California Angels 1970

[sharknut]

I somehow got Rafael Novoa back from the Cardinals. They dealt a 24 year old coming off a rookie season of 18-10 with a 2.64 ERA and 194 strikeouts for Gregg Olsen and Chris George. Olsen has been a 5 star prospect for us since we drafted him, but I've never fully bought into him. He had 18 saves for us a rookie, but he had a team worst 4.75 ERA. He's just 25, he's older than Novoa. George is an ok reliever, he was 1-4 with a 2.61 ERA with 48 strikeouts in 48 innings.

Our starting rotation is disgustingly good. Plus we have Willie Hernandez who threw a no-hitter last year and Kevin Houston, who has averaged 15 wins a season in the bullpen.

Novoa 18-10 2.64 ERA 194 K 7.7 WAR 34 starts
Hawkins 10-9 3.10 ERA 105 K 4.1 WAR is 25 starts
Fernandez 17-4 2.60 ERA 210 K 4.0 WAR 2nd in Cy Young 34 starts
Cone 16-5 3.25 ERA 182 K 3.8 WAR in 27 starts
Hitchcock 11-6 2.82 ERA 155 K 3.6 WAR in 25 games

[Edster007]

Haven't commented much but enjoying following along. Are you planning to keep it here or are you going to move the save to 26?

[sharknut]

Originally Posted by Edster007

Haven't commented much but enjoying following along. Are you planning to keep it here or are you going to move the save to 26?

Yep. But I am reaching a very important part of my career; it's the season prior to the Marlin/Rockies expansion and I want to take control of the Marlins from the expansion draft onwards.

I am hoping that by spending to the highest cap in the league for the 1st time will get me another World Series and then I need to figure the timing of taking the job in Florida.

[sharknut]

As opening day of 1992 is here, just an update on the draft and other off-season news;

1-Brewers-Jason Giambi
2-Royals-Richard Hidalgo
3-Angels-Jason Schmidt
4-Padres-Magglio Ordonez
5-Rangers-Shawn Green
6-Mets-Derek Jeter-unsigned. LOL
7-Cubs-Melvin Mora
8-Yankees-Cliff Floyd
9-Pirates-Johnny Damon
10-Braves-Jason Kendall

We had two HOF inductees, both no-brainers on their 1st ballot, Bobby Bonds with 96.7% of the vote and Robert Elliott with 91.8%

Bonds had a career of: .281/.358/.474 416 HR 410 2B 1418 RBI 1559 R 509 steals 1 MVP 6 Silver Sluggers 11 All Star

Elliott had a career of: 212-126 3.24 ERA 2985 K 1.19 WHIP. Led the league twice in wins, twice in ERA, 8 times in strikeouts, 4 times in WAR, 5 Cy Young Awards 9 time All Star

Several prominent players retired in the off season. (probably should have been doing this all along, 22 years too late)

Al Cowens 2779 hits 231 HR 1265 RBI .526 steals 1337 runs .290 BA
Gene Richards 2365 hits 450 steals 1202 runs .306 BA
Dwight Evans 2567 hits 369 HR 1554 RBI .279 BA

[sharknut]

Surprisingly, our payroll only went up 10% total despite signing Larkin to the highest contract in league history and re-signing Lynn to the 6th highest contract. We did shed payroll in several trades of pitchers. But we still have over double the payroll of 9 clubs and over triple of the bottom 4.

[sharknut]

1 month in and we are 15-8, 1 game up on San Diego and 2 over the Braves.

Our 2 big additions, John Kruk and Barry Larkin have been great so far. Kruk is .381/.500/.607, 3rd in runs and 5th in RBI. Larkin is only hitting .252, but is OBP is .370 and he's slugging .480. Lynn and Clark are hitting a combined .200, so their hot start has been needed.

Our pitching hasn't been great, we are 8th in runs allowed. Fernandez and Cone have been particularly poor and we still haven't settled on a closer. We are healthy, so just trying to get the pitching sorted out and we should be ok

[sharknut]

Our 1st series in May was against the Expos and if you recall, I said I was planning on revenge for Dave Smith breaking Dave Clark's foot with a pitch in the playoffs last year.

As it turned out, Smith wasn't going to start during the 3 day set, so I decided to hit their best player, Reggie Sanders, in his 1st AB. As fate would have it, Luis Alicia homered off Rafael Novoa with 1-out in the 1st, so when I hit Sanders.......the benches emptied.

Novoa and Sanders were suspended and the bad blood just got worse. We play in Montreal next week and Smith is scheduled to start.

.....they drilled Mike Stanley with 2 outs in the 9th with a 4 run lead. The sim is nasty

[sharknut]

A 16-10 May put us 6 games up on the Padres. 31-18 and we are 4th in runs and 4th in pitching. Nothing spectacular, zero injuries and nobody is stinking up the joint.

Not a ton to report on, really.

[sharknut]

16-11 in June and our lead is now 7 1/2. We did lose Andy Hawkins this week to a 6-week injury, so we will see how this will affect our July.

Von Hayes picked up his 2000th career hit as did Lou Whitaker and Brett Butler while Gary Carter got hit #2500. Gary Redus made it to 2000 hits earlier this season and Hayes and Chili Davis each stole base #500. Lots of milestones so far this year.

The AL has the 6 top scoring teams in the league and 4 of the 6 lowest scoring teams, there are only 5 teams over .500 while the NL has a more balance

[sharknut]

15-12 in July and Houston moved to within 5 1/2 as they had a solid 17-10 month. August opens and Andy Hawkins just came off the DL, so we are 100% healthy.

We lead the league in runs, so you would think our #3 hitter, Fred Lynn would be leading the way, but he is actually 7th in RBI's on our team. We are very balanced throughout the lineup

Kruk .302 57 RBI 12 HR
Stanley .293 45 RBI 6 HR
Lynn .274 42 RBI 10 HR
Larkin .270 50 RBI 13 HR
Clark .244 55 RBI 11 HR
Kelly .254 36 RBI 4 HR
Hayes .248 43 RBI 7 HR
Meulens .223 54 RBI 15 HR

The defending champion Expos have a 1 1/2 game lead in the east over the Cards as they try to repeat. The Tigers are trying to make it back-to-back AL East titles and lead the Indians by 4 1/2. Out west it's a good race with the White Sox up 1 on the Twins, 3 on the Mariners and 4 on the A's

[sharknut]

Good news:

Half way through August and we've gone 10-4 and our lead is up to 10 games now.

Bad news:

Right Fielder John Kruk tears ligaments in his ankle and is gone for the year and will be impossible to replace. Our leadoff man went .302/.372/.470 with 21 doubles and 17 home runs through 117 games with 63 RBI and 78 runs scored with good defense.

Good news

We have an outfielder 23 year old Daniel Varnell hitting .409 in AAA.

Bad news, he is a LF/1B only so I can't use him at all. So we call up Al Martin and hope that our #4 and #5 outfielders Ellis Valentine and Glenn Wilson can at least be ok.

[sharknut]

A 17-10 August has us 11 games up and cruising to another division title. The Mets are 1 1/2 up on the Expos to see who we will face in the NLCS. The Tigers have opened up a 6 game lead on the Indians and the White Sox are up 3 over the Twins and 4 over the Mariners.

The loss of Kruk has hurt our offense as Valentine/Wilson/Martin have struggled this month, but Von Hayes and Fred Lynn had good months, so we managed to overcome. I really don't like players who strikeout a ton, so we only have 1 player who has struck out twice as many times as they walked and our batters k/bb is the best in the league.

All of our starters have ERA's under 4 and give up less than 1 HR per 9 innings. Cone, Fernandez and Hitchcock all strikeout at least 8 per 9 innings and all 5 have at least a 2 K/BB ratio.

We're a good team

[sharknut]

Originally Posted by sharknut

We're a good team

What is my problem? Why tempt fate?

We went 10-16 in August. We sucked. We were shut out 6 times, including 4 games in a row. The scoreless streak lasted 41 innings overall. Just embarrassing. We really miss Kruk. Then.....Fred Lynn got hurt. It was a 'red cross' injury, and I was rightly nervous. Those can be nasty. The good news was it was a day-to-day injury, but it was a 3 week long injury and since Valentine and Wilson were both struggling to replace Kruk, I called up the non-40 man roster player who just hit .409 in his first year at AAA in 616 at-bats. It was a legit .400 season

Daniel Varnell can really only play LF and he has never been more than a 3-star guy, so I don't know how much I can trust his season and potential. He is listed as the 122nd best prospect, but there was no way he would hit .400.

No, he has hit .415 over over 70 at bats with 2 hr's/5 2b's and a .560 slugging percentage. He has struck out 16 times, so he's not Tony Gwynn, but I think he can just flat out rake.

In addition, we lost Willie Hernandez for the season with a knee injury and then with 10 days to go, we lost Sid Fernandez to a 2 week injury. And Lynn's day-to-day injury has had setbacks twice, so he is sitting until the playoffs since Varnell is on fire.

None of the other divisions are actually settled with 4 games to go:

Mets-
Expos 3 GB

Cleveland-
Yankees 1 1/2
Tigers-2

White Sox-
Seattle-2 (last 3 against the Sox)
Twins-3

[sharknut]

....no major drama to end the year.

We face the Mets and Cleveland plays Chicago.

[sharknut]

Unfortunately, the Mets won one more game than we did, so they get home field. Sid Fernandez is out 1 more week, but I have him on the playoff roster. He could be back for game 5 out of the pen. We will go with Hitchcock/Cone/Novoa/Hawkins against Joe Price/Greg Harris/Ken Pellien/Randy Green.

The Mets are a well-rounded offensive team with 4 players (Dave Nilsson/Frank Thomas/Roberto Alomar/Matt Williams) with at least a 5 WAR. The other 4, however are all below 2.5, so if we can control the big guys, I don't think their 5-8 can beat us.

Ellis Valentine and Glenn Wilson have been great 10 year vets, but I have to go with the rookie .384 hitter, don't I? Yes, it's only been 84 AB's, but his WAR equalled Valentine's and Wilson for the whole year, so we will see how he does as the lead off man. No pressure.

I'll have to play Fred Lynn out of position in right to accommodate that, so our defense will take a hit, but I think we need the bats in the lineup.

Varnell
Kelly
Lynn
Larkin
Clark
Hayes
Stanley
Meulens

[sharknut]

Since the Mets started a lefty in Game 1, I decided to go with Glenn Wilson in right rather than the lefty rookie Varnell. Matt Williams hit a 2-run double off Hitchcock in the 4th to open up a 4-1 Met lead. But Barry Larkin hit a 2-run homer in the 6th to tighten the game up to 4-3. But a Cecil Fielder homer made it 5-3 and the Mets went up 1-0.

Varnell was in the leadoff spot in game 2 and he set the tone going 3-5 with 2 RBI's and we leveled the series with a 7-2 win. Roberto Kelly added a homer and 2 RBI's and David Cone gave up 2 runs over 7.

Ken Pellien and Rafael Novoa each had good starts in game 3 back in LA, but a Mike Stanley single scored Larkin in the 7th and we held on for a 3-2 win to give us a 2-1 lead in the series.

[sharknut]

Andy Hawkins did not have it in game 4, giving up consecutive RBI hits in the 1st to Nilsson, Seitzer and Chris James to jump out to a quick 3-0 lead. To his credit, he only gave up 1 run over the next 5 innings to give us a chance to claw back. And claw back we did. Hensley Meulens his a 3-run homer in the 6th to tie things up at 4.
It stayed tied at 4 until the 9th when Matt Williams finished off a 4-run inning with a 3-run shot off Mike Morgan and the Mets tied things up in the series at 2 with a 8-4 win.

Hitchcock and Price had a re-match in game 1 and for the 2nd time, the Mets came out on top, this time 5-3 as Kevin Stocker went 3-3 with 2 RBI's and the Mets and Dodgers headed back to NY with the Mets 1 game from the World Series

[sharknut]

With our backs against the wall in game 6 in New York, Mike Stanley broke a scoreless tie in the 5th with a 2 run double and David Cone gave up just 2 runs over 8 and we headed to game 7 after a 6-2 win. Fred Lynn has never hit under .300 in 8 playoff seasons, but coming into game 6 he was hitting under .100 after coming off a month long day-to-day knee injury. But he homered and had 2 other hits, so he may be coming to life.

[sharknut]

In game 7, the Mets scratched across single runs in the 2nd and 3rd off Rafael Novoa, but Daniel Varnell knocked in 2 with a 2 out single in the 4th to tie things up. In the 5th, Meulens broke the deadlock with a 2 run single and the Novoa helped his own cause with another single and it was 5-2 Dodgers after 5.

In the 8th, Series MVP Meulens knocked in 2 more runs with a double and we were on our way to the World Series with a 8-4 win.

[sharknut]

In the AL, it looked like an even match up between the White Sox and Indians. The White Sox won 93 games an the Indians won 92. Cleveland scored 116 more runs than the opposition while Chicago scored 118 more. Not just that, but they were 6-6 in head to head matchups.

So of course the Sox swept Cleveland 4-0/9-2/4-3/9-7. This is the 1st time Chicago has returned to the World Series since 1959

Mark Whiten hit 3 home runs and knocked in 8 runs over the 4 game series. Bret Boone of Cleveland also hit 3 home runs and had 7 of the 12 RBI's the team had.