Looking Forward to 2008:  Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

Los Angeles Overview of Anaheim, 2008 Edition

2007 was about as gimme a season as the Angels could expect. They grabbed a share of first place on April 25 and stayed there the rest of the season. Coming into 2008, with Texas and Oakland rebuilding and Seattle offering the only challenge, the defending American League West Champions were the odds-on favorite to take the division for a third straight year. All they had to do was survive Spring Training. In case you’re looking to scroll down and see what happens, they didn’t.

Looking Backward

2007 sounds easier than it actually was. The Angels survived despite losing Juan Rivera, who shattered his leg playing winter ball, before the season started (moral of story: don’t break leg). Garrett Anderson lost half his season due to a hip flexor and nagging hurts to his back and left hamstring. Bartolo Colon was a Kazaam-sized disaster. Chone Figgins broke a finger and lost a month. Howie Kendrick broke two fingers and lost two months. Bullpen rock Scot Shields suddenly turned into a late-season pumpkin. Mike Napoli lost near 50 games due to hamstring and ankle issues. No sweat. The trademark depth and that powered the team to the 2006 division title powered the team again in 2007. Reggie Willits became the new David Eckstein, Dustin Mosley and Joe Saunders became solid back-end starters, and Figgins and Anderson lit the league on fire after a return to health. The starting rotation posted the 3rd best starters’ ERA in the American League. Unfortunately, injuries and a meeting with the Boston Red Sox ended the Angel run.

The big difference in the front office is new Angel general manager Tony Reagins, who has moved quickly to mark a difference between himself and his predecessor, Bill Stoneman. Reagins, who oversaw the team’s fruitful farm system as the director of player development, gave Torii Hunter $90 million of weakening American dollars over five years, traded Gold Glove-minted Orlando Cabrera to the White Sox for Jon Garland, and pushed hard to acquire Miguel Cabrera from the Marlins. Rumors abound of Reagins looking to grab Alex Rodriguez, Johan Santana, Paul Konerko, Khalil Green or Miguel Tejada (yikes). Angel fans used to Stoneman’s slowhand approach to dealing were treated to whiplash.

The trade for Hunter signaled the obvious: the Angels are in a win-now situation. They are the deepest, richest team in the AL West. The productive graduates of the early 2000s farm system are all up, and Vladimir Guerrero’s not getting any younger.

The Apparent Present Starting Pitching

Take a good look at one of your hands. You see your thumb and pointer fingers? Good. Now, take a butcher’s knife and cut’em off, and you’ll have the digit version of what the Angel rotation looks like to start the season. Yeah, it’s over.

The 1-2 combo of John Lackey (right tricep) and Kelvim Escobar (torn right shoulder) will start 2008 on the DL, and Escobar is probably going to stay there, perhaps forever. Lackey’s prognosis calls for him to rejoin the team in mid- to late May, but in the meantime he won’t be allowed to do any pitching. For now, he’s expected to make a full recover. With Escobar, the situation is much more serious: If his shoulder doesn’t improve by mid-April, he will likely have to have arthroscopic surgery. (The organization just went through this with Bartolo Colon, and we all know how that turned out.) Complicating matters is that Escobar was born without the supraspinatus, one of the four rotator cuff muscles behind his right shoulder. If he has to have the surgery, it’s unlikely he’ll ever pitch again.

Assuming that timetable, this means Joe Saunders and Dustin Moseley will start in the rotation for the first four weeks of the season, with roster filler Jason Bulger and possibly Nick Adenhart getting some spot starts. Asking anyone to step in for two guys who tallied over 400 innings of 140 ERA+ ball is rough, even for just two months. Saunders, your classic control lefty, is one to watch. He won’t make anyone forget Lackey, but Saunders throws strikes, keeps the ball down, and gets deep into games; he has the potential to surprise people.

Until Lackey’s injury situation is resolved, the position of staff ace defaults to Jered Weaver. This is a big season for Weaver’s development. His numbers took a hit last year because his strikeouts were down and he gave up a ton of singles, but the good news is his walks and homer rates stayed steady. ZiPS expect a better 2008, and having Hunter and Matthews will be especially helpful for a flyball pitcher like Weaver. On the other end of the rotation, John Garland should give the Angels 200+ innings of league average pitching. Given the injuries to Lackey and Escobar, how well Cabrera-for-Garland turns out for them will be especially big.

Ervin Santana is the wild card. His home/road splits were obscene (8.38 road ERA compared to 3.27 in Anaheim) and in 2007 he’d go entire weeks with hitters sitting on a hanging slider because he couldn’t throw his fastball for strikes. He changed his mechanics from game to game and in between innings, and constantly butted heads with the coaching staff. His first three games this spring were awful — 10 runs in 11.2 innings. He’s done better since but they’re still talking about trying to get his mechanics straightened out. He’s still got very good stuff and doesn’t turn 25 until May, but a win-now team that lives and dies on pitching can’t afford to keep giving Santana chances to not develop. If he can’t stay in the rotation, they’ll stick him in the bullpen and he’ll be trade fodder come August.

The above bullpen roster is what Mike Scioscia dreams about when he has alone time, lotion, and a Kleenex. (Maybe I’m projecting.) The Angel bullpen has long been the organization’s single most bulletproof asset in the Scioscia era, but one of the constants since 2002, Scot Shields, had the worst season of his career in 2007 and has been battling a sore right shoulder and forearm inflammation all spring. If Shields manages to come close to his ZiPS, small children will flap their arms with joy in the bleachers. Moreover, the Angels managed to piss off closer Frankie Rodriguez during his arbitration hearing, so this may very possibly be the end of this incarnation of the Angel bullpen.

Performance-wise, Rodriguez will match his ZiPS, and Justin Speier will beat his ZiPS. Speier had the lightest workload of his career last season in part because he was so darn effective when he did work. Look for him to see more work this year, especially with if Shields remains ineffective. Darren "Buzz?" Oliver was outstanding during the second half of the season; after yielding a 7.98 ERA in April and May, the lone lefty gave up runs in just six of his last 41 appearances. With Dustin Moseley moves up the totem pole because of injuries to the rotation and long man Chris Bootcheck starting the season on the DL, sidewinder Darren O’Day makes bullpen come Opening Day (there’s no ZiPS for O’Day; those are his 2007 A and AA numbers). Bulger figures to see plenty of work as the long man.

The Infield

Ah, health. If you don’t got that, you don’t got nuthin’. Just ask Casey Kotchman. After a year-long bought with mono in 2006, he finally got to flash that talent we’ve all been waiting for: through June 16, he hit .333/.411/.556, at which point he got drilled in the noggin on a play at second base, earned himself a concussion, and by his own account took him a month to get back on track, after which he hit 316/.395/.468. When he’s healthy, he crushes his ZiPS.

The question this year isn’t if Kotchman is healthy (he is), but if he can avoid injuries (he can’t). Already this spring he’s gashed his shin and sprained his thumb. He’s always been a pain magnet (and not in that good, porno way) and he’s never been able to play through injuries. He’ll be good when healthy, but that’s the trick, isn’t it?

If Howie Kendrick pulls a Robbie Cano 2006 (.365/.525) absolutely nobody will be surprised — the 23-year-old hit .322/.347/.450 despite having to come back from a broken finger twice last season, and everyone knows by now that he hit a cumulative .359/.397/.567 in the minors. Some fret about his low walk rate, but Kendrick’s simply a freak with his ability to put sweet spot on ball. I’ll bet my house Kendrick’s beats his ZiPS by a good margin.

Third Base: After breaking a finger then struggling mightily through the first third of the season, Chone Figgins got some advice from buddy Nat Haynes and just exploded. From the end of May until he sprained his left wrist on August 7, Figgins hit .410/.460/.504 with 28 stolen bases. Though he still continued to hit, the wrist sprain got worse, to the point where the switch hitter was batting exclusively from the right side. Off-season surgery on said wrist was successful, but unless Haynes’s advice came in the form of a magical incantation, Figgins will almost certainly regress. He’s still fast, still multi-positional, still useful, and no longer dirt cheap. Depending on Brandon Wood’s progress and where the Angels are come August, he could be very tradable.

Now that Cabrera’s gone, the Angels will have to decide if either Maicer Izturis or Erick Aybar get the regular job; thus far Mike Scioscia’s been coy about the whole thing. Izturis is the better hitter (brother Cesar got all the defensive genes), but it’s an open question as to whether Aybar is even an average hitting shortstop. Ultimately, the job will likely go to Izturis, with Aybar playing the same super-sub role he was in last season.

Catcher is another power-sharing situation, and a mystifying one at that. Mike Napoli is a better hitter, a better catcher, and is probably nicer to animals and small children than Jeff Mathis, yet it looks like they’re going to spend equal time behind the dish. Mathis’ prospect bona fides have worn off; while Napoli can beat ZiPS, Mathis isn’t a big league starter, and he shouldn’t be getting a starter’s playing time.

Bench: Kendry Morales did a good job as filler, hitting enough to earn a grip of starts at the tail end of the season. He brings more power than Kotchman, but less of everything else. The outfield logjam means he’ll have to wait for the annual Kotchman injury to get PT; beyond that, he’ll start the season at AAA Salt Lake. Organizational soldier Rob Quinlan will see some spot-start against lefties at first.

The Outfield

Vlad Guerrero is money in the bank, and the only drama around him is whether or not he’ll be satisfied DHing. He says he won’t be throwing any tantrums and for all the talk that he’s a vastly better hitter as a RF than a DH, the numbers aren’t convincing: Over the past three years, he’s hit .303/.364/.536 in 378 DH PAs, and .329/.400/.559 in 1524 PAs playing the field. Take into consideration sample sizes and the fact that, in the past, Vlad DHed for extended periods only when he’s too hurt to field, this is unhappiness the Angels can live with. It’s a lock the Angels will pick up his ’09 option.

It is to Reagins’ credit that he moved quickly to rectify one of his predecessor’s expensive mistakes. Gary Matthews Jr. was a mistake from minute one, and while Torii Hunter is twice as expensive, he’s also a much better player. The Angels haven’t gotten a decent offensive season out of centerfield since 2000; Hunter should be a sizable offensive upgrade from Matthews.

From August until the end of the season, Garret Anderson hit like a champ: .305/.356/.542 and drove in 52 runs in 52 games. It’s not going to keep up — the hip flexor injury that cost him a quarter of the season is gone, but the back and hamstring issues aren’t going away, and he hasn’t been particularly good since 2003. He’s 35 and expensive; Angel fans should give him some dap because he’s probably not going to be back next year. The Angels plan on rotating Guerrero and Anderson between the field and DH to try and keep them both healthy. Anderson, like Vlad, hates the idea, but an outfield that includes both Hunter and Matthews is a big-time defensive plus compared to having both Guerrero and Anderson at the corners.

If a truck hits one of the above guys, point the cops to Juan Rivera. Rivera’s coming back from a broken leg that cost him nearly all of 2007; so far this spring he’s healthy and hitting. He’s better than both Matthews and Anderson at this point, and if/when the other guys stop hitting, Rivera may get the chance he’s deserved since 2005. If they DO hit, Rivera may be trade bait, as he’s in a contract year. Reggie Willits, who filled in capably for Rivera and Anderson, will see his playing time evaporate to a handful of defensive replacement and pinch-runner appearances, a victim of the numbers.

Okay, so what?

The much-maligned Angel offense pushed across 822 runs last season, good for fourth in the American League despite a team slugging percentage under .400 and just homers, fewer than any team in the league besides the Twins and Royals. That’s because the Angel team OBP was .345, third best in the league and the organization’s high water mark for this century. For the first time since Scioscia took became manager, the team had a group of players in Kotchman, Napoli and Willits who actually drew walks while Figgins, Anderson and Cabrera hit well over their career norms.

For 2008, Anderson can’t reasonably be expected to hit better than his ZiPS; the same holds true for Figgins. Going from Willits to Torii Hunter is, of course, an upgrade as Willits generates less power than those windmills at a miniature golf course. The outfield jam also means less at-bats for Matthews Jr., another good thing for the offense. Better seasons can be expected from Kendrick, Napoli and Kotchman. The Angels won’t match last season’s output, but full season contributions from Hunter, Kendrick and Rivera should keep them competitive. The real drop off will, of course, be in the pitching. With both Lackey and Escobar down to start the season, the Angels are offering only one quality starter (Weaver) one average one (Garland) and three back-end rotation starters — not the stuff of a contending team. If Lackey returns and resumes pitching like an All-Star, that’ll obviously change things, but spring training for Lackey begins in June, and how often does an injury to a pitcher’s throwing arm resolve itself with zero residual short-term effects?

The best pitching staff in the division belongs in Seattle now, and the Mariners have to be considered the division favorites at this point. Texas was a solid .500 team the second half of 2007, and if the annual Oakland rebuilding project yields some fruit and Harden stays healthy (stop laughing) the A’s could be in the mix. What distinguished the Angels from the rest of the division was depth of their starting pitching. That’s gone now, and without it, the Angels are no better than anyone else in the division. Originally, I had the Angels slated for 91-92 wins, but they’re going to start the season as a .500 team. If Lackey doesn’t return at 100%, that’s going to be how they’ll finish, too.