Joe Musgrove is Going To The Padres. What are the Angels doing?
Reports broke last night that the San Diego Padres are continuing their massive offseason by trading for the best remaining Pittsburgh Pirates starter, Joe Musgrove. Musgrove, it just so happens, in an OTBB favorite and I wrote about him effusively back in 2019.
He’ll be joining a Padres rotation that already features Dinelson Lamet, Chris Paddack, top prospect Ryan Weathers, and this winter’s previous acquisitions, 4 time All Star Yu Darvish and former Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, not to mention last season’s major trade piece, Mike Clevinger, an Ace in his own right, who will miss 2021 after Tommy John Surgery but should be back in 2022.
This big trade between the Padres and Pirates leads to one obvious question- What are the Los Angeles Angels doing?!
The Angels, you may already know, have one of baseball’s 5 most exciting and awesome lineups- they came in to the 2020 season as the single most watchable team in the sport.
LA’s lineup features uber-prospect Jo Adell, one of baseball’s sweetest swings in Justin Upton, Shohei Ohtani, the most interesting player in the sport, a future first ballot Hall of Famer in Albert Pujols, Anthony Rendon the best free agent to change teams last year and a perennial MVP candidate, and Mike Trout, the future best player ever.
And yet, the Angels have missed the playoffs for 6 consecutive seasons, finishing double digit games out of first the lat 5 years in a row, including 2020 when there were only 60 games!
The Angels have made the playoffs just once in Trout’s already illustrious career and have never won a postseason game with him on the roster. It’s borderline criminal and the reason is and has been obvious for years- pitching. They have none. Never have.
Apparently, it was possible this winter to basically put together an entire rotation from scratch! The Padres just added the best pitcher off the reigning AL pennant winner, a superstar in Darvish, a legit mid-rotation guy in Musgrove, and the best pitcher to move before last year’s trade deadline in Clevinger. Those guys weren’t just available to the Padres. Any team could have called and made an offer. Not every team is out there wasting the prime of the best player we’ve ever seen.
The Angels just hired a new GM, former Braves assistant Perry Minasian. Where are you, Perry?! Start making some phone calls! The guy running the team 100 miles south is making a fool out of you and you’ve barely begun.
On the official MLB.com depth chart for the Angels right now, there are only 3 starting pitchers even listed and not one of them would even break the Padres top 5.
The only pitcher of consequence the Angels have added this winter is Raisel Iglesias from the Reds, who is actually good, but certainly isn’t the solution to the problem. We’re a month from Spring Training! When is Perry going to get to this!?
If I’m an Angels fan or the owner of the team right now, I’m pissed. Somehow, the last GM thought the way to fix the team’s pitching woes was to spend over $200 million on a new third baseman. Somehow, it didn’t work and he got fired. (Note: it was a good signing. When you can get Rendon you do it and the Angels offense is fierce, but Billy Eppler never addressed the glaring pitching problem.)
Now the new GM is sitting idly by while all the available good pitchers in baseball end up in San Diego. The Angels are staring down the barrel of another lost 78 win season and at this point, they deserve it.
What’s done is done but the winter isn’t over. Masahiro Tanaka is still a free agent. So is Rich Hill, James Paxton, Carlos Rodon, Jose Quintana, Jake Odorizzi, Chris Archer, Collin McHugh and Trevor Bauer and a whole bunch of other guys. Aside from Bauer and maybe Tanaka and Paxton, none are world changing, franchise fixing guys, but they’re all a step in the right direction. All of them.
The Angels need to build a new rotation. The Padres just did it through savvy trades for excellent veterans. The Angels missed that boat. Now they need to do it through free agency or a savvy trade or two. Spring training starts in a month, they better get started.
