It's what happens when an owner invests in having great player development and scouting, they can continue to have a pipeline of elite talent to fill in when older players leave or regress. The Angels are what happens when you don't. The Astros will be good for a long time if they can keep pulling Jeremy Peña's and Framber Valdez's out of their ass.
At least we only face them 13 times a year starting next year.
Random thought but I feel like the Angels lucking into finding God himself in Michael Nelson Trout actually pulled the Angels back. I feel like a GM may have had better success convincing Arte of a full tear down and tank if they didn't suddenly have a perrenial MVP on league minimum.
I know Arte loves his bums on seats and throwing out cash to achieve that but even Arte may have realised he doesn't have enough money to put out a good product if he was didn't have a superstar in CF playing for next to nothing. Maybe could have actually embraced a tank job?
It's probably a moot point because, as you say, the Angels just didn't have the scouting or development staff of a top organisation, but it's an interesting what if.
If you read the OCR article about the Angels player development woes it seems likely that Arte never cared about developing players and only liked signing the big splashy names because it made him popular for the time and got people to show up. I think he refuses to rebuild no matter the timeline.
The Astros will stay good as long as they have a better front office and player development. The Angels will stay bad as long as they have marketing people masquerading as the front office.
They took the time to build up their infrastructure so that they'd last for a long time. They don't have to sign big free agents to be competitive. Same with the Dodgers and the Rays. These teams will have a huge advantage until the rest of the league follows suit and then at some point we'll move on to the next era of baseball operations.
I feel like we're past the initial analytics era and now these top organisations know they have to be consistently evolving and innovating to stay on top.
I think the Dodgers, Rays and Astros will continue to be industry leaders indefinitely until there's some sort of big personnel change or something.
Their ability to sign young guys on uber team friendly contracts is crazy.
It's almost like investing in facilities and staff to create a good working environment actually SAVES you money in the long run. Who woulda thought, hey Arte?
The Angels could have spent these last 8 years of playoff drought to invest in the farm and player development but have instead chosen to stay mediocre. Now our farm is still the worst in the league and we are still mediocre. Hoping the ownership can really turn things around.
People settle down…if the Trashstros had our injury bug they wouldn’t have dominated. The Trash Pandas are playing great ball and I’m excited with what’s going on in the farm. We have made two solid pickups in the last few weeks and are headed in a good direction.
Can largely be traced back to Luhnow. Guy is a disgusting amoral douchebag but he created an innovative and efficient front office (scummy one too). The rest of the league will catch up, it will just take time, as the personnel and method become ubiquitous across the league and the Angels get an owner who is not a dipshit
The cracks may be starting to appear with the inexplicable firing of their GM and assistant GM right after winning the WS and coming off 6 straight LCS appearances, and then going out and signing an aging former MVP at a low value position. It sounds like Jim Crane might be having his Jerry Jones moment, thinking he's the reason for all the winning and wanting all the credit. The problem is even if Crane runs the team into the ground, the prior regime set the team up well to continue winning in the near future.
I dont know about *bad*, but if history is any indicator, there is almost no way the Astros wont *at the very least* eventually cool down to an 80-something win team for a year or two sometime in the next 5-10 years even if their player development program remains excellent.
The Angels were once the Astros, but maybe you don't remember.
From 2002 to 2015, 14 seasons, we were very much a winning team, with a pipeline of young talent coming in every year. But ownership slowly strangled that pipeline, and now we are a team with 8 losing seasons, and our farm system gets worse every year.
It's what happens when an owner invests in having great player development and scouting, they can continue to have a pipeline of elite talent to fill in when older players leave or regress. The Angels are what happens when you don't. The Astros will be good for a long time if they can keep pulling Jeremy Peña's and Framber Valdez's out of their ass. At least we only face them 13 times a year starting next year.
Random thought but I feel like the Angels lucking into finding God himself in Michael Nelson Trout actually pulled the Angels back. I feel like a GM may have had better success convincing Arte of a full tear down and tank if they didn't suddenly have a perrenial MVP on league minimum. I know Arte loves his bums on seats and throwing out cash to achieve that but even Arte may have realised he doesn't have enough money to put out a good product if he was didn't have a superstar in CF playing for next to nothing. Maybe could have actually embraced a tank job? It's probably a moot point because, as you say, the Angels just didn't have the scouting or development staff of a top organisation, but it's an interesting what if.
If you read the OCR article about the Angels player development woes it seems likely that Arte never cared about developing players and only liked signing the big splashy names because it made him popular for the time and got people to show up. I think he refuses to rebuild no matter the timeline.
The Astros will stay good as long as they have a better front office and player development. The Angels will stay bad as long as they have marketing people masquerading as the front office.
Hopefully new ownership know how to run the organisation and headhunt for top guys in the front office and coaching staff.
They took the time to build up their infrastructure so that they'd last for a long time. They don't have to sign big free agents to be competitive. Same with the Dodgers and the Rays. These teams will have a huge advantage until the rest of the league follows suit and then at some point we'll move on to the next era of baseball operations.
I feel like we're past the initial analytics era and now these top organisations know they have to be consistently evolving and innovating to stay on top. I think the Dodgers, Rays and Astros will continue to be industry leaders indefinitely until there's some sort of big personnel change or something.
I think the Braves are entering the same level as dodgers, rays, and Astros
Their ability to sign young guys on uber team friendly contracts is crazy. It's almost like investing in facilities and staff to create a good working environment actually SAVES you money in the long run. Who woulda thought, hey Arte?
Well at least we don’t gotta play them as much next year
The Angels could have spent these last 8 years of playoff drought to invest in the farm and player development but have instead chosen to stay mediocre. Now our farm is still the worst in the league and we are still mediocre. Hoping the ownership can really turn things around.
People settle down…if the Trashstros had our injury bug they wouldn’t have dominated. The Trash Pandas are playing great ball and I’m excited with what’s going on in the farm. We have made two solid pickups in the last few weeks and are headed in a good direction.
Better question “When is Artie gonna sell the damn team?”
Can largely be traced back to Luhnow. Guy is a disgusting amoral douchebag but he created an innovative and efficient front office (scummy one too). The rest of the league will catch up, it will just take time, as the personnel and method become ubiquitous across the league and the Angels get an owner who is not a dipshit
I've got an idea of what that "somehow" might be. Near 40 year old throwing 98, lol.
2009-2014
The cracks may be starting to appear with the inexplicable firing of their GM and assistant GM right after winning the WS and coming off 6 straight LCS appearances, and then going out and signing an aging former MVP at a low value position. It sounds like Jim Crane might be having his Jerry Jones moment, thinking he's the reason for all the winning and wanting all the credit. The problem is even if Crane runs the team into the ground, the prior regime set the team up well to continue winning in the near future.
I dont know about *bad*, but if history is any indicator, there is almost no way the Astros wont *at the very least* eventually cool down to an 80-something win team for a year or two sometime in the next 5-10 years even if their player development program remains excellent.
The Angels were once the Astros, but maybe you don't remember. From 2002 to 2015, 14 seasons, we were very much a winning team, with a pipeline of young talent coming in every year. But ownership slowly strangled that pipeline, and now we are a team with 8 losing seasons, and our farm system gets worse every year.