The Angels are needy. All they do want, want want. They were the best team in baseball in 2014 with 98 wins, yet here they are acting like greedy little brats, demanding more toys for their roster so they can be even better. Ugh, what an insufferable ballclub.
Fine, let’s humor this spoiled brat and actually take a look at these supposed needs and determine which of them are actually for real.
Starting pitching forever
Stop me when you’ve heard this one before, but the Angels need more starting pitching. Assuming that Garrett Richards won’t be ready to go for Opening Day, the Angels projected rotation is Jered Weaver–Matt Shoemaker–C.J. Wilson–Hector Santiago–Cory Rasmus. So that’s two guys who can barely get through the lineup twice and one guy who can barely make it out of the first inning. I’ll let you decide who is who.
Even if Richards is 100% to start the season, that still leaves a little something to be desired. There is just no telling what the Angels are going to get out of any of those guys, even Shoemaker and Weaver. That will put the Halos in the market for at least one decent quality starting pitcher and possibly a second lower quality pitcher to serve as insurance against Richards taking longer to recover than expected. Heck, let’s go for a third pitcher as well, just in case. You can never be too safe. It would be no surprise at all if a vast majority of their available spending room went to the rotation.
Hopefully Dipoto will do a bit better than he did the last time he tried to make over the rotation:
Hock a LOOGY
The Angels spent most of last season without a lefty in the bullpen. Technically speaking, they had Nick Maronde, Rich Hill, Michael Roth and Joe Thatcher present in the bullpen at various points, but, functionally, they were sans-southpaw. It didn’t really hurt them to not have a left-handed reliever, but it is one of those things where not having one just kind of feels weird.
Given the great depth in the bullpen otherwise, it would be surprising if the Angels invested much, if anything, in a LOOGY. If anything, it is more likely that they address this need by staying in-house with Hector Santiago. Or maybe they will trade a veteran position player for prospects that include a high-end lefty relief arm.
Ultimately, they don’t really NEED a left-handed reliever. They have so much bullpen talent otherwise that a LOOGY is just a luxury item. It wouldn’t hurt to add one, but they can survive if they don’t manage to turn one up.
Put the hitter in designated hitter
The designated hitters for the Angels this last season actually didn’t do all that much hitting. For the season, they posted a .253/.311/.442 slash line. That’s not terrible, but digging deeper into it and you find that a lot of that production came from Albert Pujols.
Report from Baseball-Reference.com.Report from Baseball-Reference.com.In that respect, they kind of cheated because that was just Pujols getting days off his legs and, perhaps coincidentally, hitting well on those days. There is real value in being able to spell Pujols and other regulars in the DH spot, but that wasn’t something the Angels really had either because doing that meant using all these other guys you see listed here like Boesch, Navarro, Ibanez and Cron. What the Angels need is either a quality full-time DH or a productive batter that they can use at DH but also use in the field so they can rotate Pujols and Hamilton through the DH slot.
They kind of have that in C.J. Cron. He’s not much of a fielder and something of an OBP sinkhole, but he’s still young and could develop. Having him as an option at DH, perhaps part of a platoon, is a decent start. Still, Dipoto should look to add depth to that position in lieu of an injury to Hamilton or Pujols or in case Cron fails to develop. Ideally, that would come in the form of a left-handed bat with some pop that can play left field without being a defensive liability.
This, by the way, is what they should have done last season (only with a righty instead of a lefty), but for whatever reason decided not to do so. That worked out well, didn’t it?
Grab some bench
This is something of an extension of the earlier point. The Angels just need more depth in general. They never should have been at a point last season where “Gosh, I wonder if Brennan Boesch will be on the ALDS roster,” is a valid thought.
As of right now, the Angels have a back-up catcher in Hank Conger and a back-up outfielder in Collin Cowgill. That leaves a need for a utility infielder, which defaults to Gordon Beckham until he gets traded or non-tendered in a few weeks, and an opening for a left-handed bat of indeterminate position. Finding lefty bats and utility infielders is relatively easy on a base level. They could easily just roll with Grant Green and Efren Navarro and call it a day. But that doesn’t really maximize the bench utility.
If they go in-house, they have nobody with real pop off the bench. They have nobody with high-end speed, since apparently everyone needs to copy the Royals’ model now. They have nobody that would be a very clear upgrade in defensive value over the team’s weakest defenders, which is really just David Freese.
That’s a lot of versatility to try and squeeze out of just two spots, especially when you are trying to make sure you have sufficient defensive coverage. They could always go with the crazy, radical, borderline insane idea of carrying only 11 pitchers so that they can have another bench option, but that’s never going to happen. What is this, the 1990’s?
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