"I think we have to wait a couple years first. Right now, it's obvious. Mike Napoli is having an incredible run with Texas," Scioscia said.

"I think we have to wait a couple years first. Right now, it's obvious. Mike Napoli is having an incredible run with Texas," Scioscia said. "He was certainly capable of doing what he did and we valued him. The thing that cracks me up is when people say we didn't think he was any good. We played him a lot more than Texas has this year over his career with us."

"We played him a lot more than Texas has this year over his career with us."

"If you say our organization didn't value Mike Napoli, it's absolutely wrong," he said. "The hindsight of this trade is 20/20 vision, and right now, obviously in the playoffs, that vision carries lot of weight. But I still think there is a lot of upside of what our team can become with Vernon."

The rap on Napoli here was that he wasn't a good defensive catcher, and, indeed, the Rangers have seemed to agree. He was their starting catcher for only 57 games this season, fewer than he caught in each of his five Angels seasons.

The Angels never gave up on Napoli's hitting, and, in fact, valued it even more than the Rangers, as he had nearly 100 fewer at-bats with the Rangers this season than with the Angels last year.

The Angels didn't hate Napoli. They simply thought that with Kendrys Morales returning at first base and Bobby Abreu scheduled to be the DH, there wouldn't be enough playing time for him.

They obviously blew it. They obviously placed far too much value in the defense of a Jeff Mathis-led group that finished the year as the worst-hitting catchers in the American League.

Scioscia, who prided himself on defense when he starred for the Dodgers, set that value and should be held accountable for its impact. It's fair to blame Scioscia for thinking Napoli could not be an everyday catcher, and fair to assume that he thought Napoli was expendable.

But is it fair to blame him for trading Napoli for an underachieving, $23-million disappointment like Wells? Scioscia refused to utter a negative word about Reagins, but he insisted Tuesday — as he has insisted since he joined the Angels a dozen years ago — that he did not make that trade, or any trades.

Basically, I think that this interview is primarily meant to put the 'Scioscia is de facto GM' rumors to bed so that the new GM is comfortable in taking the job. [\quote]

Watch what they do, not what they say.

Scioscia said he has spoken with Bud Black and Joe Maddon, former coaches on his staff who now are major-league managers, and neither is interested in leaving the bench to become the Angels GM.

I think the fact that Scioscia has already tried to recruit former subordinates for the job tells you volumes about the amount of control he wants to exert over the GM.

Hey, sometimes people don't click. Yeah, Scioscia should have used him better. But it seems really clear from all that's gone down that the two just didn't get along.

The Angels traded Napoli and Juan Rivera to the Toronto Blue Jays for Wells. Toronto then traded Napoli to the Texas Rangers, where he batted .320 with 30 home runs and a stellar .1045 OPS.

* Scioscia was a good catcher
* Scioscia is therefore an "expert" at evaluating catching talent
* Scioscia is biased towards fundamentally or mechanically sound defensive catchers, as he sees them
* No amount of offense is going to get Scioscia to overcome his biases

Scioscia has been with the Angels since 2000 and is signed through 2018.

Scioscia already has given the bad defensive rap to Hank Conger, as one of his justifications to start Jeff Mathis for the majority of the games. It might even be true, but for a team that starved for offense, sitting down a player that can help you this year and potentially for the next five for Mathis was just silly.

Scioscia acknowledged the trade hasn't worked out as the Angels envisioned. On Sept. 30, Angels general manager Tony Reagins stepped down under pressure from owner Arte Moreno and the Angels are deep into their search for his replacement. The team also fired its farm director, two top scouts and assistant general manager Ken Forsch.

I think the fact that Scioscia has already tried to recruit former subordinates for the job tells you volumes about the amount of control he wants to exert over the GM.

Scioscia had a quote saying that one of the reasons why Napoli got traded because being a catcher didn't come naturally to him like it did some catchers. Kinda interesting that he didn't apply that to his favorite toy, Jeff Mathis, like the fact he can't hit at all.

I find it incredulous that Texas and the small posse that represents the sabermetric community are seemingly the only people that value Napoli correctly.

It took Texas a while to figure it out too. Napoli lost a ton of playing time to Yorvit Torrealba and Mitch Moreland in the first half. Wash was handling him essentially like a platoon player; he got all the starts against LHP with scattered games against RHP if Torrealba needed a day off. But basically Napoli was only playing 3-4 games a week there for quite some time.

Moreno's list of GM interviews strongly suggests that he's looking to get somebody who is a total outsider

That said, if Wash bats him 8th in tonight's game, my head might actually explode.

That said, if Wash bats him 8th in tonight's game, my head might actually explode.


You might want to have 911 on speed-dial, then, because I would bet a very large sum that's exactly where he bats.

Whether Scioscia reached out to his former subordinates with Moreno's blessing or not it sure as hell doesn't sound like a guy who has no interest in being the man behind the curtain for a puppet GM.

That said, if Wash bats him 8th in tonight's game, my head might actually explode.

Has no one looked at the Jorge Posada experience with the Yankees and seen that if you have a C with a 120 OPS+ his D don't matter much? You'd think that a team making 14 of the last 15 post-seasons with all bat and no glove players at C and SS would get people to rethink biases.

They obviously blew it. They obviously placed far too much value in the defense of a Jeff Mathis-led group that finished the year as the worst-hitting catchers in the American League.

Folks, we see this all the time where a former player identifies with the skill set he had and expects those who play the same position to have the same qualities. It just "is".

He only exceeded his 2011 PA count in 2010.

Folks, we see this all the time where a former player identifies with the skill set he had and expects those who play the same position to have the same qualities. It just "is".

Good god--he's never even approached mediocre, even for one season. Is there a worse hitter in baseball who's gotten that much playing time in recent years?

The Angels C's were bad, but the team with the $23m catcher was worse.

The Angels C's were bad, but the team with the $23m catcher was worse.

Home runs are home runs, but Napoli had a .344 BABiP this year. Doesn't change the fact that he's an elite hitter, but it does suggest he's not really as good as he looked in 2011.

The Napoli to Toronto trade was shocking. The Napoli to Texas trade was also surprising, even accounting for Toronto having several corner infield/catcher pieces and having a need in the bullpen.

Has no one looked at the Jorge Posada experience with the Yankees and seen that if you have a C with a 120 OPS+ his D don't matter much?

Giving away 5-6 wins on D will make any rotation look shitty.

That said, I think we are seeing the best of Napoli. I expect that the rest of his years in Texas will be good, but not Benchesque. And that is ok. Winning it this year is more than I had hoped for and Napoli has been a HUGE part of this run.

But I think that if we are judging this trade and Scioscia's competence, we need to make sure we don't pencil Napoli in for a 1.045 season OPS and a WS MVP in 2012, 2013, etc.

Now if you want to blame having Jeter, Soriano, Giambi, Sheffield, a Japanese Zombie and the corpse of Bernie Williams playing D behind them, we can talk. Man, was that an awful defense for 3 or 4 years.

I haven't looked in a while, but IIRC there is a pretty decent argument that getting away from the Yankees' defense was a major factor in Clemens's post-40 resurgence in Houston.

It's at least a more solid theory than shouting "steroids!" in a crowded room of sportswriters.

Why is it always black or white? Why not black AND white! ROIDS and crappy D!

Guy pitches coupla years here, coupla years there, coulda just been his year some years and not other years, just sayin.

I wouldn't read too much into this. My sense is that Scioscia is probably still close with those guys and talks to them regularly. This is the first I've seen this reported, and the way I read, it sounds like he at most was gauging any interest. And why wouldn't he? Wouldn't you want someone as your boss with whom you worked well and had a successful partnership in the past? I'm not saying that this would be in the best interest of the Angels, but how many managers are going to say "I really hope they hire someone I've never worked with who won't come to me for any input whatsoever"?

It's not like the Angels went out looking to trade Napoli and took the best deal they could find, they wanted Vernon Wells and were dumb enough to pay almost the full load and give up talent.

This is exactly true, and I don't understand why people seem to act as though it is not true. The team believed they had a surplus at catcher, and they believed Wells was an impact bat worth the money, so they traded from surplus to shore up a deficiency.

But this was the dumbest trade I can think of.

This is exactly true, and I don't understand why people seem to act as though it is not true. The team believed they had a surplus at catcher, and they believed Wells was an impact bat worth the money, so they traded from surplus to shore up a deficiency. The problem was that they didn't really have a surplus at catcher and that Wells was not at all (and was never going to be) what they hoped.

I think the Victor Zambrano/Scott Kazmir trade was dumber on the day it was made, but it's close.

It's fair to say that the Angels didn't recognize Napoli's value, but isn't it the case that nobody recognized Napoli's value?

You could drop this man in any decade from 1920-1960 and nobody would bat an eye.

But his defense is not that much worse, if at all, than Mathis's. I looked at this the other day, pouring over their relative defensive stats on b-r, and didn't see much difference. I concluded that Mathis was probably a little better defensively, but just a little. He's clearly more flashy: 16 pickoffs vs. 4 for Napoli. But their CS%s and PB and WP, etc., are similar.

When you add the money into the equation do you still think the Zambrano/Kazmir trade was worse? That's a hard sell for me...

Here are many nerds in their natural habitat. There's definitely some who are saying that Napoli is undervalued in that link, but it wasn't viewed as an incredible steal by everyone.