How long will three-time MVP Mike Trout have to wait before returning to post-season play.

June 16, 2022

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

Abe Martin, the old Texas Christian football coach, once sent Johnny into the game to replace Billy.

“I’ll try, Coach,” Johnny said.

Martin sighed and told Johnny to come back to the sideline.

“Billy’s tryin’,” he explained.

Philosophers from Martin to Yoda have decried the emptiness of effort without result. This is not to glorify those who don’t even bother. Baseball’s most elusive problem is the lack of try by at least half a dozen franchises, the ones who raffle off their best players just before free agency, the ones who constantly tout their ‘five-year plans” to fan bases that aren’t sure they have five years left.

And then we come to the Los Angeles Angels, who don’t play within an hour of Los Angeles on a normal traffic day and have rarely been angelic. They, like Johnny, are actually trying. It only makes things worse.

The Angels have not visited major league baseball’s playoffs since 2014. The Detroit Tigers can say the same thing. The only other teams with longer vigils are the Seattle Mariners (2001) and the Philadelphia Phillies (2011).

The Angels have the No. 8 payroll in the game and have been in the top 10 every year since 2003, the second full year of Arte Moreno’s ownership. The Tigers are No 17, the Mariners No. 22. The Phillies are No. 4.

The Phillies fired manager Joe Girardi three days before the Angels fired Joe Maddon. The Phillies immediately won 11 of 13. The Angels, going into Thursday night’s game with the Mariners, had lost seven of nine. A promising start to 2022 has disappeared down a bullpen drain, and through various injuries that the top-heavy Angels can’t overcome.

Maddon, who will live forever as the air traffic controller on the day that pigs flew and the Cubs won a World Series, was fired after 278 games over three seasons. It probably happened too quickly, but general manager Perry Minasian is not the man who hired him, and Minasian has never stopped trying to rebuild the bullpen that couldn’t withstand the tremors during the 14-game losing streak. Phil Nevin, the third base coach whose love is a little tougher than Maddon’s, now gets his chance.

This team has a three-time MVP in Mike Trout, the reigning unanimous MVP in Shohei Ohtani, an oft-injured former National League RBI leader in Anthony Rendon, and some promising hitters in Taylor Ward, Jared Walsh and Brandon Marsh. But the Angels’ inability to draft and develop pitchers, at least after scouting director Eddie Bane was fired at the end of 2011, remains a plague.

Minasian devoted the entire 2021 draft, every single pick, to pitchers, but there’s a time-release there. Reid Detmers, the lefty who was the top pick in 2020, threw a no-hitter on May 10 and has a 1.017 WHIP.

The Angels’ rotation of Ohtani, Detmers, Noah Syndergaard, Michael Lorenzen and Patrick Sandoval is sixth in the AL in quality-start percentage, but bullpen problems and offensive inconsistency have obscured that.

Nevin is the third manager since the Angels let Mike Scioscia leave after the 2018 season, much to the delight of analytics buffs. Scioscia’s final two years were both 80-82. They are 204-242 since with 77 wins as the high. The Angels, a franchise born in 1961, have not won a playoff series without Scioscia as their manager, and their lone World Series win in 2002 was the prelude to a formidable six-year run, with five division championships.

It began changing when the Angels fired GM Tony Reagins after 2011, hired Jerry Dipoto, and signed Albert Pujols for 10 years, $240 million. Dipoto’s apparent priority was to get rid of Scioscia, and his first shot was the firing of Mickey Hatcher, batting coach and longtime Scoscia friend.

He underrated Scioscia’s stubbornness, which is approximately as deep and enduring as gravity, and when Scoscia began depositing Dipoto’s suggested lineup into File 13, the general manager demanded that Moreno choose between the two. Moreno is many things, but “forgetful” is not one. He went with the only manager he’d known. Now Dipoto is running the Mariners’ successful defence of their non-playoff streak.

From 2002 through 2008, the Angels’ WHIP ranked in the top half of the American League, and was third twice. Since 2016, it has never been higher than sixth and was in the bottom half every other season.

Moreno tried to sign Gerrit Cole, an Orange County native, but the Yankees outbid him. He also tried to sign Trevor Bauer and got lucky when he didn’t. He should know what it takes to win, having seen a clear outline when Scoscia, Bane, Reagins and former general manager Bill Stoneman were around, but prefers the big-event signing. His hat-to-cattle ratio is baseball’s highest.

In 2019, the Angels had five players making a total of $160 million – Trout, Pujols, Rendon, Justin Upton and Andrelton Simmons – and the money they’ve wasted on Zack Cozart, Ian Kinsler, Julio Teheran, Dexter Fowler and Cody Allen could have armed the Ukranians.

Like most teams, the Angels have some thriving minor leaguers. Ky Bush, a lefty, is 4-1 with an 0.994 WHIP in double-A. Sam Bachman, who has the most explosive arm in the firm, is also at double-A, as is Brandon Olthoff of Tulane, one of that pitchers-only class of 2021.

One wonders who will be managing and general-managing the Angels when they finally discover that October is not just Fantasy Football month. But as long as Trout and Ohtani are functioning, the people will keep coming. False hope beats none whatsoever.

Whicker: The Angels try ... yet still without a post-season trip since 2014