Feels like this is about a week overdue. Assuming this is all about giving him a shot before the make a play for a 2nd basemen at the deadline, why not bring him up right after the All Star Break? Or maybe this just means they don’t have in mind to give up prospects for a 2B.
Opening day is a beautiful day for all baseball fans. We hold hopes, and possibly some ignorance, that our teams will snag a division title, a pennant, or a World Series championship. We at least expect we will be able to watch games that matter in September.
The Angels weren’t good last year. Today, though, we imagine, hope and expect this year will be different.
I’m feeling optimistic about the 2017 Angels, and there have been some positive expectations in many pre-season write-ups. So, with hopes of enjoying baseball in October, here are reasons to look forward to the 162 games in the meantime:
More good expectations for the Angels on the eve of the season. This one calls them the AL’s Cinderella team:
In all, there’s enough in Anaheim to take the Angels from a 74-win team to better than an 85-win team. That would be good enough for wild-card purposes.
A fun take on the never ending stream of articles about how good Mike Trout. I never tire of reading them.
Adams, 30, has a 6.29 ERA over 58 2/3 innings in the majors over the past three seasons. A former fifth-round pick, Adams has a career 3.33 ERA in the minors.
Oh.
If the Angels can’t afford to buy quality arms, and if the minor league system can’t deliver them at the moment, Eppler is gambling that the team is better off rolling the dice on high-ceiling arms than on journeymen who might be gone in a year anyway. He said he has had no conversations with longtime ace Jered Weaver about returning, no matter how opportunistic a deal the Angels might be able to strike.
We didn’t expect Jered back, but still hard to read. Thanks for so many great years, Jered.
Perhaps it’s all about the left hand bat, but this is so very curious.
CJ Cron continued to improve last year, and there’s no reason to think 2017 wouldn’t be even better. The Angels played .400 ball during the 35 games he was injured and were just under .500 when he was healthy.
They can’t really be worse than we think. I hope.
The projection:
The 2017 projections at Fangraphs.com (yes, these are up already) indicate that they could be. They peg the Angels for 85 wins, an 11-win jump from their 2016 total and a number that would put them at the head of the AL wild-card pack.
There are some reasons for optimism if they stay healthy. But there is very little depth that is MLB ready if key players go down, especially in the starting rotation.
If any player were not going to be fatigued but the HR derby, wouldn’t it be Trout with his quick, compact swing? And if ever he were going to fatigue himself, wouldn’t this be the year to do it, this season with a team no going anywhere? I’d love to see him do it. But maybe he’s such a team guy (he is) and still expects the Angels can make something of this season. Maybe.
Sheesh.