California Angels 1970-1986/Dodgers 1987-
 

I intended to start a career simulation of my favorite player ever, Graig Nettles, but I messed up and forgot to choose a team prior to league creation. As a result, only 3 teams were looking for managers once the league was created, Milwaukee, KC and the Angels. The Brewers and KC were REALLY bad with poor prospects and the Angels were 71-91 with decent prospects, so I took them on.

Mickey Rivers broke camp as the every day CF as a 22 year old straight out of rookie ball. He had walked 66 times in less than 300 AB's in his only pro season, so his eye is rated 50. He was the unanimous pick for Rookie of the year hitting .283/.364/.418 with 11 HR's/42 steals and 170 hit along with 73 walks. His career best IRL was 43. If he develops on that kind of path, he could have a special career.

25 year old Jay Johnstone won a Gold Glove in RF despite getting just 450 AB's in a semi-platoon. He shared RF with Jim Hicks, who shared 1st with rookie Jim Spencer. Hicks led the team with 19 HR's going .253/.364/.426 but striking out a league high 198 times. That's...way too much for 1970.

28 year old Jim Fregosi won Silver Slugger at SS going .282/.347/.442 with 17 HR's and a league high 41 doubles.

25 year old Andy Messersmith hurt his forearm and missed half the season and only won 4 games despite a 2.37 ERA and 1.08 WHIP.

26 year old Rudy May went 14-10 with a 2.89 ERA and 1.18 WHIP

They started the season hot and was in first place at 46-30, but limped home 41-45 the rest of the way to finish in 2nd place, 7 games behind the West winning Minnesota Twins who traded for Lou Brock (!!!!).

At 87-75, they finished with 641 runs scored.

IRL they were 86-76 and scored 631 runs.

Not bad.

In the World Series, the Pirates took it over the Yankees in 6 games with Roberto Clemente winning the series MVP.

Clemente was 2nd in the regular season MVP voting behind Bobby Bonds who went .317/.392/.513 28 HR 90 RBI. He led the league with 60 SB's and a WAR of 10.3.

Tom Seaver won the Cy Young going 21-8 with a 2.60 ERA 1.12 WHIP 137 ERA plus.

Darrell Evans won ROY going .256/.347/.414 with 16 HR's.

Jim Brewer won Fireman of the Year going 9-9 with 21 saves and a 2.26 in 102 innings

In the AL, Rivers won the ROY as mentioned.

Frank Robinson won his 3rd MVP going .292/.408/.546 with a lead leading 41 HR's, 104 RBI's and a 173 OPS+.

Jim Perry won the CY Young with 21-8, a league leading 1.79 ERA a league leading .95 WHIP and an ERA+ of 198.

Lindy McDaniel won Fireman of the Year, 7-12 33 saves 2.71 ERA.

In the off season, I shook things up a bit. The Giants are going with a re-build and offered us 32 year old Juan Marichal for our #1 prospect and starting (below average) catcher. I had to jump on that.

To offset some of the $$$ that I took on, I dealt Hicks (way too many K's) to the Giants for 2B Tito Fuentes, coming off a rookie year of .283/.334/.379

I then dealt our previous 2b, Sandy Alomar for 22 yr old P Buzz Capra. He will start the year in the BP but has potential to start.

I picked up veteran C Johnny Edwards on a salary dump for a AAA outfielder.

Rivers-CF
Fregosi-SS
Alex Johnson-LF .298/.337/.411
Johnstone-RF
Aurelio Rodriguez-3B .280/.318/.419 72 RBI
Jim Spencer-1B 133 AB .278/.368/.386 3HR's
Fuentes-2B
Edwards-C

Marichal 7-14 4.07 ERA 87 ERA plus, (hope he's not done at age 33)
Messersmith 4-9 2.37 ERA 149 ERA plus
May 14-10 2.89 ERA 122 ERA plus
23 yr old Tom Bradley 13-9 2.82 ERA 125 ERA plus
29 year old Clyde Wright 10-11 2.83 ERA 125 ERA plus

In the draft, I drafted a fake player in the 1st round and a player who never went above AAA in the 2nd round. The only big leaguer I drafted was Dennis Lamp in the 3rd round.

Top ten picks were

Jim Rice-Milwaukee
George Brett-Montreal
Mike Schmidt-Cleveland
Sixto Lezcano-San Diego
Jerry Mumphrey-San Francisco
Ron Guidry-Kansas City
Burt Hooton-Philadelphia
Larry Herndon-Cincinnati
Frank White-Chicago Cubs
Charlie Moore-Houston

Jesus, they have me playing 37 games in 34 days with no days off before the all-star break.

The first month of the season has not gone to plan.

As a team, we are hitting .240/.288/.308. Even in the offensive starved 1971, that's not good. The .240 is the league average, but 3rd to last in runs and just 10 hr's for the month.

Only 10-12 because our pitching is 5th in the league. Messersmith had a dead arm and missed a start, so I have to make sure to keep him to no more than 6 innings for the next month since he missed 8 weeks last year and he is my #1.

An 11-16 May is making it clear we have much work to do.

I understand that 1971 was the year of the pitcher, but dead last in runs, next to last in home runs and an OBP of under .300 is not what I expected.

My big off season move, trading for Juan Marichal has actually worked out. Although he is under .500, he is 4th in the league in WAR. If you had told me that I would say we could be in first. But Mickey Rivers has gone from ROY to a WAR of 0.0.

Hope I don't get fired.

The month of June began the stretch of 37 games in 33 days with no off days. The Angels won 3 of the first 4 of that stretch our hitting finally showed up in June after a long spring vacation. But just as we approached .500, last years ROY Mickey Rivers fractured his elbow and was lost for the year. One week later, 26 year old #2 starter Rudy May hurt his knee and was lost for the year.

That led to a rough stretch, but we turned things around, somehow. A 17-13 month brought us to 38-41, but miles behind the 49-29 Twins. At the start of the season, we picked up Al Bumbry on waivers with a promise that he had to be in the big leagues by May 1st. He hit .400 in April in AAA and was inserted in the Angels every day lineup when Rivers went down. He's not hitting yet, but he stole 9 bases in June.

We went from 12th to 10th in runs, but we still have 12 games in 11 days before the All-Star game. 8-4 would put us over .500 which would be a little miracle given our injuries.

I lose another starting pitcher, this time Clyde Wright for 6 weeks with a bad back.

Down my #2 and #3 from my pre-season rotation. I picked up Luis Tiant after he posted a 5.66 ERA last year and then was released after an ERA over 4 in AAA this year. He gave up 15 baserunners in 7 innings his first start, but bounced back allowing 3 runs in 7 innings his second time out. Just need him to be a reliable #5,

Despite losing 2 starters and our leadoff hitter, we ended up going 22-16 during the 38 games in 34 days. Still 11 games out, so we won't win anything, but being 46-45 at the ASG is as good as we can expect given the injuries.

A few weeks until the trade deadline, the pitcher I wanted to deal is out for another 5 weeks, so he's out. I really only have a veteran catcher to give up unless I want to see if Juan Marichal can get me a top prospect. I'll shop him

July is over and we have passed the trading deadline. After a very impressive 17-11 July, we were still 10 games back and had no realistic chance to catch the Twins. We ended up selling 3 parts for future pieces.

Veteran catcher Johnny Edwards lost his job to Jerry Grote, so his salary was dealt for a 25 year old middle reliever who will probably be an 11th-12 pitcher.

Third base platooner Rich Barry was dealt for #141 prospect Greg Minton. Minton was a starter last year and started closing this year in A ball. We are going to put him back in the rotation and see if can develop there.

Finally, we decided to deal Juan Marichal. He is 4th in WAR,so he is having a great season, but he's 33 and our most expensive player. If we can be 11 games back with him, why not get a piece that can help us for 10 years. The market for him wasn't great the week before the deadline. I was going to have to settle for something less than I wanted, but then the Red Sox offered 24 year old starter Bill Lee straight up. He has a ERA+ of 107 and gives us a chance to have a nice group of arms under 28.

Al Bumbry had a great month. Forced into a full time job due to the injury to Mickey Rivers, he improved from a .173 first month to .289 in July. Overall, he has an OPS+ of 112 and actually leads the AL in triples with 9 despite having 190 less plate appearances than the 2nd place player. He's also 19 for 24 in steals and is slugging a robust .402 despite just 1 home run. With him and Rivers in 2 spots, if Morris Nettles develops as he might, we could have 3 players capable of .300 BA and over 40 steals each. 1970's and 80's baseball.

...and in his first start for us, Lee strains his forearm and is out for 5 weeks.

*head shake*

An abysmal 8-20 August has dropped us to 63-72 and 17 1/2 back now. Couldn't hit, couldn't catch, couldn't pitch. It was a team effort.

Dude, I think you need to dial back the injury slider a bit. That is simply too many injuries. Are the other teams suffering as bad? I mean, injuries are part of the game, and make it more of a challenge, forcing you to have depth. But too many guys going down ruins it for me. My impression is that you did well, given all those injuries - unless the other teams were losing multiple starters as well.

I have it under normal, but there were a huge amount of injuries all season, which wasn't the case in season 1.

Just ended the season, will have a re-cap after the playoffs, but the Red Sox went 15-0 to close the season out to force a playoff against the Orioles just to be shut out in the playoff game.

I have it under normal, but there were a huge amount of injuries all season, which wasn't the case in season 1.

Just ended the season, will have a re-cap after the playoffs, but the Red Sox went 15-0 to close the season out to force a playoff against the Orioles just to be shut out in the playoff game.

As example, the Twins won the West despite 7 players on the DL including 4 starters. Not only did they win the West, they won the World Series in 7 over the Mets, winning game 7 1-0 when Nolan Ryan walked in the only run in the game. The Mets had zero players on the DL.

To sum up 1971, we finished 75-87. We were 10th in hitting, 9th in pitching and 10th in defense. Not much to hang our hats on. Our bullpen was 3rd and I expect that to get better as most of them were young live arms.

The best OPS+ was 113, nobody had a good year even though Fregosi won another Silver Slugger at SS, but .264/.345/.373 was a step back from 1970.

We drafted 3B Roy Howell with the 8th pick as we need hitting at that position badly. Added P Randy Jones as well.

Going to try to deal a SP for a bat, but not sure there is much of a market when hitting is at premium.

The 1972 season is about to get under way and we've decided to try to make the Angels manufacture runs via the stolen base. Pitching is dominating and we now have 3 youngsters that can get on base and run our way into runs, because we have no power at all.

Just before the season we dealt leading hitter 31 year old Alex Johnson to Pittsburgh for 23 year old 2nd baseman Dave Cash coming off an All-Star year of .297/.341/.372 and a 5.3 WAR. He can run and will hit behind Al Bumbry who can fly and just ahead of Mickey Rivers hitting 3rd who is almost as fast as Bumbry. The hope to get these guys on base for Silver Slugger Jim Fregosi hitting cleanup. The cast behind him are pedestrian, average players like Aurelio Rodriguez, Jim Spencer and Jay Johnstone, so the top of the lineup has to do the work.

Rudy May is healthy and leads a rotation where everyone is under 27 and only 3 bullpen arms are over 30. 32 year old Clyde Wright lost his spot in the rotation and I didn't want to pay $90,000 to a long reliever, so I dealt him for 25 year old Gene Clines who can run, play all OF positions and backup at 3rd base.

Acquiring Dave Cash made Tito Fuentes superfluous, so he was dealt for a 19 year old 1b with a great eye who will start the year in AA and some middle infield depth.

I could totally crash and burn or my young players can get on base and steal 50 bases each. I am starting the year healthy. So we have that working for us.

Enjoying reading this. I started a game (albeit in Go not the desktop version) playing the Yankees beginning in 1970 to see how they do with me and no George Steinbrenner to buy the club in 1973

Thanks. I am enjoying doing this. Let's me remember moves that I make plus I went to school to be in sports journalism, so this is as far as I will get. :)

After the first month, we are lucky to be 8-10. We only scored 36 runs our first 18 games. Couldn't hit. Only Fregosi and Rivers were doing anything. Thankfully, our starting pitching is (somehow) 1st in the league. We then scored 39 runs our last 7 going 5-2 to end the month on a nice run.

Fregosi is leading the AL with a .394 avg. Rivers is over .300, but we were getting nothing from our corners. I dealt disappointing 1b Jim Spencer to KC for LR Tom Burgmeister as our BP blew 4 games in April. Backup C/1b Randy Brown was inserted in the lineup since Spencer couldn't get his average over .200. Brown ended up .382/.450/.500 in 40 PA. We will see if he can at least do better than .200.Dave Cash has struggled, only going .250/.300/.310.

The only starter in the top 5 of any of the major categories is Bill Lee with a 1.69 ERA. He has NO stamina though. Getting 6 IP a game is the best I can hope for.

3 games behind the A's and Twins, though the A's lost Vida Blue for the season. Again, there seems to be a ton of big injuries, but it's on normal. If the season goes like this again, I may drop it a level next year.

Norm Cash just went on the DL for a month with an injury he picked up making brownies.

We followed up a 9-11 April with a worse 12-17 May. We just can't hit at all. 10th in BA, dead last in HR's with 15 after 49 games. Because we've been behind so much, I haven't run as much as I wanted. In addition, Bumbry has been out for most of the year. We are just 3rd in SB.

Fregosi was 1st in the league in BA in April and in May he only hit .260. We dealt slick fielding-waffle ball bat power Jay Johnstone for a 1b who was hitting but has stopped now that he is here.

There is no HC available with a better rep than the one I have now. Kinda stuck going nowhere. My top hitting prospects won't make the jump this year.