” than ‘He’s a good player but he’s kind of like a doosh.’ I try to say hi to everybody and respect everybody. Hopefully I can get respect back. That’s all I want.”

C.J. Wilson doesn’t have a simple approach to pitching. The 33-year-old Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim lefthander throws everything but the kitchen sink at opposing batters, and there’s a reason behind each pitch. That reason could be based on a weakness or it could based on feel. And the pitch may not come from the same arm angle as the one that preceded it. In all likelihood, it will have a different spin axis, which is a subject Wilson knows better than most big-league pitchers.

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Wilson on his mindset: “When I throw a really good game, I feel like I’ve pulled off a master heist. I’ve stolen their ability to win that day with a well-thought-out, totally under control, non-emotional, logical plan. I knew exactly how much time I had before they called the cops on me.

“We all have different personalities. Some guys literally grip it and rip it. They throw as hard as they can every single pitch. They just stare at the catcher and try to throw the nastiest slider they can throw. I’ve never pitched that way. I was a control pitcher before I had Tommy John surgery. I was crafty. I modeled myself after Tom Glavine, who I watched growing up. I wish I had Pedro 1999 stuff, but I don’t and never have.

“Felix Hernandez is able to change speeds from 90 to 96. It’s a different gear. David Price can throw 97 if he feels like it. Tommy Millone throws 88. You have to understand where you are on the continuum. I feel I have to be the criminal mastermind on the mound if I want to win.”

On spin rates: “Spin is a big thing. It’s like swing planes for hitters. Hitters who have certain swing planes may have what we call bat lag – the way they bring their hands through the zone, the barrel kind of drags a little bit. That allows them to stay inside the ball more and hit for a higher average. They don’t hook balls and roll over, they’re able to cover a wider speed variety.

“Spin control is sort of the same thing. You’re trying to create the illusion of a white baseball. The faster it spins, the whiter it’s going to look. Most hitters assume that if it’s white, it’s a fastball. Therefore they’re going to swing at the very top of where that ball is going to go – in their mind, where they think the ball is going to go. A perfect curveball is going to have exactly the opposite spin of a fastball, but if it comes out white the hitter is going to react to it like it’s a fastball. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello friends, my name is Jeff. You might recognize me from Lookout Landing or Baseball Nation, or from being my mother, Mom. Beginning today, right now, I’m going to be doing a lot of writing over here, and I hope that we can get along famously. If we don’t, remember that it wasn’t my idea for them to hire me. People make mistakes. Now let’s talk about baseball.

I was nervous about starting over in a new place, so I was hoping that Dave would spoon-feed me an easy topic suggestion. Of all the things currently going on in baseball, perhaps the most fascinating scenario is unfolding in Anaheim, and that’s what I’m here to tackle now, as Dave came through in the clutch. Perhaps you’ve noticed that the Angels have fallen on their faces of late. Perhaps you haven’t! Considering what the Angels were supposed to be, this is worthy of some discussion, and then some more.

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Los Angeles caught lightning in a bottle with the addition of rookie Mike Trout earlier this season. Now the team will look to do the same with the addition of Jean Segura. Back in November, I ranked the rookie as the club’s fourth-best prospect entering the this season.

The middle infield prospect was promoted to the majors for the first time in his pro career after starting shortstop Erick Aybar fouled a pitch off his foot on Saturday. X-rays were inconclusive, but the swelling has yet to subside. It remains to be seen how long he’ll be out of action. Segura, 22, has battled injury woes of his own and missed a good chunk of the 2011 season when he hurt a hamstring. I wrote less than a month ago that the infielder was about a year away from helping the big league club, so I’m not expecting a huge impact from the Dominican Republic native in 2012.

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Wendy and Matt have already covered the NL West and AL Central, so let’s continue to show that we here at FanGraphs are not subject to East Coast bias and look at the other set of second baseman on the left coast: the AL West. Due to the presence of the A’s and Mariners, the AL West does not generally project as a strong offensive division, but second base is the exception with two All-Stars, a potential star, and the younger brother of an All-Star second baseman. Let us know how you think these players will perform next year.

Texas has the most well established player in the division in Ian Kinsler, a player with a strong walk rate and excellent power for his position. Last season, he posted the 4th highest WAR total in the American League on the strength of a .370 wOBA. Pretty impressive considering his .243 BABIP was 39 points below his career average. The big factor was that he eclipsed 650 plate appearances for the first time in his career. No one has ever doubted Kinsler’s talent level – for his career he has posted 4.64 WAR per 650 plate appearances – just his durability. This is the big question going into 2012, along with whether he can maintain his power while simultaneously raising his BABIP. It may be a coincidence, but the two seasons in which he has posted an ISO above .220, he has had BABIP’s of .241 and .243. All of his other seasons have resulted in ISO’s below .200, and BABIP’s ranging from .279 to .334. Read the rest of this entry »