Posted 3:53 PM by Sean
A big thanks to All-Baseball.com for the link. That's twice that this has been identified as the Anaheim Angels weblog to read. At least until someone else starts one.

Posted 3:44 PM by Sean
The Angels' tentative 2003 schedule is posted here, although I believe they're moving opening day back to Sunday, April 29, so that they can be on ESPN in prime time. Looking at the schedule, two things hit me immediately: (1) it's a total meat grinder for the first month and a half. They start in the West, of course, so they'll have six apiece with the Mariners, A's, and Rangers, then their next twenty-four games are against the Red Sox, Yankees, Indians, and Blue Jays. I don't think the Indians will be all that good, but the Blue Jays are definitely a team to watch out for next year. (2) We did all right on the intraleague draw. The Angels will be playing the NL East except for the Braves (plus two series with the Dodgers, of course), and they'll have the Mets and the Phillies at home, while traveling to Montreal and Florida.

Oh, and one other thing - one of those delightful scheduling vagaries that are commonplace now that everyone plays an unbalanced schedule - the Angels don't play Detroit at all until August 15. As bizarre as that kind of thing is, I think the advantage of playing more games in your division is far more important.

Posted 3:31 PM by Sean
The Mariners sign Jamie Moyer to a three-year deal. When it's done, Moyer will be forty-three years old.

Posted 12:25 PM by Sean
Remember when Phil Nevin hit .228 in 75 games for the Angels? In 1998? Well, Nevin just put the kibosh on a deal that would have sent him from the Padres to the Reds in a straight-up deal for Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball, she is strange, no?

Posted 11:11 AM by Sean
Uh-oh. The Angels broke the Commissioner's Trophy. Actually, considering how it's configured, I'm amazed those pennants don't get snapped off every time there's a celebration. This time, six of them came loose. It's being repaired.

Posted 11:05 AM by Sean
Wow, Disney is raising the Angels' payroll from $62 million to $84 million? It's Bizzarro World! The article also includes a list of who's eligible for arbitration this year, and who's signed through what season.

Posted 9:36 AM by Sean
Okay, so Tom Glavine signs with the Mets, which, along with Thome going to the Phillies, prompts Rob Neyer to declare that the Braves' run of division titles is over. Me, I'll believe it when I see it. With the departure of Glavine, John Smoltz becomes the last player on the Braves' roster to have been there since 1991, the year they began their domination, meaning that the front office has managed to turn over nearly every single spot and still win. That's unbelievable, and enough to give the Braves the benefit of the doubt until someone proves otherwise on the field.

Meanwhile, Peter Gammons lists the potential free agents in 2003 and 2004. Not only do the Angels have no everyday players on the free agent market this year, they don't have any until 2004. So two years from now we have to worry about Troy Percival, Troy Glaus, and Garret Anderson. Percival will be 36, and hopefully Frankie Rodriguez will be ready by then anyway. Glaus and Anderson we'll have to see about. Of course, thinking that far ahead is a fool's game to the extent that there are so many potential intervening factors, but it's nice to have that security of not having to worry about losing pieces of the puzzle (except to injury or diminished skills, which are themselves enough to worry about).

One other thing I've been meaning to mention: when the 2003 season starts, Mike Scioscia will become only the second manager in Angels' history to have held that position on opening day for four years in a row. The first was Bill Rigney, their first manager, who helmed the Halos from 1961 to 1969. He'll also be the longest-tenured manager in the AL West, which is a pretty strange thought.

Posted 5:11 PM by Sean
So the Yankees' idea of a "youth movement" is to go after Bartolo Colon, who will be thirty years old in May. What will they do next, scour the Negro Leauges?

Seriously, Colon's a good pitcher and all, but the fact that he's a spring chicken compared to the rest of the Yankee starters says volumes about how much they're going to have to do to fix that rotation in the next couple of years.

Posted 9:07 AM by Sean
Darin Erstad needs hand surgery, but is expected to be fully recovered by the start of spring training. Sounds pretty routine. And apparently Mike Scioscia was going to go to med school if the whole baseball thing didn't work out - "He's hurt a bunch of different parts of his body before, so this is no different," he said.

Posted 1:37 PM by Sean
This story from the Associated Press, this column by Jayson Stark, and this other column by Jayson Stark bring back some memories. Essentially, all three describe how the Phillies made Thome feel wanted, so now there's lots and lots of love between them, so of course he'll be a great clubhouse presence and just what the youngsters in Philadelphia need to jell into a contender. To be honest, I don't care all that much what happens - if anything, I'm pulling for them slightly, if for no other reason than to make the NL East exciting - but damned if all this isn't eerily reminiscent of when the Angels signed Mo Vaughn. Mo, of course, is now persona non grata (more like persona maladicta, actually) in Anaheim, but when he was first signed it was tremendous - the Angels' first big free-agent signing since Reggie Jackson (just like this is the Phils' first since Pete Rose), a showing by ownership that they were willing to spend cash to build a winner, etc. All of the same things they're saying about Thome were said about Vaughn. To repeat: I wish Thome and the Phillies luck; it's just funny how things can change so quickly.

Posted 4:34 PM by Sean
The A's trade Billy Koch to the White Sox, and get Keith Foulke in the deal (there are other players, plus cash considerations, involved, but right now I'm just interested in the closers). Looking at their 2002 performances against the Angels, Koch had 7 saves, a .220 batting average against, and a 1.64 ERA with 9 strikeouts in 11 innings. Foulke only pitched 4.2 innings against Anaheim, allowing a .333 average against and a 3.86 ERA while striking out three and saving none (but not blowing any, either). Overall, Koch has been the more consistent closer, but Foulke has shown some talent and may improve. Just on the face of it, though, this is a good deal for the Angels, who won't have to deal with Koch nearly as often - both because he moves out of their division, and because they're not likely to enter the ninth trailing the White Sox as often as they will against the A's.

Posted 1:43 PM by Sean
Hey, thanks to John at TwinsGeek for linking to me, and welcome to those who've come here from there. If you haven't seen TwinsGeek, check it out - I want Purgatory Online to be like that when it grows up. Thanks also to Doug for letting me know about TwinsGeek in the first place.

For folks just visiting for the first time, I try to post at least once a day. Most of the posts are bite-sized, but occasionally I'll post something longer (like my post about going to Game 7 of the Series this year, or watching the Game 6 comeback, both of which are archived). Thanks for visiting!

Posted 9:17 AM by Sean
Scott Spiezio, David Eckstein, and Adam Kennedy will be making guest appearances on an as-yet-unscheduled episode of She Spies, one of those really awful-looking independent shows you always see ads for during afternoon baseball games. They're playing members of a World Series championship team who moonlight as emergency medical technicians in the off-season. The show itself looks like a Charlie's Angels knock-off, isn't affiliated with a network (it's supposedly on in Dallas at midnight on Saturdays on NBC, but is on various other networks at various other times elsewhere), and is obviously pretty stupid. But it stars Natasha Henstridge! Why was I not informed of this before?

Posted 9:05 AM by Sean
You know, when I first saw this I ignored it, despite (probably because of) how completely stupid it was. But now, more than a month after the end of the World Series, ESPN's MLB page still has the following quote from Joe Morgan at the bottom:

"All the intentional walks ruined the World Series for me as well as for Barry Bonds. I asked him if he was having fun because of all the walks and he said he really wasn't. It's just a shame. (Former Astros manager Larry) Dierker started that process last year and everyone built on it. It's a black eye on baseball. I don't know how you can change it though. There is no way you can control it really. It's one of the shortcomings of the game."

Forgive us, Joe. We didn't know that the point of baseball was to provide fun for Barry Bonds. We were unaware that the team with the best single player was supposed to win. We were ignorant, O Maestro, of God's divine plan to bring you amusement.

Posted 4:35 PM by Sean
The Phillies give Jim Thome a six-year contract worth $85 million, with an option for a seventh year (the article doesn't say whose option, but implies it's the team's). This after signing David Bell for four years, and continuing to chase Tom Glavine. I know they want to build momentum going into their new ballpark in 2004, but what's going to happen to this team in three years when they have Bell and Thome, both of whome will be in their mid-thirties, and Glavine, who will be almost forty, gobbling up that much of their payroll?

Posted 4:27 PM by Sean
Doug Miller, who reports on the Angels for MLB.com, has an offseason column called "Miller's Mailbag" that has some interesting tidbits, among them the fact that the winning player's World Series share was $229,351 this year. Miller also thinks that Frankie Rodriguez will continue in the role of set-up man to Troy Percival, rather than being given a starting slot.

Given that this is a guy employed by MLB, writing on the MLB website, I don't know how much faith to put in what he says about certain things. Most of the time he seems pretty reasonable, but then there's this answer to a fan wanting to know if money concerns are going to be a factor in the clubhouse next year:

"The Angels are a unique team because they don't let any outside influences or non-baseball-related thoughts enter their minds once they get to the park to prepare for and play games. Don't expect that to change any time soon, especially with Mike Scioscia at the helm. The players understand that the money issues will take care of themselves. They'll arrive for Spring Training and get back to the business of defending a championship. They realize how fortunate they are to have the team makeup they've built, and they won't sacrifice that for petty concerns."

Look, I'd love to believe the Angels are above all of those "petty concerns," and in all honesty I think they really are pretty focused on baseball. But these days teams are lucky to have two or three guys who don't worry about what they're paid, let alone twenty-five. This doesn't make them bad people, just people. It's going to make Scioscia's job more interesting, that's for sure.

Posted 9:11 AM by Sean
Here's a list of people on this year's Hall of Fame ballot. Slow year. I'd vote for Lee Smith, and maybe Eddie Murray, but that's probably it. When I have a little more time, I'll write about the Hall some more - it's a pretty interesting subject, and my life's ambition is to one day be the head librarian there.