California Angels 1970

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Well, we went 0-6 on a road trip and 2-8 overall and we are now 37-43, 9 games back and in last place. 4 of those losses were 1 run losses, so perhaps we are losing our mojo

We miss the hell out of Jeff King. Our first basemen have 2 RBI in the 10 games and we are struggling to score. 9 games left before the break, all at home, so if we enjoy home cooking we may have something to play for in the 2nd half.

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5-4 in the last games before the All-Star break put us at 42-47 and 10 games out. I've some offers to get a little better, but it won't get us to the playoffs. Going to keep making some deals to get some younger players if we can.

We've already overhauled our bullpen. We start the 2nd half of the season with 5 different arms than opening day and 2 different starters as well. Our pitching has climbed up to 8th and our defense is still top 5. If our expected ace Will Cunnane was having even an average season that would help. He's 5-9 with a 5.20 ERA and our expected #2, Dave Otto is 6-7 with a 4.47 ERA....not good.

King is still out another 10 days or so, and we really miss his bat. The guys we have batting in the 3-5 spot all have OBP of less than .300, we really need help next season. Reggie Sanders, a 26-year old SS who has averaged .281/.345/.451 with 20 HR with speed and good defense is my target in free agency.

The Yankees open the 2nd half on a 14-game winning streak and a 10 game lead in the AL east. The Indians just had a 17-game winning streak snapped, and they have a 3 game lead.

The AL Central is so good this year, 4 of the best 6 teams are in the division

Cleveland 61-29
KC 57-32
Chicago 49-38
Minnesota 46-40
Milwaukee 43-43

The A's lead Rangers by 1 in the West. In the NL, Atlanta and Montreal are tied for 1st with the Mets 2 games back. The Astros are 2 games over the Cards and the Giants have a 9 game lead over the Dodgers.

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Prospect update:

Rule 5 draftee Jon Barnes hasn't allowed a run in his last 9 relief appearances and looks to be a good one. I'll keep him in the pen another month or so and then give him a few starts to end the year.

As a team in year 2, we don't have any real prospects at AAA. We haven't been around long enough, so our most advanced prospect is at AA Portland. Last years 1st rounder, 21 year old pitcher Paul Wilson is 7-6 with a 1.2 WAR and 136 strikeouts in 170 innings. He also has a 5.34 ERA, I expect him to be there another full year.

Closer Matt Ryan is in his 2nd year and is 1-3 with 16 saves and a 3.76 ERA.

Last years 3rd rounder catcher Juan Brea is hitting .331/.365/.508 with 6 HR 15 2B 10 3B and 61 RBI with 50 runs.

We have 3 teams at Single A level. At High Desert, 19 year old Felix Heredia is 11-3 with a 4.05 ERA and 110 strikeouts in 140 innings. 5th rounder 3rd baseman Brad Burckel is hitting .344/.405/.532 with 7 HR and 36 doubles. 8th rounder LF Decomba Conner may be a find. He's hitting .342/.453/.527 with 11 HR 50 RBI 75 runs and 52 steals

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Before I recap July, I will go over our comings and goings at the deadline and through the month

On the 5th I dealt P Sheldon Andrews to the Astros for 24 year old IF/OF Ernie Young who will get playing time to see if he's someone who can develop. We needed another arm in the bullpen and OF Matt Mieske really wasn't going to pan out so we dealt him to the Twins for leftie Danny Jackson.

Closer Bryan Farmer made it very clear he was not going to sign with us so we dealt him on the 23rd to the Royals for AA middle infielder Jason Bates who becomes our top 2b prospect.

On the 27th, the Cubs placed the #98 prospect Micah Franklin on waivers so we claimed him because the AI is dumb. He can play 1st, 2nd, left and right with speed

We had a very busy deadline day. We gave Arthur Martinez a 1-year deal at $400,000 in the offseason since the Orioles were using him as a starter. I put him back as a reliever and is 4-0 with 10 saves and 0.96 ERA. We approached him and he wanted 4 years and $3.4 million a year.

So we had to move on from Martinez and got 26-year old catcher Brent Mayne from the Yankees. He's a career .280 hitter, but his main attribute is he is a 75 out of 80 for defense and calling a game. He's signed for 2 more years and will help all our pitchers out.

Our last big trade was dealing 31 year old UFA to be SS Tony Fernandez and 24 year old 3B Jeff Barry to the Yankees for 24 year old Eduardo Perez, the #86 prospect. He is a great 1b, but we just signed our best player, Jeff King, to a 3 year deal. Perez can play third at an average level and left in a below average level. He can hit with power and run and will be better than Jeff Barry, so since Fernandez won't be back next year, it was basically Barry for Perez

We dealt our (now) 3rd catcher Rick Wilkins to the Reds for reliever Kevin Gross. We also dealt AAA leftie Chris Nabholz to the Tigers for reliever Timothy Barr.

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Our July started terribly. We were 8-12 when Jeff King came back from his 5 week injury and we won our last 6 games of the month to finish 14-12 and we are now 51-54. We scored 48 runs in those 6 games moving from last to 13th showing how important King is.

We will start the 2nd half of the season with only 3 of the same starting 8:

Seitzer-RF
Varnell-LF (Young vs lefties)
King-1B
Reimer-CF (Chamberlain vs lefties)
Perez-3B
Mayne-C
Colon-SS
Franklin-2B

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We had a terrible 9-19 August and are just playing out the string at 60-73. No injuries, just a bad month of pitching and hitting. Still 13th in runs and not much closer to getting to .500 than season 1.

The draft pool is out, and I am very excited. We have the 4th pick and there are about a dozen studs out there, with A-Rod, Erstad, Carlos Guillen, Geoff Jenkins, Helton, Beltran, Tejada and Sean Casey all 5-star prospects. I hope we can somehow get A-Rod who went 2nd last year and was unsigned. If not him, Helton looks to be the best prospect from our scouts work so far.

After 2 months we had a bunch of close races, but not anymore. Yankees are up 19 games, Cleveland is up 6, the A's are up 7 and the Giants up 12. The Expos have a 1 game lead over the Braves and the Astros are 2 over the Cardinals in the only close races.

The Royals and Braves have somewhat large leads in the wild card races.

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We were .500 the rest of the way and finished 1994 with a 74-88 record, a 10 game improvement from our expansion season. We ended up 13th in runs, but we had a few bright spots

Despite missing 5 weeks, 1b Jeff King had a hell of a year. He hit .296/.343/.537 with 30 HR and 102 RBI, hitting his 30th in game 162. Just a 2.1 WAR, which was 9th in the NL, but he was 5th in HR and 4th in RBI and slugging in the NL amongst first basemen.

25 year old Cris Colon had a really solid year. He started 32 games at second, 14 at third and 52 games at short and compiled .287/.308/.423 with 8 HR and 68 RBI in 397 AB. He has a solid glove at all 3 positions and should play plenty next year

Daniel Varnell did what he does....he hit for high average and struck out too much. His first year as a starter he hit .319/.364/.425 in 550 AB with 5 hr and 44 doubles and scored 85 runs hitting 1st and 2nd all year. Only a broken rib with 5 games to go kept him from leading the league in striking out with 149. He isn't a great fielder, so I really don't know how much he adds to the lineup despite a WAR of 2

Kevin Reimer was healthy all year and hit a solid .291/.332/.457 in center while playing good defense. 14 HR and 49 doubles helped him knock in 82 runs. Kevin Seitzer came over after 60 games and hit .287/.357/.387 in 92 games and will likely hit at the top of the lineup next year.

We still have lots to sort out, we don't have any prospects that can help next year. With the 4th pick this year, we may get lucky and get a player MLB ready. (This sim has way too many 19 year olds who are MLB ready)

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We drafted catcher Juan Brea 2 years ago in the 3rd round and he's advanced quickly.

As an 18 year old in A ball last year, he hit .298/.373/.505 with 11 HR, 20 doubles and 23 triples knocking in 77 and scoring 76 runs despite zero speed at all. He won the Silver Slugger.

As a 19 year old this year in AA, he hit .342/.379/.542 with 12 HR, 26 doubles and 14 triples knocking in 81 and scoring 74 runs and zero steals as he won the MVP. He has a perfect Gap Power rating, thus all the triples.

When I promoted him to AAA when Edmonton made the playoffs, he was the series MVP hitting .406/.441/.717 with 1 HR, 2 doubles and 3 triples with 6 RBI.

And yet.....he is a low rated prospect

Our own scout says, "It's doubtful Brea makes it to the big leagues"

The OSA scout says, "He doesn't have the skills needed to play in the majors"

......I just don't get it.

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We lost a promising player to a random retirement.

22 year old closer Matt Ryan was good in AA this year going 2-3 with 18 saves and a. 3.21 ERA following a rookie year in A ball last year where he had 20 saves and a 2.82 ERA.

But he is apparently a better golfer, so he retired to join the pro golf tour.

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20 year old Will Cunnane came into his 1st full season with a ton of expectations after 18 good starts as a 19 year old, but it did not happen. He went 8-15 with a 4.41 ERA but a 2.6 WAR. However, he had an ERA over 5 most of the year until a very good September brought 5 straight quality starts.

We traded for Dave Otto before the season as he had 5 seasons of an ERA under 4 and we thought we would be adding at least a #2. But that didn't happen, either. He went 12-12 with a 4.66 ERA and a WAR of 2. He has 3 years left at $1.5 a year, so he's definitely written in stone in our rotation.

Andy Araujo got off to a great start for us, We signed him to a 3 year extension at $700,000 a year in August when he was 8-6 with a 3.86 ERA. But the rest of the way, he went just 1-5 with an ERA over 5, but he is also written into the rotation next year

We traded for 24 year old Bobby Jones before the season hoping he could turn a good season as a swingman into the 4th starter spot. Well....that didn't happen. He went 5-13 with a 5.05 ERA. No promises for a rotation spot next year

We took 20 year old Jon Barnes in the rule 5 draft from the Cubs and he has to be the most exciting prospect we have now. He started the season in the bullpen as the last arm in the pen and ended the season, frankly, as the 2nd best starter on the team. His first 38 appearances were out of the pen where he was 2-2 with a 3.70 ERA. We gave him 5 starts to end the season and he went 6 innings every time lowering his ERA to 3.60. He ended up 3-4 with a save and a 3.60 ERA and over a 2-1 K-BB ratio. Very excited

Our bullpen went from a strength to a weakness after trading our original closer, Bryan Farmer and then the best reliever we had, Arthur Martinez. We never found a 3rd closer after the break, so we will need to add someone in the offseason as we re-build the bullpen. We may add a starter and if so, we would slide Jones into the pen as a longan

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In the 1st round of the playoffs, the lower ranked team won every series 3 games to 2. The Royals beat the Indians, the A's beat the Yankees, the Braves beat the Expos and the Astros beat the Giants. The A's dispatched the wild card Royals in 5 games while the wild card Braves made it to the World Series in a 6 game win over the Astros.

In the World Series, it came down to game 7 as the Braves and A's traded wins and losses until game 7 where the A's slugged 3-2 run homers en route to a 7-5 win and their 1st World Series win since 1976. The Braves have now lost 5 World Series since 1980.

23 year old 3rd baseman Jason Giambi may be a generational player. In his 2nd full season in Milwaukee, the AL MVP hit .369/.481/.682 with 43 HR 141 RBI 132 runs 208 hits and a 9.9 WAR.

Williams Jester of the White Sox won his 2nd straight Cy Young, speaking of generational players. He went 19-9 with a 3.19 ERA to lead the league for the 2nd year in a row.

21 year old SS Jeff Patzke of the Royal won the Rookie of Year as he hit .308/.414/.411 with a very good glove. Roger McDowell won the Reliever of the Year going 3-4 with 39 saves and a 2.82 ERA

In the NL, 26 year old Gary Sheffield won his 4th straight MVP for the Giants. He hit .339/.418/.659 with 50 HR and 136 RBI and an 11 WAR. All these individual accolades but no World Series wins yet.

Roger Clemens won his 4th Cy Young at age 32 for the Padres going 19-7 and a 3.08 ERA. He also led the in strikeouts for the 9th time. All these individual accolades but not a single playoff appearance. He is a UFA.

In a weak rookie crop, 25 year old Met Andy Dolson won rookie of the year going 9-5 with a 3.60 ERA and a 2.2 WAR. Reliever Steve Howe won reliever of the year despite just 9 saves. He also had 9 wins and a 1.41 ERA in 70 innings.

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We ended up with the 8th pick in this very deep draft, so our wishes to get A-Rod or Todd Helton would not be fulfilled, but we did get a guy who I will have a hard time keeping out of our lineup this year, LF Darin Erstad. He's 20 and like too many of the players in the draft, are too advanced for their age, but it is what it is.

Toronto-A Rod
Rockies-Helton
Red Sox-Carlos Guillen
Angels-Halliday
Cubs-Geoff Jenkins
Mariners-Tejada
Tigers-Sean Casey
Marlins-Erstad
Reds-Beltran
Phillies-Brad Fullmer

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Our #1 target in free agency, SS Reggie Sanders, re-signed with Montreal on the day before free agency began, so that was a bummer. But I think we recovered well and I think we improved the team a lot

26 year old C Israel Frias was a backup to Chili Davis in Minnesota for 4 years, getting about 150 AB's a season, but in those 620 AB's, he hit 34 HR's, so he was a highly sought after prospect. The Padres traded for him last year for Pedro Astacio and he hit .296/.335/.536 with 37 HR and 90 RBI but Frias decided to test free agency and we got him. He signed a 6-year deal for $26 million. He is also a leader in clubhouse, and we are thrilled to get him.

We added 2 solid pitchers who could start or work out of the bullpen in Charlie Liebrandt and Jimmy Meadows in free agency as well, and when we dealt middle infielder F.P. Santangelo to the Dodgers, we picked up another arm in James Meiland, who pitched for me in LA

Then, we added 4-time All-Star and 2-time Gold Glove winner 30 year old SS/2B Mike Bordick to a 5 year-$11 million dollar deal, a bargain I think. He was an All Star in Philly where he averaged 15 HR and a .288 average with a 4 WAR through his 7 seasons. He was dealt at the deadline to Texas where he got hurt and struggled, but we will happily have him as our SS.

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The Braves have taking losing their 5th World Series in 15 years rather personally. They missed winning by 1 game and they responded by:

1)Signing 10-time All-Star and 4-time NL Cy Young winner Roger Clemens to a 4 year-$24 million dollar deal.

2)Signing 4-time All-Star coming off 2 straight AL Cy Young award winning seasons, William Jester from the White Sox to a 7 year-$36 million dollar deal.

3)Signing 6-time All-Star, 8-time Gold Glove winner, 4-time Silver Slugger winner 36 year old Rickey Henderson to a 3 year, $15 million deal. Rickey is Rickey, he's great. But his injury history so long, it's almost funny:

1976-Broken Jaw-6 weeks
1977-back injury-4 weeks
78-wrist injury-4 weeks
81-herniated disc in back-6 weeks
84-torn hamstring-6 weeks
84-torn hamstring-8 weeks
85-back injury-2 weeks
85-thumb injury-8 weeks
87-bone marrow edema in knee-5 weeks
87-back injury-3 weeks
88-herniated disk-5 weeks
89-herniated disk-6 weeks
89-torn PCL-8 months
90-sprained ankle-5 weeks
90-thumb-5 weeks
91-back-2 weeks
92-herniated disk-4 weeks
93-herniated disk-3 weeks
93-hamstring-8 weeks

He's only averaged 114 games in his 18 seasons, but even with those injuries, his averages are .294/.397/.440 11 HR 22 2B 54 steals 5 WAR. His 162 game avg is a 7 WAR, so his value is huge, when he can stay healthy.

They added 16 WAR to a team 2 runs away from the World Series. If they don't win this year....

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20 games in and we are doing well. We sit 2 games behind the Braves at 12-8 and tied for the wild card lead. We are 4th in pitching and 11th in runs scored but I am hopeful our hitting picks up a bit.

Newcomer Mike Bordick is hitting .369/.421/.512 with 15 RBI to set the table along with Varnell who is hitting .298/.322/.395.

Our 3-4-5 hitters aren't pulling their weight, however. King is hitting .222/.278/.364 with 3 HR and 8 RBI. Reimer is just hitting .167/.245/.354 with 3 HR and just 4 RBI. Our slugger newcomer Israel Frias is slugging. His 9 HR are tied for 1st in the NL, but he just hitting .247/.268/.610 and 23 strikeouts. We can use more from all of them.

Kevin Seitzer is enjoying his 1st full season in Miami. He's hitting .377/442/.571 and leading the league with 10 doubles while scoring 14. Micah Franklin/Cris Colon/Eduardo Perez are holding down 2b/3b.

Franklin .296/.412/.444
Colon .237/.270/.322
Perez .229/.340/.371

Once again our 2 'best' pitchers are struggling. Cunnane is 1-1 with a 5.36 ERA and Otto is 0-1 with a 6.65 ERA. Otto is on a very short leash. 21 year old Jon Barnes is saving the day going 3-0 with a 1.57 ERA and Jimmy Meadows is 2-1 with a 3.54 ERA.

Our bullpen has the lowest ERA in the NL, but we've blown 2 saves so far. We need to find a closer. Charlie Leibrandt is ready to take Otto's spot in the rotation. He's yet to allow a run

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I have decided to not be a patient GM and to try to make the playoffs this year, why not?

I dealt 23 year old 2b Franklin to the Red Sox for 26 year old starter Bryan Roskom who has averaged 13 wins with a WAR of about 4, with the Sox retaining 1/4 of his $3 million salary. He is a UFA to be, so let's see how we do and if he likes Miami.

From there, I dealt UFA to be CF Kevin Reimer to the Royals for UFA to be Carlos Baerga, with the Royals retaining 1/4 of his $2.2 million salary. We will see how he enjoys South Florida after being in KC for 5 years. He will go right into 3rd base after playing 1st in KC.

And then I called up Darin Erstad. I didn't want to, I just drafted him, but he has a perfect contact rating already and is above average everywhere at age 20. He was hitting .342 with 16 RBI in 18 games in AAA, but he's leading off now.

Erstad
Bordick
King
Frias
Seitzer
Baerga
Varnell
Colon

Only 2 starters from opening day last year.

I do like my lineup now.

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11-9 in our next 20 games have us 3 games behind the Braves and 1 game out of the wild card. We are struggling to hit but we are pitching quite well. We've gone 3-0 in Roskum's 1st 3 starts since trading for him as he has put up a 1.32 ERA in 22 innings. The Phillies waived their former closer Jeff Gray after getting 203 saves so we picked him up along with his $400,000 deal. It's a bargain, 2-0 with 4 saves in his 1st 6 appearances.

Frias has a great 3 weeks, he has 13 home runs and 31 RBI to go with a .305/.327/.631 split. Seitzer is 2nd in the league with a .388 avg to go with 16 doubles. Despite that, we are just 13th in runs. Erstad has struggled since I called him up and Varnell is hurt and out for 6 weeks with a muscle injury.

Sitting in OK shape