Awesome!!!!

Napoli-Wells - bad trade or worst trade?

Wow!

Napoli-Wells - bad trade or worst trade?

Considering the money? Might just be the worst trade. If the Angels just get a cromulent OFer instead of Wells and let Napoli play 1st, they make the playoffs. That's gotta sting.

The original BTF thread on the trade, if you want to relive it.

Tuque's quote--lol wut--remains the best.

Did he jump or was he pushed? Can't imagine Moreno was happy about the job he did.

What on Earth did Napoli do to them that made them 1) not play him and then b) trade him for Wells? It was unfathomable then and in hindsight it's ineffable. And (surprise) it probably cost him his job.

Adrian Gonzalez and P Chris Young for Adam Eaton seems like the worst trade ever, but it was really more the "best trade ever" for the Padres, since Gonzalez was blocked by Teixeira for the foreseeable future.

Did he jump or was he pushed? Can't imagine Moreno was happy about the job he did.

LA Times:

“In moving forward, we felt a change was needed," said owner Arte Moreno

Jeff Mathis had consecutive under .500 OPS seasons, and he could still be the Angels starting catcher next season. This is amazing.

51. RoyalsRetro (AG#1F) Posted: January 21, 2011 at 10:53 PM (#3734463)
Its like the Angels had money earmarked for Carl Crawford and were hellbent on spending it one way or another.

Wells's OPS+ was only two points lower than Crawford's this year. The plan worked almost perfectly.

Good news, everybody!!

What on Earth did Napoli do to them that made them 1) not play him and then b) trade him for Wells? It was unfathomable then and in hindsight it's ineffable. And (surprise) it probably cost him his job.

It was just this total blind spot Scoscia had with Jeff Mathis. He puts a lot of emphasis on catcher's defense and stats like catcher's ERA, and nobody on the Angels could never convince him that supposed defensive god Jeff Mathis wasn't the best defensive catcher ever, or that his minus on offensive hurt the team. Scoscia is the strongest person in the organization anyway. Notice that the Angels never cut a guy like Mathis despite him probably being DFA years ago if he was in any other org.

Napoli-Wells - bad trade or worst trade?

No trade will ever be worse than Damion Easley for Greg Gohr.

Damn, there goes my hope for a Jason Bay for Mike Trout deal.

Hopefully they hire someone with experience that Scioscia can't strong-arm. I love Mike Scioscia, but he needs someone to disagree with him once in a while. I think Reagins probably never felt like he had the proper authority over Scioscia. He needs a voice to say "hey, Mike Napoli is good and cheap, and Vernon Wells is crappy and expensive. Maybe we should think about this." Reagins was never going to do that.

Maybe the Angels will get lucky and Reagins will take a GM job somewhere else and trade for Vernon Wells again.

The original BTF thread on the trade, if you want to relive it.

A lot of negativity for Ellsbury's future in that thread.

I wonder if Theo would like to live somewhere nice.

5:38 PM: We weren’t expecting that! Rosenthal reports that the Angels have traded Mike Napoli to the Blue Jays. No word on the return. Giving up one of the team’s better bats makes some sense if you can get some good young Rays talent. The Jays system isn’t quite as stocked. Here’s hoping for Angels fans that they’re getting some value back.

LOL

This isn't very creative, but it probably is the first step to righting the S.S. Los Angeles of Anaheim. Is Bill Stoneman available?

The Angels can totally have Ned Colletti if they wanted to.

Two words: Hen. Dry.

Hopefully they hire someone with experience that Scioscia can't strong-arm.

I think that's unlikely. More likely that Scioscia will have some sort of say in who does get hired, and that whoever does get hired will have little ability to manage Scioscia in any way.

-- MWE

I guess we now know one difference between not-very-good "regular" GMs and not-very-good "sabermetric" GMs: not-very-good "sabermetric" GMs are better at making their managers take the fall.

(Sung to the tune of the old Budweiser jingle)

When you say Min-aya,
You've said it all.

Jeff Mathis had consecutive under .500 OPS seasons, and he could still be the Angels starting catcher next season. This is amazing.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I just saw that Brandon Wood was a woeful .216/.270/.340 this year and now .186/.225/.289, 39 OPS+ in 751 career PA. Worse even than Mathis (career 50 OPS+). It's remarkable that the Angels produced two of the very worst ML hitters in recent memory pretty much simultaneously, and that both were once exciting hitting prospects.

I wonder if Theo would like to live somewhere nice.

He already lives in Boston. Aside from the accent, that's a pretty decent place to live.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I just saw that Brandon Wood was a woeful .216/.270/.340 this year and now .186/.225/.289, 39 OPS+ in 751 career PA. Worse even than Mathis (career 50 OPS+). It's remarkable that the Angels produced two of the very worst ML hitters in recent memory pretty much simultaneously, and that both were once exciting hitting prospects.

But it's Beane who is over-rated and running an organization that can't develop hitting prospects.

Sad to see Reagins leave. While I'm sure the Angels will be dumb in the future, I'm not sure they'll reach his levels on a consistent basis.

Hopefully they hire someone with experience that Scioscia can't strong-arm. I love Mike Scioscia, but he needs someone to disagree with him once in a while. I think Reagins probably never felt like he had the proper authority over Scioscia. He needs a voice to say "hey, Mike Napoli is good and cheap, and Vernon Wells is crappy and expensive. Maybe we should think about this." Reagins was never going to do that.

I think I was listening to Petros and Money during their LA only hour and it seemed like people in the LA media have sort of thought that it isn't exactly Scioscia who meddles with the GM and that Arte Moreno pushes the GM towards the Vernon Wells type of deals. I'm not sure how true that actually is, but it may be one of those smoke-fire type of situations.

But it's Beane who is over-rated and running an organization that can't develop hitting prospects.

The A's had one hitter from their system with an OPS+ over 100 this year. I can't defend the crappiness of Mathis and Wood, but I'll take the combined Trumbo, Kendrick, Borjous, and Aybar over Jemille Weeks. The Angels have had some big misses, but the fact that they've missed on some guys doesn't mean the A's can hit all of the sudden.

Tuque's quote--lol wut--remains the best.

Aw, thanks, Shooty. I wish I hadn't edited it later. Oh well.

The A's had one hitter from their system with an OPS+ over 100 this year. I can't defend the crappiness of Mathis and Wood, but I'll take the combined Trumbo, Kendrick, Borjous, and Aybar over Jemille Weeks.

Sure but you put any of those 4 guys on the A's and they'd be lucky to hit 220. :-)

Maybe the Angels will get lucky and Reagins will take a GM job somewhere else and trade for Vernon Wells again.

The announcement says that Reagins will stay with the team as assistant to chairman Dennis Kuhl. They rave about his accomplishments with the team.

It sounds like an example of The Peter Principle: Reagins had done a ton of great work for the organization, so they made him GM, and he was totally overmatched there. Kudos to the Angels for recognizing this, and removing him from that role while keeping him around for a role that he can excel at (rather than firing him outright). (Though I'm pretty much taking the Angels' word here; what do people think of Reagins in his previous roles, like Director of Player Development?)

It sounds like an example of The Peter Principle: Reagins had done a ton of great work for the organization, so they made him GM, ...

It's interesting to me just how many GMs entered MLB in non-baseball jobs. This weekend's reports on Reagins reminded me that he didn't cross over into baseball ops until he was in his 30s. As for other current (or recently fired) GMs, Colletti and Wade spent years in public relations; Anthopoulos reportedly started on the business side in Montreal; Wren started out as a minor league GM; and Alderson was general counsel of the A's. (And I might have missed a couple; this is just off the top of my head.) But with just those six, that's 20 percent of ML GMs who apparently had little or no prior baseball experience or background before they joined an MLB front office.

I'm not sure I have a point, other than what we already knew: Office politics clearly play a huge role when it comes to f.o. jobs, and analyzing and choosing GMs is still far more subjective than it is with players. Given the amounts of proprietary info. involved, I doubt this will change much in the coming years, but it's interesting nonetheless.

As for other current (or recently fired) GMs, Colletti and Wade spent years in public relations...(And I might have missed a couple; this is just off the top of my head.)

Theo started in PR with the Padres.

PR & General Counsel actually seem pretty good places to start for being a GM considering media relations, managing expectations, managing personnel and contract negotiation is a significant part of the job. I would imagine the actual talent evaluation part of the job relies much more on the ability to quickly process and evaluate information coming to you from analysts, medical staffs, traning staffs and scouts with the ability to also hire smart people into those positions.