If you read our Halo Headlines, you’ve probably noticed that just about daily some site/expert predicts that the Mariners will win the AL West and not the defending division champion Angels. Perish the thought!
How can this be? Has the world gone mad? Does logic and reason no longer matter in this crazy world? I simply cannot let this stand, so allow me to detail the reasons the Angels will in the AL West in 2015. I’ll even try (emphasis on “try”) not to be a total homer about it.
1) The offense is still pretty good
Go ahead name me one Angels hitter that clearly overachieved on offense last season. I dare you. Chris Iannetta? Maybe? That’s really it.
Now, name me an Angels hitter that clearly underachieved on offense last season. I’m guessing you’ll say David Freese or, more obviously, Josh Hamilton. You could make a pretty compelling case that Mike Trout underachieved too, but you won’t say it because it feels weird to suggest that Trout could ever underachieve. Considering the overachieve/underachieve ration, I don’t get the notion that the Angels offense is suddenly going to crater.
Yes, losing Howie Kendrick hurts, especially with the inimitable Johnny Giavotella replacing him. Some have even said the loss of Josh Hamilton hurts too, but let’s be serious, he was hurt for half of last season and played like garbage half the time he was healthy. With Matt Joyce in the fold, the Halos have a very good chance of improving on the .629 OPS they got out of their left fielders last season, even if Hamilton never returns.
The DH position looks to be in better shape as well, or have you already forgotten the 190 plate appearances that got flushed down the toilet in the form of Raul Ibanez? Now, I’m no huge fan of C.J. Cron, but he’s looked impressive this spring and even in a worst case scenario, he can step up there and run into a dozen or so dingers over the course of a season.
If you really want to be negative and forecast drop offs from Albert Pujols, Kole Calhoun and David Freese, the Angels offense isn’t going to fall apart. It can still easily be a top ten offense instead of a top two offense like it was in 2014.
2) The rotation isn’t as bad as you think
Remember how before last season everyone thought the Angels’ rotation was going to be really bad? Remember how that rotation then helped them win 98 games? And Remember how they are bringing back the same rotation this year only with more depth?
OK, it isn’t quite the same. Tyler Skaggs is gone, but they will be getting a whole season out of Matt Shoemaker (whom nobody has yet to make a compelling case against him repeating his success in 2014) and should also be getting more starts from Garrett Richards than they did last season. It is also a rotation that has actual depth for a change. None of this “bullpen day” starter anymore. Andrew Heaney, Nick Tropeano, Drew Rucinski, Jose Alvarez and (in six-to-eight weeks) Cory Rasmus are waiting in the wings to step in when needed.
When I refer to depth, I don’t just refer to it in the sense of being able to survive injuries, though that is part of it. The advantage that I see all that depth giving the Halos is that there is enough talent waiting in the minors that they won’t have to just suck it up and keep Hector Santiago in the rotation if he stinks and/or can’t get through six innings again. If C.J. Wilson comes out and looks like he did in the second half of 2014, they won’t have to keep running him out there because they have no other choice.
All that adds up to the rotation still not being a strength, but it also mitigates the possibility of the rotation bottoming out.
3) The bullpen will actually be good for an entire season
The era of the Bullpen of Perpetual Sorrow is over thanks to the machinations of Jerry Dipoto during the 2014 season. Consider this: in the first half of the 2014 season the Angels had the 10th best bullpen ERA in the American League and 11th best FIP but in the second half, they had the 5th best bullpen ERA in the AL and the best FIP. Now, losing Jepsen could cause the bullpen to take a small step back from that second half performance, but it is pretty clear that the Halos at least have the talent to be a top five bullpen in the AL.
Even a step back from the second half bullpen dominance is an improvement over what the Halos had in 2014 on the aggregate. Bullpen volatility is a constant threat, but the Halos have plenty of depth (for a change) to combat that. Plus, that volatility cuts both ways, the Mariners got tremendous contributions from their bullpen last year. They return pretty much the same relief corps, but it is highly unlikely that they will be able to repeat the same level of success.
4) The Mariners are injury-prone
We all saw how much injuries ravaged the Rangers last season and how much they’ve already been ravaged this season. It turns out that injury-prone players keep getting injured. It isn’t all just bad luck. Health is a skill not mere happenstance.
This is something the Mariners, who have already been anointed the AL West champs by many, should keep in mind. Seattle is certainly an improved team this year, but health is going to be a potential issue for them. Just look at their roster. Nelson Cruz is supposed to be the big boon to their offense, but he’s also a guy who has been on the DL six times in his career. Logan Morrison is their lone first baseman and his career has been defined by his inability to stay healthy (and underachieving when healthy, let’s not forget that). They also brought in Justin Ruggiano to help balance out the lineup and provide depth, but he was on the DL twice last year. As for their vaunted rotation, Hisashi Iwakuma missed time due to injury last year, James Paxton‘s bugaboo as a prospect was that he couldn’t stay healthy, Taijuan Walker was plagued by shoulder problems last season and J.A. Happ has been to the disabled list a handful of times in his career as well. That’s a lot of important pieces that carry big injury red flags.
Amplifying the injury risk for Seattle is their complete and utter lack of depth. Let’s not forget that this is a team that is already planning on using Rickie Weeks as a half of a platoon in left field. They have no true back-up at first base. They have no true back-up in center field. Plan B for their entire infield is Willie Bloomquist. WILLIE BLOOMQUIST.
People can make all the fun they want of the Angels starting Johnny Giavotella at second base, but the Mariners are one ACL tear away from having to give Willie Bloomquist 500+ plate appearances.
5) LOL Rangers
I don’t want people thinking that I’m just focusing on the Mariners, even though the rest of the baseball world seems to be focused on them. If I thought the Mariners were injury-prone, then the Rangers are a MASH unit. They had a comically high number of injuries last season which they can’t possibly repeat, but they still have a lot of those same guys, so there is still a very high rate of injury risk. Already they’ve lost Darvish and Profar for the season. Nobody knows how much, if at all, Fielder and Choo will bounceback from their injuries. Mostly though, their pitching staff is just a mess. Even if they don’t suffer any more injuries, they are relying heavily on Colby Lewis, Ross Detwiler and Nick Martinez. Plus, their bullpen is basically Neftali Feliz and that’s pretty much it.
6) We are finally OK to discount the A’s, right?
That might be the most dangerous sentence in this entire piece. I think history has shown that discounting the A’s is a virtual guarantee of the A’s being really good. But after their offseason in which they jettisoned so many quality players, I feel reasonably safe in saying that this is a year in which the A’s aren’t a real threat.
They just don’t have any high-end players anymore. Ben Zobrist if pretty good and Sonny Gray might be ready to jump to the next level, but after that, what do they have? On the position player side, the hope rides almost entirely on Brett Lawrie tapping into the potential he showed his rookie season and then never again since. Sorry, but Ike Davis and Marcus Semien just aren’t going to blow a lot of skirts up. On the pitching side, there is a fair amount of youth and potential in Hahn, Graveman, Nolin and Pomeranz plus the eventual post-TJ returns of Griffin and Parker. So that does give me some pause, but that same youth and potential also could swing the complete other direction and make the A’s a pretty bad team.
7) The Astros aren’t ready yet
Just in the interest of being fair and balanced, I figure I should give the Astros a blurb. They are certainly a team on the come, but they aren’t ready yet. They’ll even admit that. They’ve got a lot of nice pieces, but they’ve also still got plenty of holes. Do I really need to explain it any further than that? No. No, I don’t.
8) The Angels aren’t a 98-win team, but they don’t have to be
It is highly unlikely that the Angels will win 98 games this year, but it is also highly unlikely that any team will win 98 games this year. There just aren’t many true talent 98 win teams anymore. The Angels weren’t a true talent 98-win team last year either. They weren’t that far off though. If you look at their first order, second order and third order records for the 2014 season, they should have won between 96 and 98 wins. I fully realize that those are not real measures of talent, but those different record calculations also show that the Halos weren’t lucky en route to those 98 wins.
What that means is that they can get a few wins worse this season and still be really damn good. Granted, they can get a few wins worse and still have a very good record as long as they don’t also get unlucky. So there is less margin for error, but looking at the AL West, 93 wins sure seems like all that will be required to win the division. That number might even be a bit high.
Now, for all the reasons that I’m probably wrong. There is little doubt that this entire post was written through the lens of an Angels fan. I try my best to be objective, but I don’t think I’m capable of completely turning the fandom off. For example, maybe if I wasn’t such a fan I’d be far more concerned about Kole Calhoun struggling in the second half and perhaps being just a fourth outfielder. Angels fans have an irrational amount of faith in Calhoun. Perhaps I’m also sticking my head into the sand when it comes to the fragility of Albert Pujols. I know he is getting older, getting worse and physically decaying, but I also don’t see him completely falling off a cliff. Maybe that cliff is looming and I just don’t see it because I don’t want to.
I could keep going about all the biases I have and just don’t fully acknowledge, like the fact that I live in Seattle and really don’t want to deal with the idea of being surrounded by happy Mariners fans, but I won’t. I think you get it.
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