Have we been wrong about the Angels?

Mike Trout should be traded.  The Angels are a bad team.  They are wasting Mike Trout’s best years.  The Angels farm system is terrible.  There’s no talent and that’s why they won’t be good anytime soon.  The Angels have too many bad contracts, and so they can’t sign anyone in free agency to help Trout.  The Angels are nothing except Trout.

As an Angels fan and blogger, I could write you a long-winded post about how each and every single one of these statements are wrong, but that wouldn’t be interesting, or even well received.  You see, you aren’t the problem here.  It’s the Angels.  The Angels have a perception problem.  Or more specifically, everyone else doesn’t know how to perceive the Angels correctly because they haven’t shown the world how they should be viewed.

Consider this….as it stands right now…..the Angels are a PLAYOFF team.  I know, I know….crazy, right?  Have you checked the standings lately?  Better yet, have you looked closely at those standings?  Ok, go look. Yeah, right past the Yankees.  What’s that LAA thing sandwiched between the Yankees and everyone else?

That is the Angels.  The team that is wasting Mike Trout.  The team that is bad and has no prospects and all the bloated contracts.

If the Angels hadn’t signed Albert Pujols and saw his production go south, or signed Josh Hamilton and watched his career go down the drain, or traded for Vernon Wells…..and so on and so forth.  Well if the Angels didn’t do all these things, they’d probably be more positively received by the public.  All these terrible decisions cast a dark shadow over the reality.

Flash back to 2014, the Angels were the best team in baseball.  They cruised easily over the heavily favored Mariners and A’s to take the AL West.  They had the best team in baseball, the best record in baseball, and the best player in baseball…..then they didn’t win a single playoff game.  Ouch, right?

But let’s not forget, the Angels played the AL Champion Royals closer than any team in the league that October.  More specifically, it took two 11th inning victories to best the Angels.  Two extra inning affairs that could’ve gone any direction.  It happened nonetheless, but what you were seeing was the best team in baseball playing the hottest team in baseball.  But that’s not what you remember, is it?  No, you remember the Angels got swept and Mike Trout still hans’t won a playoff game.

The Angels entered 2016 with perhaps the most intriguing pitching staff in the American League.  Garrett Richards was a bonafide ace, Andrew Heaney was a top prospect and played into the front of the rotation as well.  Tyler Skaggs was a former top prospect and expected to play into the front of middle of the rotation.  Nick Tropeano’s stuff and numbers indicated that he too was a mid-rotation starter.  And finally C.J. Wilson was going to be healthy, and he was an all-star just a couple years earlier.  Yes, the Angels looked very promising on the mound.  But then disaster struck, Richards, Heaney, Skaggs, Tropeano and Wilson were all gone for the season.

The Angels are still feeling the pain of this loss today.  They’ve yet to get Richards or Heaney back on the mound (save for four innings from Richards), the same can be said of Tropeano.  Wilson went into retirement, and Skaggs has just now reached a stage where he’s healthy enough to pitch every fifth day.  And yet here they are, right in the thick of the AL playoff race.  Richards and Heaney are expected back within the month.

If things keep going as they are going, the Angels will win the Wild Card-1 and the Yankees will continue to tailspin into the basement, and the much ballyhooed “next dynasty” will be delayed yet another year.  Sad, right?  I mean it doesn’t fit.  The Yankees are god and young and exciting and no one cares about the Angels outside of Trout, right?  A lot can happen in a month.  The Angels may not make the playoffs this year.  And the perception will remain the same, that they aren’t very good.

Still, it’s hard to argue with the makeup of the team.  Andrelton Simmons is an MVP candidate in his own right this year.  Parker Bridwell, J.C. Ramirez and Alex Meyer came out of nowhere, unless you were someone that paid attention to prospects.  Not interesting, but somehow decent.

But one thing is for certain.  Right now, the Angels are a playoff contender, and they figure to be in the October conversation, and they are a lot better than they are being given credit for.