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Press Clips

(September 25, 2018)

September 25, 2018 Page 2 of 29

CLIPS CONTENT

FROM THE OC REGISTER (PAGE 3)

Angels beat Rangers on Jose Briceño’s pinch-hit, walk-off home run

The numbers agree: Mike Trout’s defense in center field improved in 2018

FROM LOS ANGELES TIMES (PAGE 7)

Jose Briceño blasts walk-off homer in 11th to snap Angels' losing streak

FROM ANGELS.COM (PAGE 9)

Briceno ends marathon with walk-off HR in 11th

Ohtani crushes his hardest-hit homer of career

Scioscia says he wants to continue managing

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (PAGE 13)

Briceno’s walk-off HR sends Angels past Rangers 5-4 in 11

Angels’ Mike Scioscia says he wants to keep managing

FROM THE ATHLETIC (PAGE 16)

Sarris: Two surprising toolsy young stars are key cogs for their teams

Mike Scioscia wants to continue managing, even as his future with the Angels remains

uncertain

FROM MLB.COM (PAGE 21)

Final Rookie of the Year Award poll

Do you want to hear Shohei Ohtani sing 'Despacito' for his teammates? Of course you do

Each team's all-time single-season ace*

FROM FAN GRAPHS (PAGE 24)

Elegy for ’18 – Los Angeles Angels

FROM FOR THE WIN (PAGE 28)

Mike Trout Monday: Mike Trout's mom offers simple, accurate take on AL MVP field

FROM NBC SPORTS (PAGE 29)

Report: Eric Chavez the favorite to replace Mike Scioscia as Angels manager

September 25, 2018 Page 3 of 29

FROM THE OC REGISTER

Angels beat Rangers on Jose Briceño’s pinch-hit, walk-off home run

By J.P. Hoornstra

ANAHEIM — Few details of the Angels’ plan Monday against the Texas Rangers looked ideal. In that way, it was the perfect September test for a young team far from postseason contention.

Andrelton Simmons missed the game with a sore knee, so Kaleb Cowart got his first major league start at shortstop. Jose Fernandez got his first start at second base and made his debut in the cleanup spot. He did not hit a home run but rookie left fielder Michael Hermosillo did – also a first.

After a blown save by first-time closer Ty Buttrey came the finishing touch: Rookie catcher Jose Briceño hit a pinch-hit, walk-off home run against Matt Moore (3-8) in the 11th inning to cap the Angels’ 5-4 win, snapping a five-game losing streak.

It was only the second game the Angels have won this season with a home run in their final at-bat.

“That experience is something that can only help them,” Scioscia said of his young players. “We just want to put them in a good role, let them play baseball, and this experience is what it’s about. You want them to see what the big leagues are about, understand what adjustments you have to make.”

Briceño’s fifth home run this season was only the second pinch-hit home run by an Angel in 2018. Coincidentally, Briceño hit the first Sunday in Houston.

Though a rookie, Briceño is 26, an age that often constitutes a baseball player’s prime. He also defies the prototype of a career starter at every minor-league level tasked with performing off a major league bench. Pinch-hitting was one of Briceño’s strengths before he was making big-league money.

“In Venezuela, when I was there, I hit like a few homers (as) a pinch-hitter too,” he said.

A reporter jokingly asked Briceño if he merely did not want to catch into the wee hours after replacing Francisco Arcia.

“I mean, no,” Briceño said, laughing.

Shohei Ohtani and Jefry Marte also hit home runs for the Angels (76-81), who avoided matching their longest losing streak of the season.

Five days after one of the worst games of his career, Angels starter Felix Peña allowed three runs over seven innings before the announced crowd of 29,052 at Angel Stadium.

The Angels took a 4-3 lead into the ninth inning. Buttrey got two quick outs, then blew the save when Ronald Guzman doubled and scored on an Elvis Andrus single, tying the score at 4.

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It was the second blown save in as many games for Buttrey, who converted his first four save opportunities after being recalled from Triple-A Salt Lake. Buttrey was charged with five runs in the eighth inning Saturday in Houston.

Ohtani gave the Angels a 1-0 lead in the first inning with his 21st home run of the season, extending his record for the most ever by a Japanese-born rookie. Estimated at 428 feet, its fate was assured long before it landed between two tunnels in the right field bleachers.

“Got all barrel,” Ohtani said through his interpreter.

Ronald Guzman’s solo home run to right field tied the score 1-1 in the second inning. The Angels pulled ahead 3-1 on the home runs by Hermosillo and Marte. In the sixth inning, Texas tied the score when Jurickson Profar sent an 0-and-1 slider from Peña over the right field fence for a two-run home run.

The Angels pulled ahead in the bottom of the sixth inning. The first batter, Marte, was hit in the right hand with a pitch from Rangers starter Adrian Sampson. He advanced to second base on a balk and reached third on a groundout by Arcia.

Rookie Connor Sadzeck was summoned from the bullpen to pitch to Hermosillo and threw a changeup in the dirt on 3-and-2. When the pitch eluded catcher Isiah Kiner-Falefa and bounced toward the backstop, Marte scored easily from third base to give the Angels a 4-3 lead.

Peña came back out for the seventh inning, did not allow a run, and left in line for the victory. He allowed a total of five hits, walked one batter and struck out six. It was a vast improvement over his most recent start, a four-inning debacle last Wednesday in Oakland in which he allowed six runs. The Angels lost that game 10-0 and had not won since.

A reliever at Triple-A to begin the season, Peña has been given a long audition as a starter since June. His numbers have improved since leaving the bullpen; his earned-run average in 17 major league starts is now an even 4.00.

“I feel confident this is where I want to be,” Peña said through an interpreter. “I don’t want to be in the bullpen. Hopefully, this is the new role for me.”

Angels center fielder Mike Trout finished 0 for 3 with two walks, giving him a franchise-record 117 walks for the season. Trout was the previous record-holder too. He walked 116 times in 2016.

Taylor Cole (3-2), another rookie, pitched a scoreless 11th inning to pick up the win.

Hermosillo said he got to keep the baseball, which landed near the Angels’ bullpen. Ohtani did not keep his, but he is accustomed to swatting souvenirs into the stands. Only three American League rookies have hit more home runs this season than Ohtani.

While the Angels’ other rookies can only be rewarded with the benefit of major league experience, Ohtani might win the AL Rookie of the Year award.

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“It’s a huge honor for me to be a candidate still this late in the season,” he said. “I can accomplish something here late in the season personally; I take that very positive. Still got five games left. I want to finish up strong and hopefully carry it over to next season.”

The numbers agree: Mike Trout’s defense in center field improved in 2018

By J.P. Hoornstra

ANAHEIM — This time a year ago, the raw impression of Mike Trout’s defense did not agree with the numbers. For every gif-able catch above the wall, there was an advanced statistic to bring the Angels’ center fielder down a peg.

By Defensive Runs Saved, Trout ranked 25th out of 31 players with at least 500 innings in center field in 2017. By Ultimate Zone Rating, Trout ranked 26th. This became a point of emphasis for Trout in the offseason, then a talking point in spring training, when the two-time American League MVP said he wanted to add a Gold Glove Award to his trophy case.

Trout probably won’t win the award, but he’s at least moving in a different direction – literally and figuratively.

Through Sunday, Trout had not been charged with an error this season, something no other major league center fielder who’s played at least 120 games can claim. He led the majors in double plays started (four) and his seven assists ranked third in the American League.

As for the fancy stats, Trout’s plus-7 DRS (through Sunday) ranks fifth in the AL and his 1.3 UZR ranks 20th – closer to the top than the bottom at least. Some dismiss the validity of the publicly available advanced metrics. But DRS and UZR factor into the Gold Glove Award selection process and, not insignificantly, Trout pays attention to them.

“The defensive runs saved is the biggest,” he said. “You take pride in defense to make all the plays, but saving as (many) runs as you can for your team, I think that’s the biggest stat.”

Trout said he considered arm strength and accuracy his biggest areas for improvement coming into the season. He incorporated more long toss sessions into his off-season and in-season training. Observers note that Trout has also been more aggressive charging balls hit in front of him compared to seasons past. While he might have sacrificed some ability to catch balls hit over his head as a result, the net effect seems to be positive.

Having extra forward momentum feeds into arm strength too, and all of this could help explain Trout’s increased assists and double play totals. Manager Mike Scioscia said those numbers only tell part of the story.

“There’s a lot of singles that go through the holes with guys on and what happens? Do you stop the guy from scoring? Do you stop the guy from going first to third? These are all things in team defense that get overlooked, but are very, very important,” Scioscia said.

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While not listed publicly, these statistics are recorded internally by the Angels. Scioscia didn’t want to disclose exactly how Trout stacks up but said he’s improving “in a lot of aspects.”

In turn, Scioscia said Trout’s defensive improvements have allowed the Angels to position their corner outfielders differently, knowing Trout can cover a larger share of the outfield gaps.

The Gold Glove voting is out of his hands, but Trout believes he’s done what he set out to do at the start of the year.

“Obviously you want to improve and you want to see your numbers improve throughout the year,” he said. “There are some things you can get better, and I’m going to keep working hard. Like you said, (seven) runs (saved), maybe shoot for a bigger number next year.”

SCIOSCIA’S FUTURE

Scioscia told Angels radio station KLAA that he will speak to owner Arte Moreno and General Manager Billy Eppler this week and “come to a decision” about his future as a manager.

Scioscia’s contract expires at the end of this season. He has repeatedly denied reports claiming a decision about his future has already been made. On Monday, Scioscia told KLAA that he wants to continue managing.

“I think that if you love something, you ought to continue to keep doing it,” he said. “If you can, great. If you can’t, so be it, but I love the dugout.”

ALSO

An MRI on Andrelton Simmons’ right knee came back “clean,” Scioscia said, but the shortstop was given a day off. Simmons landed awkwardly on the knee in the bottom of the seventh inning Sunday in Houston and was removed from the game. He did not take part in pregame activities on the field Monday but Scioscia said it’s possible that Simmons would return to the lineup Tuesday.

UP NEXT

Angels (RHP Matt Shoemaker, 2-2, 5.48 ERA) vs. Rangers (RHP Yovani Gallardo, 8-6, 6.59 ERA), Tuesday, 7 p.m., Fox Sports West

September 25, 2018 Page 7 of 29

FROM LA TIMES

Jose Briceño blasts walk-off homer in 11th to snap Angels' losing streak

By Maria Torres

The scene at Angel Stadium’s home plate Monday night resembled a mobbing.

White dust floated in the air. Clothes were ripped off. Grunts roared in the night.

The gleeful cheers of those still gathered to watch the episode unfold gave it away. This was a celebration, one the Angels earned after defeating the Texas Rangers 5-4 in 11 innings to begin the final week of the season.

In the moments after he clubbed a game-winning home run, pinch-hitter Jose Briceno was a target. He had launched Rangers reliever Matt Moore’s third pitch of the inning over the center-field wall. His teammates would not let him go without a kindhearted pummeling. It happened in seconds — baby powder thrown at his head, jersey ripped out of his belted pants, undershirt torn clear down the front. A bucket of ice was dumped over his shoulders during his postgame interview.

“That was awesome,” Briceno said in the clubhouse. “I don’t know what’s going on around me. I just tried to close my eyes.”

The Angels had lost five games in a row, outscored 58-13. They needed someone other than Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani to step up to end this disappointing season on a high note.

On this night, it was rookie catcher Briceno. His heroics came in the wake of Ty Buttrey’s blown save in the ninth inning, which erased seven quality innings hurled by Felix Pena.

Instead of portending disaster, the blown save paved the way for perfect outings from Angels relievers Hansel Robles and Taylor Cole and for Briceno’s second career pinch-hit homer, his second in as many days.

“We battled,” manager Mike Scioscia said. “Those guys battled on the other side, too. ... But we did a lot of good things. We had a lot of young guys on the field tonight. I think they all held up well.”

Before the hoopla, Ohtani knocked a first-pitch homer off Rangers starter Adrian Sampson in the first inning. It arced high, reaching a peak of 146 feet according to MLB’s Statcast system, before landing in the right-center-field seats. Lasers in the ballpark measured the exit velocity of the home run at 112.9 mph — the hardest-hit home run of Ohtani’s rookie campaign.

But the home run’s majesty almost went for naught, along with solo shots Sampson surrendered to Jefry Marte and rookie Michael Hermosillo. It was the first home run of Hermosillo’s career and his fifth hit since joining the Angels as a September call-up.

For the second time in two outings, Buttrey could not hold a lead. He gave up a two-out double to Ronald Guzman in the ninth. Pinch-hitter Elvis Andrus then laced a single through the left side of the

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infield, giving pinch-runner Delino DeShields enough time to score from second base. The Angels contended DeShields missed the bag as he rounded third and called for a replay of the tying run. Umpires upheld the call.

In his previous outing Saturday, Buttrey was charged with five runs in a loss at Houston after entering the game in the eighth inning with a 5-1 advantage. For the first time in his short major league career, which began Aug. 16, he wasn’t able to record an out. He’d given up only one earned run and held batters to a .185 batting average in first 14 games.

His last two opponents have not been set down as effortlessly.

Yet the Angels improved to 76-81 anyway. Should they win their final five games, they would avoid a third consecutive sub-.500 season.

“Oh my gosh, I’ve been waiting for it,” Hermosillo said. “I’ve been waiting to just get an RBI or just get on the board in some way. So it was great to help the team win for sure.”

Scioscia doubles down … sort of

In the weeks since rumors surfaced of his impending retirement, Mike Scioscia has spent little time publicly discussing his intentions beyond the end of this Angels season, which coincides with the expiration of the 10-year contract he signed in 2009.

He’s waved off attempts to reminisce about his career. He’s talked often about the 2019 Angels and his enthusiasm for seeing what Ohtani might accomplish in 2020, when the two-way star is expected to return to the mound as a starting pitcher after repairing the damaged ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow.

But when asked on KLAA’s pregame radio show if he still loves managing, Scioscia broke his silence to tell Terry Smith he would like to remain at the helm if given the chance.

Scioscia, who turns 60 in November, has been in professional baseball for some 40 years. After 19 seasons managing the Angels, he will have earned the right to negotiate a new contract. It’s just a matter of if he really wants one.

“We’ll continue to evaluate things this week,” he said. “I’ll speak with [owner Arte Moreno] and speak with [general manager Billy Eppler] and kind of come to a decision. I think that if you love something, you want to continue to keep doing it. And if you can, great. And if it doesn’t happen, so be it.”

Simmons MRI clean

The Angels went without reigning Gold Glove winner Andrelton Simmons at shortstop, after Simmons landed awkwardly on his right knee while making a defensive play in the seventh inning of Sunday’s loss.

Scioscia said Simmons underwent an MRI and received a clean bill of health.

Simmons, who’s played in 142 games this season, is expected to return to the lineup on Tuesday.

September 25, 2018 Page 9 of 29

FROM ANGELS.COM

Briceno ends marathon with walk-off HR in 11th

Pena throws seven solid to help Halos halt five-game skid

By Maria Guardado

ANAHEIM -- Jose Briceno tried to brace himself as best he could, but he wasn't prepared for the rollicking celebration that awaited him at home plate after he blasted a pinch-hit, walk-off home run in the 11th inning to lift the Angels to a 5-4 win over the Rangers in Monday night's series opener at Angel Stadium.

By the time he emerged from the scrum, he was coated in baby powder and had his jersey ripped off his chest by Kaleb Cowart. Not that he minded.

"That was awesome," Briceno said. "I don't know what's going on around me. I just tried to close my eyes."

Briceno entered Monday with only five pinch-hit appearances in the Majors, but he delivered after subbing for catcher Francisco Arcia with the game tied at 4 in the 11th inning. After falling behind, 0-2, against Rangers left-hander Matt Moore, Briceno drove a fastball over the left-center-field wall for his fifth home run of the season. It was the Angels' first pinch-hit, walk-off home run since Scott Spiezio in 2000 and only the fifth in franchise history.

"As a pinch-hitter, you have to be aggressive, so I was just hoping for a fastball," Briceno said. "That's why I swung really hard."

Briceno's heroics helped bail out fellow rookie Ty Buttrey, who allowed a one-run lead to slip away in the ninth after Ronald Guzman doubled off the center-field wall to set up Elvis Andrus' two-out, pinch-hit RBI single to left field.

Shohei Ohtani, Jefry Marte and Michael Hermosillo also homered, while right-hander Felix Penaworked seven strong innings to rebound from a rough outing at Oakland last week, helping the Angels snap a five-game losing streak and open their final homestand on a high note.

"We battled," manager Mike Scioscia said. "Those guys battled on the other side, too, and tied it up in the ninth with two outs. But we did a lot of good things. We had a lot of young guys on the field tonight. I think they all held up well. We drove the ball out of the park, which was nice. It's a good win."

Ohtani broke out of his mini-slump and continued to make his case for the American League Rookie of the Year award, crushing a 428-foot solo shot to put the Angels on the board in the first inning.

Ohtani, who entered Monday in a 3-for-22 rut, launched a first-pitch sinker from Texas right-hander Adrian Sampson to right field for his 21st home run of the season. The blast had an exit velocity of 112.9 mph, making it the hardest-hit home run of his career.

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"I got all of the barrel," Ohtani said through interpreter Ippei Mizuhara. "I felt pretty good about how far it went."

Guzman homered off Pena to tie the game in the second, but the Angels countered with a pair of solo shots from Marte and Hermosillo to take a 3-1 lead in the fourth. It was the first career home run for Hermosillo, who started in left field in place of Justin Upton.

"I've been waiting for it," Hermosillo said. "I've been waiting to just get an RBI or just get on the board in some way. So it was great to help the team win, for sure."

But the Rangers used another home run to erase the deficit in the sixth. After allowing a single to Rougned Odor, Pena hung an 0-1 slider to Jurickson Profar, who hit it out to right field for a game-tying homer. Pena immediately dropped to his knees, lamenting the errant pitch.

"I missed with the pitch," Pena said in Spanish. "Every time you miss, you have to pay the price."

Still, the Angels' offense picked up Pena in the bottom of the sixth, as Marte scored on a wild pitch from Rangers reliever Connor Sadzeck to give the club a 4-3 lead.

Pena returned to the mound in the seventh and posted a scoreless inning to cap his efficient, 89-pitch effort. He departed after allowing three runs on five hits while walking one and striking out six, an impressive turnaround from his rocky performance against the A's on Wednesday, when he gave up six runs over four innings.

"I kept doing what I had been doing, working hard and making my pitches," Pena said. "Those things happen. My last start, things didn't work out how I wanted, but I stayed focused and maintained my routine. It worked out well, thank God."

Pena has now pitched at least six innings in seven of his last eight starts and has posted 3.60 ERA over his last 10 outings. A converted reliever, Pena said he believes he's shown enough to prove that he can be a long-term starter for the Angels.

"I feel strong, and I feel really positive," Pena said. "I enjoy it a lot more than being in the bullpen. I'm not thinking about returning to the bullpen anymore. Hopefully, that'll be the case. I'm going to keep working hard to always give my best."

SOUND SMART Mike Trout drew his 117th walk of the season in the 10th, breaking the single-season club record (116) that he set in 2016.

MITEL REPLAY OF THE DAY The Angels challenged that pinch-runner Delino DeShields missed third base while scoring from second on Andrus' single in the ninth, but the call was upheld following a replay review.

UP NEXT Right-hander Matt Shoemaker (2-2, 5.48 ERA) will take the mound for the Angels on Tuesday as they continue their three-game series against the Rangers at 7:07 p.m. PT at Angel Stadium. Shoemaker

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pitched five scoreless innings in his last start against Texas on Sept. 3. The Rangers will counter with right-hander Yovani Gallardo (8-6, 6.59 ERA).

Ohtani crushes his hardest-hit homer of career

By Maria Guardado

ANAHEIM -- With less than a week until the end of the season, Shohei Ohtani continues to bolster his case for the American League Rookie of the Year award.

The 24-year-old Japanese star launched a 428-foot solo shot to put the Angels on the board in the first inning of Monday night's 5-4 series-opening win over the Rangers at Angel Stadium.

Ohtani, who entered the game in a 3-for-22 slump, crushed a first-pitch sinker from Texas right-hander Adrian Sampson to right field for his 21st home run of the season. The blast had an exit velocity of 112.9 mph, making it the hardest-hit home run of his rookie campaign, according to Statcast™.

"I got all of the barrel," Ohtani said through interpreter Ippei Mizuhara. "I felt pretty good about how far it went."

Ohtani has been a persistent thorn in the Rangers' side this season, batting .327 with four doubles, five home runs, and 11 RBIs in 15 games. His five home runs against Texas are his most against any opponent.

Despite spending a month on the disabled list with an elbow injury that led to a Tommy John surgery recommendation earlier this month, Ohtani has emerged as a frontrunner for the Rookie of the Year award after hitting .280 with a .925 OPS over 307 plate appearances as a left-handed hitter and logging a 3.31 ERA over 51 2/3 innings as a right-handed pitcher. His chief competition for the honor will likely come from the Yankees' Miguel Andujar and Gleyber Torres.

"It's a huge honor for me to be a candidate still this late in the season," Ohtani said. "That means I accomplished something positive during the season. Personally, I take that as a positive. We've still got five games left. I want to finish up strong and hopefully carry it over to next season."

Scioscia says he wants to continue managing

By Maria Guardado

ANAHEIM -- Mike Scioscia has consistently deflected questions about his future with the Angels since reports surfaced in August that he planned to step down after 19 seasons in the managerial seat. But he

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addressed his future in a pregame interview on Monday with Terry Smith of KLAA AM 830, the team-owned radio station.

"I love managing," Scioscia told Smith. "I love the dugout. I love the challenge of getting the team and getting them going in the right direction. That's something I thoroughly enjoy."

Asked if he wanted to keep managing, Scioscia said, "I'd like to. We'll continue to evaluate things this week. I'll speak with [owner] Arte [Moreno] and speak with [general manager] Billy [Eppler] and kind of come to a decision. But I think that if you love something, you want to continue to keep doing it. If you can, great, and if it doesn't happen, so be it. But I love the dugout."

Scioscia, the longest-tenured manager in baseball, is in the final year of the 10-year, $50 million contract he signed with the Angels in the fall of 1999. The most successful manager in franchise history, Scioscia steered the Angels to their first and only World Series championship in 2002 and has also won six division titles and two Manager of the Year awards during his tenure in Anaheim.

But the Angels have not won a postseason game since 2009 and have only one playoff appearance since then, which ended in a sweep at the hands of the Royals in the 2014 American League Division Series. The Angels also failed to live up to heightened expectations in 2018 and enter their final homestand of the season with a 75-81 record. Unless they win their final six games of the season, they will finish with a losing record for the third consecutive year.

If the Angels decide to move on from the 59-year-old Scioscia, they have three internal candidates who will likely be in the mix to succeed him: bench coach Josh Paul, former Tigers manager Brad Ausmus and former Major League third baseman Eric Chavez. Ausmus and Chavez are currently special assistants to Eppler.

Gold Glove for Trout? Angels center fielder Mike Trout is a two-time American League Most Valuable Player, a seven-time All-Star and a five-time Silver Slugger, but he still has his eye on adding another accolade to his impressive resume: a Gold Glove.

Trout was named a Gold Glove finalist in 2012 and '15, but the defensive hardware has so far eluded him. He's making a push to change that this year.

After recording -6 Defensive Runs Saved in 2017, Trout said he wanted to improve his defense at the beginning of the season. The 27-year-old focused on getting better jumps and playing more aggressively in center field, leading to a tangible improvement in some defensive metrics. He now has 7 DRS this season, according to FanGraphs, which ranks fifth among American League center fielders.

Scioscia said he believes Trout's play this year merits Gold Glove consideration.

"Mike's played Gold Glove-caliber center field, there's no question," Scioscia said Monday. "I don't know if there's a guy that we've seen that does such a wide array of things, whether it's taking a hit away, stopping the first and third, which he's as good as there is in baseball in center field, which is an important play for an outfielder. A lot of times it's overlooked, but when you can come in and stop, especially the first and third and the extra base, that's tremendous. So just the presence he brings that

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puts less pressure on the corner guys with the range he has, so no doubt in my mind, he's playing a Gold Glove-caliber center field."

Simmons, Upton out Shortstop Andrelton Simmons and left fielder Justin Upton were out of the Angels' lineup for Monday's series opener against the Rangers. Simmons, who exited Sunday's game in Houston after landing awkwardly on his right knee while attempting to field a groundball, underwent an MRI exam that came back clean and could return to action on Tuesday. Scioscia said Upton received a routine day off.

Kaleb Cowart and Michael Hermosillo started at shortstop and left field, respectively, on Monday.

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Briceno’s walk-off HR sends Angels past Rangers 5-4 in 11

By Greg Beacham

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — The Los Angeles Angels celebrated Jose Briceno’s extra-inning homer with the frenzied enthusiasm of a team barreling toward the playoffs, not a team that needs a six-game winning streak this week just to finish at .500.

Although the Angels are staying home for yet another October, they’re looking to build for next season with small successes — and big celebrations, apparently.

Briceno delivered a pinch-hit homer leading off the 11th inning, and the Angels snapped their five-game skid with a 5-4 victory over the Texas Rangers on Monday night.

Shohei Ohtani hit his 21st homer in the first inning and Michael Hermosillo added his first career homer as the Angels opened the final homestand of their fourth consecutive season out of the playoffs.

After Taylor Cole (3-2) retired the Rangers in the 11th, Briceno drilled an 0-2 pitch from Matt Moore (3-8) to center for his fifth career homer. It was the Angels’ first walk-off homer by a pinch-hitter since Scott Spiezio did it in 2000.

After improving to 76-81, the Angels were ready to party: Briceno’s teammates ripped his jersey off his back, tore his undershirt and repeatedly pelted him with rosin and liquids when he reached home plate.

“Yeah, I didn’t know what was going on around me, so I just tried to close my eyes,” Briceno said with a grin.

After a 1-5 road trip that included four straight humiliating blowout losses, the Angels returned home with a four-homer performance and a strong start from Felix Pena. The 28-year-old former Cubs reliever yielded five hits over seven innings and struck out six, continuing his improbable rise as a starter in the Angels’ injury-plagued rotation by matching the longest appearance of his career.

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Angels rookie Ty Buttrey was one out away from his fifth career save, but after Ronald Guzman doubled with two outs in the ninth, pinch-runner Delino DeShields scored the tying run on pinch-hitter Elvis Andrus’ single to left.

Guzman and Jurickson Profar homered for the Rangers, who opened their season-ending road trip with their sixth loss in eight games.

“I thought it was a really well-played game,” Rangers interim manager Don Wakamatsu said. “We talked about playing throughout the rest of the season hard, with some energy, with some personality. We’ve got a lot of bright spots.”

Adrian Sampson yielded five hits and four runs while pitching into the sixth for Texas.

Two batters after Jefry Marte hit his first homer since Aug. 21 in the fourth inning, Hermosillo got his first career homer — and a big hug from Mike Trout on his way back to the dugout — in his 28th game with the Angels. The 23-year-old outfield prospect made his big-league debut in May, and he said his father already laid claim to his first home run ball in a fortuitously timed text message shortly before this game.

Rougned Odor singled in the sixth and scored when Profar’s 19th homer barely cleared the wall in right.

Marte was hit by a pitch from Sampson leading off the sixth. He advanced on a balk and a groundout before scoring the go-ahead run on Connor Sadzeck’s wild pitch.

NUMBER 21

Ohtani hit a 428-foot shot to right field in the first inning, interrupting a 3-for-22 slump with another superlative blast by the Angels’ two-way sensation. He has five homers while batting .327 against Texas this season. He also hit into two double plays and struck out, but his 21 homers are fourth-most among AL rookies.

FREE PASSES

Trout went 1 for 3 with two strikeouts, but drew his 116th and 117th walks of the season to set a franchise record, surpassing his mark in 2016.

SCIOSCIA’S FUTURE

Before the game, Angels manager Mike Scioscia told the team-owned radio station that he would like to manage again next year. Scioscia is finishing his 19th season in the Angels’ dugout, and his contract expires this year. He has been widely expected to step down when the season concludes, but Scioscia sounded open to returning or to managing elsewhere in the majors.

TRAINER’S ROOM

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Angels: Andrelton Simmons wasn’t in the starting lineup due to a sore knee, but he worked out on the field. The star shortstop landed awkwardly while fielding Sunday in Houston. ... LF Justin Upton got a rest day.

UP NEXT

Rangers: Yovani Gallardo (8-6, 6.59 ERA) is 1-5 in his last seven starts, and he has a 6.91 ERA since the beginning of August.

Angels: Matt Shoemaker (2-2, 5.48 ERA) makes the sixth start of his injury-plagued season after getting chased in the third inning of last appearance in Oakland.

Angels’ Mike Scioscia says he wants to keep managing

By Greg Beacham

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Mike Scioscia says he would like to keep managing next year.

The longtime skipper of the Los Angeles Angels has been widely expected to step down after the regular season concludes this week. His comments to KLAA-AM radio Monday night suggested he is open to returning for a 20th season in the Angels’ dugout, or perhaps a managing job elsewhere in baseball.

When asked directly if he wanted to keep managing, Scioscia said: “I’d like to.”

“We’ll continue to evaluate things this week,” Scioscia added. “I’ll speak with (Angels owner) Arte (Moreno) and speak with (general manager) Billy (Eppler), and kind of come to a decision. But I think that if you love something, you want to continue to keep doing it. If you can, great. And if it doesn’t happen, so be it. But I love the dugout.”

Scioscia, who will turn 60 in November, is the longest-tenured manager in the majors by seven seasons, and he earned his 1,600th career victory earlier this year. Since taking over the team for the 2000 season, he has led the Angels to six AL West titles and their only World Series championship back in 2002.

“I love managing,” Scioscia said. “I love the dugout. I love the challenge of getting the team and getting them going in the right direction. That’s something I thoroughly enjoy.”

But Scioscia’s lucrative 10-year contract ends this season, and the Angels have made the playoffs just once in the last nine years despite annual high-priced rosters. They haven’t won a postseason game since 2009, a stretch that covers the entire concurrent Angels careers of Mike Trout and Albert Pujols.

The Angels opened a season-ending homestand against Texas on Monday night. They will miss the playoffs for the fourth consecutive year.

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FROM THE ATHLETIC

Sarris: Two surprising toolsy young stars are key cogs for their teams

By Eno Sarris

Baseball is complicated. There’s no one way to be great. But there’s also an element of the simple about it: If you can run fast, throw the ball hard, and hit the ball hard, you’re probably good. Sounds true, right? There are only two players in baseball who do all three of those things at an elite level.

Can you guess which two?

They are both right-handed outfielders who debuted this year, if that helps narrow down the pool. They’ve both won games for their teams single-handedly, and they’re both on teams that are currently in the playoffs. They’re both really exciting to watch … and, of course, both of them came with some questions they’re on their way to answering.

Still wondering? Let’s answer with a table.

To find the toolsiest players in baseball, I took the top 10 percent in sprint speed from Statcast’s leaderboards, and then added the top 10 percent of the league in Barrel Percentage — how often the hitter hit a Barrel, or a hard-hit, well-angled ball in play. For the last, I asked Mike Petriello for a list of players Statcast has recorded throwing 98+ mph. That list only detailed outfield throws, but it turns out only one infielder hit the ball hard enough and ran fast enough to make that an issue.

If arm, legs and power are the three easiest tools to directly measure, then here’s your list of players with two or more of those tools.

Name Total

Ramón Laureano 3

Tyler O’Neill 3

Trevor Story 2*

Aaron Judge 2

Avisaíl García 2

Bradley Zimmer 2

Harrison Bader 2

Hunter Renfroe 2

Joey Gallo 2

Michael A. Taylor 2

Mike Trout 2

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Ronald Acuña Jr. 2

Shohei Ohtani 2

Yasiel Puig 2

What a fun list. It would be longer if we had infield arms, but it’s still fun.

There are plenty of excellent young athletes on the bottom of this leaderboard who could join the top two or three with just a little improvement in their game. Bradley Zimmer needs to lift the ball more, and Harrison Bader the same, or maybe hit it a touch harder. Maybe it doesn’t matter to their actual baseball value, but if Aaron Judge or Joey Gallo could run faster, or Mike Trout or Ronald Acuña Jr. could throw the ball harder, they’d also be atop the list.

We know Shohei Ohtani has thrown over 98 mph — he’s thrown as hard as 101 from the mound — so, instead, he’s actually the second-closest athlete to having three tools on this list. He’s fast, but his sprint speed only counts as in the top 25 percent, not the top 10 percent. Then, there’s Trevor Story, who maybe should be one of the top two, but we don’t know. He’s thrown 96 mph from the mound says this scouting report, but that was a long time ago. Closest is maybe Avisaíl García, who has a surprising sprint speed that is in the 88th percentile — do you think of him immediately when you think of tools?

But there, right now atop this board, is a spark plug who’s making a huge difference in Oakland. Ramón Laureano landed and immediately made an impact.

First, he walked it off in his debut.

Then, he wowed us with his arm.

That’s a former pitcher’s arm, of course.

“I pitched in high school. But I never liked it, never in my life,” admitted Laureano. “You don’t get to play every day.”

Of course, he also won a game with his legs.

It’s that last tool that might have required the most work from the player.

“It’s my (running) form,” he told Julian McWilliams with a smile as he recapped that time in the video above, in which he almost got thrown out at the plate in a huge game against the Astros earlier this year. “I have terrible form. It happens to me all the time (when rounding) third base. It happens every single time.”

So, he’s had to work on his running form, also just … getting faster.

“I live in the hills, and that helps,” Laureano told me last week. “Uphill, downhill, couple times a week — not long distances. Gotta watch out for the knees. I used to do, but it’s too much.”

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It might look a little wonky, but his speed allows him to make plays with the glove that wow even seasoned baseball watchers.

“I dropped a Willie Mays on him after he made that play in center field. And I’m not sure that was fair, to compare him to Willie Mays,” Bob Melvin laughed before a game the other day. “Let’s see how he does a couple years down the road. But to this point, it’s been fantastic and he’s made our team a whole lot better, I know that.”

At the plate, Laureano looks across the division for inspiration on how to get the most from his size.

“I do compare my approach to Alex Bregman,” said Laureano. “He’s efficient. You look at him in the box, and you know you can’t miss up and down, side to side — and then, as soon as he puts the barrel to the ball, he makes the most of that.”

And it’s that Bregmanian efficiency on contact, along with his size, that also links Laureano tightly with his tools mate Tyler O’Neill in St. Louis.

Sluggers Under Six Foot

Name Height Barrels/Batted Ball %

Tyler O’Neill 5’11” 22.5

Khris Davis 5’10” 16.6

Mookie Betts 5’9″ 14.4

Ramón Laureano 5’11” 12.5

Steve Pearce 5’11” 11.4

O’Neill impresses first with power and girth. He doesn’t have the sample of Laureano, but he currently leads the league in barrels per plate appearance. And last Friday, he did this to help keep the Cardinals in a wild-card spot.

The homer part, not the shirt part. The son of bodybuilder Terry O’Neill, maybe this part of his athleticism is not surprising. But he also has a strong arm.

The 27th-fastest sprinter in the big leagues has shown it with the legs, too, even when he came on late in the game as a pinch runner and had the attention of the opposing pitcher and catcher.

What stands between O’Neill and even more of an impact is his ability to make contact, that difficult to define and measure aspect of athleticism in baseball that we call the “hit tool.” For a player who grew up in Canada and devoted some of his upbringing to hockey, O’Neill admitted that, in some ways, he’s playing catch up.

“Baseball hasn’t always been super hard for me especially because Canadian high school isn’t obviously the same competition you get in Florida or California,” he said at the 2017 Futures Game. “But I’ve always been pretty good at baseball, and so I want to pursue that.”

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He admitted that the Mariners were super excited by his improvements in strikeout rate in the minor leagues, and that his mental approach was the main component of that improvement. He’ll have to strike out less than 40 percent of the time going forward, but those past improvements offer hope.

Back in Oakland, Laureano has similar improvements on his plate, as he’s striking out 27 percent of the time and wouldn’t mind shaving that down a bit.

“I don’t swing that much. But when I do swing, I want to swing with authority every time,” he told me, suggesting that maybe he’ll always have some swing-and-miss in his game. But that doesn’t mean he can’t improve his approach. “Sometimes they try to get me in hard, soft away, stuff like that, and you just have to adjust — I hit something of yours; you try somewhere else.”

These two young outfielders are blessed with the tools you can’t coach — they can run, throw and slug with the best in baseball. And they’ve performed in the biggest moments and already helped their teams win huge games. All that stands between them and the league-wide stardom that might await is a little refining around the edges.

Mike Scioscia wants to continue managing, even as his future with the Angels remains uncertain

By Fabian Ardaya

ANAHEIM, Calif. — The Angels are, once again, spending the final week of September playing out the stretch. Their time within postseason contention ended long ago, a promising start suddenly riddled by injury.

For the third consecutive season, they will finish .500 or worse. An offseason spent revamping their roster with the trade for Ian Kinsler, re-signing of Justin Upton, free-agent pickup of Zack Cozart and acquisition of Shohei Ohtani, a two-way superstar the game hadn’t seen in over a century, could not direct a club with the game’s best player in Mike Trout back to the postseason. Their window to win with Trout under contract is tight — he’s a free agent after 2020 — and the Angels again were unable to get a Trout-led nucleus to October.

The Angels rolled out a lineup Monday against last-place Texas that had six players, including starter Felix Peña, who started the season in the minor leagues. Upton sat, as did shortstop Andrelton Simmons, neither pushed through the final stretch of a pennant race. Kinsler will receive that luxury, shipped off in July to the first place Red Sox. The final six games of this season offer a time to see into the future — and perhaps to see the end of an era in the franchise’s history.

No manager in the game — heck, only one coach in all of professional sports — has been with their current organization longer than manager Mike Scioscia, who is completing his 19th season manning the Angels’ dugout after a playing and coaching career spent over in Los Angeles with the nearby Dodgers. He’s taken the Angels to their lone World Series title in 2002, taken them to seven postseason appearances and put together the most sustainable run of success in the franchise’s history.

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But Scioscia, who turns 60 on Nov. 27, is in the final season of a 10-year, $50 million contract he agreed to in January of 2009. In August, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that Scioscia and the Angels had already agreed to part ways at the conclusion of the 2018 season, with Rosenthal citing sources in saying “his decision not to pursue a new deal would be his alone and not the result of pressure from the club.”

Over the past eight seasons, the Angels have made the postseason just once. They have not won a single postseason game since 2009.

Scioscia hasn’t offered much comment to date regarding his future status, calling the report “poppycock” and saying talks of an extension have not taken place since last October. In an interview with Terry Smith, the official radio voice of the Angels on KLAA AM 830’s pregame show, Scioscia said he will meet with Angels owner Arte Moreno and general manager Billy Eppler at some point this week to discuss his future managing with the club, indicating he would like to continue.

“I’d like to (continue managing),” Scioscia told Smith. “We’ll continue to evaluate things this week and I’ll speak with Arte and speak with Billy and kind of come to a decision. But I think that if you love something, you want to continue to keep doing it, and if you can, great, and if it doesn’t happen, so be it. But I love the dugout.”

The decision to retain Scioscia as manager will not be entirely his, as was the case when he held a potential opt-out of his contract following the 2015 season — the Angels haven’t had a winning season since.

Much of Scioscia’s longevity, along with his on-field success, can be attributed to his strong relationship with Moreno, who hasn’t known a manager other than Scioscia after purchasing the club in 2003. Since Scioscia was hired in the 1999 offseason, he has seen four general managers — Bill Stoneman, Tony Reagins, Jerry Dipoto and Eppler — and remained in his role as manager each time.

As Rosenthal reported, Scioscia and Eppler have maintained a good relationship since the latter was hired at the end of 2015 after serving as assistant general manager to Brian Cashman with the Yankees. Scioscia’s staff, however, has seen increasing signs of Eppler’s influence.

When Ron Roenicke, who spent 12 seasons alongside Scioscia over a pair of stints with the Angels, departed to become Alex Cora’s new bench coach in Boston, Eppler replaced him with Josh Paul — a former member of the Yankees organization whose only ties to Scioscia came over parts of two seasons as a player from 2004-05 — instead of relaying the role to Dino Ebel, who previously held the role and who now serves as the club’s third-base coach. Charles Nagy, Eric Hinske and Scott Radinsky, the Angels’ pitching, hitting and bullpen coaches, have all been brought on since Eppler was hired with little-to-no ties to Scioscia.

Additionally, Eppler has brought ex-Tigers manager Brad Ausmus and former big league third baseman Eric Chavez to serve as special assistants, playing a similar role to that of Bud Black in 2016. Black wound up parlaying that experience to a managing gig with the Rockies. Paul, Ausmus and Chavez have all been reported as potential candidates should the Angels move on from Scioscia, with Chavez assigned in August to be interim manager for Triple-A Salt Lake and gain managerial experience when Keith Johnson was promoted to the big-league coaching staff.

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Should the Angels decide to explore their options outside of the organization, they’ll have company — even with the Cardinals removing the interim tag for Mike Shildt. The Rangers, who the Angels host for the first part of their final homestand, fired manager Jeff Bannister just last week, with no certainty they’ll retain interim man Don Wakamatsu. Several managers with postseason experience, such as Joe Girardi, John Farrell, Dusty Baker and Mike Matheny should all be available on the open market.

So the Angels will play out the stretch. Scioscia, Eppler and Moreno are slated to meet over the course of this week to discuss Scioscia’s future, but one wouldn’t imagine any announcements are made quickly. The Angels are honoring Scioscia’s 19 years as manager with a bobblehead on Saturday, with the ex- World Series-winning manager and catcher depicted holding a lineup card with some of the best players he’s managed, including the likes of Trout, Hall of Fame outfielder Vladimir Guerrero and 2002 World Series hero Tim Salmon.

Is it a celebration of his time in Anaheim and a review of what could happen upon his potential return, or is it a tribute in the form of a parting gift?

FROM MLB.COM

Final Rookie of the Year Award poll

By Richard Justice

Almost from the first hour of Spring Training, pretty much everyone in and around baseball agreed that Shohei Ohtani of the Angels and Ronald Acuna Jr. of the Braves were the rookies they were most interested in seeing. Sometimes, these things turn out the way they were supposed to.

Ohtani and Acuna hold sizable leads in our final Rookie of the Year Award survey of MLB.com's members of Baseball Writers' Association of America. Acuna received 34 of 36 first-place votes to comfortably outdistance 19-year-old Nationals outfielder Juan Soto in the National League balloting.

In the American League, Ohtani got 26 of 36 first-place votes, with Yankees third baseman Miguel Andujar getting nine and teammate Gleyber Torres one.

Ohtani, 24, led our AL survey only one other time, back in May when he was baseball's first true two-way player in almost a century. He finishes the season as a designated hitter after sustaining ligament damage in his right elbow in June. Ohtani has made just one pitching appearance since then and appears to be headed for Tommy John surgery that puts his 2019 schedule into doubt.

In terms of talent, Ohtani answered every question. He had a 3.31 ERA and 11 strikeouts per nine innings in 10 starts as a pitcher, and he had 20 home runs and a .923 OPS in 342 plate appearances as a designated hitter.

Acuna, 20, made his Major League debut on April 20, homered in his second game and has taken off from there. He has 25 doubles, 26 home runs, 15 stolen bases and a .926 OPS in 105 games.

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Acuna took over the top spot in our NL Rookie of the Year Award survey in the next-to-last vote, and he has widened his lead over Soto since then.

Here's a closer look at the leading vote-getters:

AMERICAN LEAGUE Shoehei Ohtani, Angels (154 points) Ohtani is the first player in MLB history with 20 home runs as a hitter and 50 strikeouts as a pitcher. He needs one more stolen base to join Mike Trout and Devon White as the only rookies with a 20-home run, 10-stolen-base season in Angels history.

Miguel Andujar, Yankees (93 points) Andujar's 51 multihit games are the most by a Yankees rookie since Tom Tresh had 54 in 1962, and the most by an AL rookie since Trout had 56 in 2012. Andujar's 43 doubles are the most for a Yanks rookie since Joe DiMaggio had 44 in 1936.

Gleyber Torres, Yankees (71 points) Torres' 23 home runs are the third most by a Yankees player before his 22nd birthday; ahead of him on that list: Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio. His seven two-run home runs are the second most in the Majors, trailing only Brewers first baseman Jesus Aguilar, who has eight.

Others receiving votes: Joey Wendle, Rays; Brad Keller, Royals.

NATIONAL LEAGUE Ronald Acuna Jr., Braves (176 points) Acuna has a 1.053 OPS, with 14 doubles and 19 homers since manager Brian Snitker moved him into the leadoff spot after the All-Star Game. He leads the Majors with 53 runs in that span. Acuna's eight leadoff home runs are a Braves franchise record, and he's the 10th player -- and the first since Trout -- to have at least 25 home runs and 15 stolen bases in his rookie season.

Juan Soto, Nationals (110 points) Soto leads MLB rookies with at least 450 plate appearances in batting average, on-base percentage, walks and RBIs. He's second in slugging, OPS and home runs.

Walker Buehler, Dodgers (25 points) Buehler has held hitters to a .171 batting average since the All-Star break, lowest in the Majors. His 2.14 ERA in that span is the fifth lowest, and his 0.89 WHIP is tied with Jacob deGrom of the Mets for the second lowest.

Others receiving votes: Jack Flaherty, Cardinals; Harrison Bader, Cardinals; Dereck Rodriguez, Giants.

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Do you want to hear Shohei Ohtani sing 'Despacito' for his teammates? Of course you do

By Jessica Kleinschmidt

What can't Shohei Ohtani do? The Japanese two-way player can hit, he can pitch and, on Monday, we found out he can sing as well.

Yep -- you read that correctly. We were lucky enough to witness the singing talents of Ohtani as he belted out the hit song "Despacito."

As you can see, his teammates were pumped for him and clapped along while he did his best to sing the lyrics. In his defense, we know it's not the easiest song to sing. Ohtani channeled the confidence he got from his performance to hit a towering dinger against the Rangers on Monday night.

But back to the song. Which version do you like better -- Ohtani's or the remix featuring Justin Bieber?

Each team's all-time single-season ace*

Which pitcher should take the hill with everything on the line?

By Will Leitch

The thing about baseball is that you can have the best lineup in the history of the game, but if it runs up against a hot pitcher at the wrong time, it's essentially useless. Nothing happens until the pitcher throws the ball; we're all reacting to him. And when you have a truly great one, it doesn't matter how fantastic a hitter you are: He can get you out regardless. A true ace can be unhittable.

Imagine, then, a tournament of the future, one that transcends space, time and death, in which every franchise had to win one game, with its best pitcher ever, for its own survival. That'd be fun, right? Who would you want throwing in that game? This conversation happens a lot this time of year, when we look ahead to the Wild Card Games, where one dominant pitching performance can change everything. (Remember Madison Bumgarner in 2014 and '16?)

With all of this in mind, we take a look at each franchise's One Game To Live pitcher, the one pitcher, during his one peak season, who you'd put on the mound with it all on the line. You just get to pick one pitcher, and one season, when he was at the height of his game. Who's your pick? Here are mine.

AL WEST

Angels: 1977 Nolan Ryan 19-16, 2.77 ERA, 341 K An argument could be made that teammate Frank Tanana had an even better year in 1977 than Ryan … but with one game to decide the fate of your franchise, you really would rather face Ryan than Tanana?

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Astros: 1986 Mike Scott 18-10, 2.22 ERA, 306 K Apologies to some wonderful Roy Oswalt years, not to mention a couple of great Clemens ones, but Scott was otherworldly in 1986.

Athletics: 1931 Lefty Grove 31-4, 2.06 ERA Grove threw 27 complete games in 1931 … and notched five saves to boot.

Mariners: 1995 Randy Johnson 18-2, 2.48 ERA, 294 K One gets shivers just thinking about having Johnson staring down at you during this era. So much hair!

Rangers: 1974 Ferguson Jenkins 25-12, 2.82 ERA, 225 K Jenkins has always been underappreciated. This was his first, better stint with the team.

*Article cut to only include AL West-related material.

FROM FAN GRAPHS

Elegy for ’18 – Los Angeles Angels

By Dan Szymborski

Thanks to the feats of the Astros and AL Wild Card winners, we get to a legitimately non-horrible team fairly early in this series of elegies. That’s due in large part, of course, to the fact it’s almost impossible for a club to be very bad when Mike Troutoccupies a spot on their roster — even if that team occasionally tries. But math is math and the Angels headed to the numerical woodshed at a fairly early date.

The Setup

It may Mike Trout be hard to Mike Trout get through Mike Trout an entire sentence Mike Trout about Mike Trout the Angels without Mike Trout Mike Trout talking about Mike Mike Trout Trout, because Mike Trout his existence Mike Trout is the defining Mike Trout feature of the Mike Trout franchise at this point.

The overarching theme of the Angels over the last seven years has been the team’s inability to build a winner around the greatest player in franchise history, a player who has already become an inner-circle Hall of Famer based on peak performance. Trout’s already passed the bus test, and if he happened to take a bus to Hudson Bay and never returned — I’m tired of theoreticals in which we kill great players with mass-transit accidents — he’d be inducted into Cooperstown via the Addie JossException.

September 25, 2018 Page 25 of 29

The Angels can, without straining credulity, blame some of their misfortunes on bad luck — especially to the annual rash of injuries that inevitably infect their rotation. But to steal a phrase from Branch Rickey, luck is the residue of design, and given the uncertainty about some of the pitchers who have populated the club’s 40-man roster in recent years, the organization ought probably to have overprovisioned that part of the team, something they really haven’t done.

Los Angeheim’s farm system hasn’t generally been strong enough to add starting pitching of value to the team, which leaves money as the primary method of adding someone who can hopefully provide serviceable innings. The last starting pitcher signed in MLB free agency by the club was C.J. Wilson.

The team was more aggressive about addressing their holes this offseason, extending Justin Upton, signing Zack Cozart and Shohei Ohtani, and trading for Jim Johnson and Ian Kinsler. This was a set of moves I really liked, though they didn’t all pay off, but I really had been hoping the Angels would go after one of the few interesting starting pitchers available in free agency. Most of the winter, I had spent writing fan fiction about the Angels bringing in Jake Arrieta, a worm-burning pitcher who I thought would fare very well in an infield with three Gold Glove-esque defenders in Kinsler, Cozart, and the ever-amazing-and-actually-quite-underrated Andrelton Simmons. My “shipping” fantasies of that relationship did not, unfortunately, come to pass.

Another difficult situation entering the season (and others before it) was what to do with Albert Pujols. Still being paid an enormous salary, Pujols was one of the least-valuable players in baseball in 2017, but as a future Hall-of-Famer and nearing milestones, the Angels did little to try to upgrade what was a gaping hole in the lineup, taking the path of least resistance and just hoping the offense around Pujols was good enough to keep him from dragging it down.

That last paragraph would have sounded odd a decade ago!

The Projection

ZiPS was optimistic about the team’s offseason improvements and the possibility of a reasonably healthy rotation, pegging the Angels at 85 wins with a 45% chance of making the playoffs, generally via the Wild Card rather than a division win. (The Astros won the division 84% of the time in the preseason simulations.) Even if the job wasn’t as thoroughly or as cruelly done as might have been warranted, the Angels had legitimately imagined playoff aspirations.

The Results

The season started as well as the team could reasonably expect. They started off 13-3 and grabbed a 2.5-game lead in the AL West. This was kind of the scenario the team needed; with the Astros projected as the superior club in terms of talent, building a nice cushion would have been highly useful for the Angels. But rather than build on the lead, they proceeded merely to tread water after their fast start, never putting up a single month with a record better than .600 or worse than .400. The Angels played like a .500 team and are ending up a .500 team, but that wasn’t enough ever to be interesting in the division after losing the lead in mid-May.

One thing I didn’t see coming was the adequacy of the starting pitching depth. Tyler Skaggs stayed healthy for at least most of the season, and while he doesn’t have a high ceiling, Andrew Heaney’s

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recovery from elbow injuries went as well as could be expected, and he once again looked like the No. 2 or 3 pitcher he appeared to be back in 2015. The team still lost Garrett Richards and Nick Tropeano, but the pitching generally remained solid if not spectacular.

Trout stayed healthy and stayed Mike Trout, which the Angels still needed to happen. Kole Calhoun had a horrid first half, protected from the full attack squadron of lollercopters only by the presence of Chris Davis, who was worse. Calhoun’s .754 second-half OPS isn’t amazing or anything but at least established he can still play baseball. But Calhoun’s struggles wouldn’t have been enough to make the Angels a playoff team if things had been reversed.

As a whole, the Angels had a bucket of awesome in Trout, Ohtani, and Simmons, but too much meh-too-OK surrounding their core talents.

What Comes Next

The fundamental issues surrounding the Angels were not resolved, so they still loom large in the looking glass. It would be a shame if the Angels went through Trout’s entire prime without winning a single playoff game or even making a second playoff appearance. The farm system has improved considerably — Jo Adell, in particular, smells like a future star — but the team can’t just wait and see what bears fruit. Adding talent in free agency is expensive, but the team has a definite reason to be exploring the top of this year’s free-agent market. Not everyone can sign Manny Machado or Bryce Harper, even with the willingness to do so, but if this winter ends with the Angels failing to sign a Keuchel-or-better free agent, I suspect it’ll be hard to give the offseason high grades.

And yes, it’s time to move on from Albert Pujols. It’s been time for a while now, but with 600 homers and 3,000 hits behind him and the increasing implausibility of a 700th homer — let alone a 715th, 756th, or 763rd — there’s really no semi-legitimate excuse for a competitive team to using him as a Plan A. The Angels aren’t so dominant that they can afford to pooh-pooh the two or three wins that a good, non-superstar first baseman can bring over Pujols. If he wants to stick around as a role player and the Angels have the roster flexibility, sure, but the team has bent over backwards to send him out like a champ. It’s getting to the point now, however, where it’s looking like Pujols is at fantasy camp.

Way-Too-Early ZiPS Projection — Shohei Ohtani

The reason I didn’t mention him above at any length is that I wanted to greedily save the plaudits for this section! Ohtani was everything that could have been expected of him as a pitcher, displaying otherworldly stuff and making fools out of a lot of top-tier hitters from day one. The only disappointing thing is that we only get 10 starts from Ohtani due to injuries, the most devastating a Tommy John surgery that will leave him a plain ol’ batter until the 2020 season.

What’s surprising has been his offensive contributions. ZiPS expected Ohtani to be a decent hitter for an outfielder — which makes him some kind of god-emperor-king since he can pitch — but he proved to be an instant star with the bat, as well, hitting .280/.361/.564 with 21 homers in 347 PA, for 2.6 WAR and a 152 wRC+. That’s about 4.5 WAR over a full season of AB, making Ohtani a star even if he had never pitched a game in his life or even if he were an Orioles free-agent starting pitcher signing!

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It doesn’t repair the sadness in our souls from losing Ohtani as a pitcher for a while, but it sure mitigates it. Imagine if your car blew its transmission and broke down on the highway. You wouldn’t be happy, but you’d definitely feel somewhat better if you found out its fairy godmechanic granted its wish to be able to magically create tacos on demand. Now, you still have to get to work, but, yeah, tacos.

Since I always have to find that gray lining, I’m actually slightly worried on one level about Ohtani being too good a hitter. Let’s say he’s a .950 OPS hitter on a projection basis. At what point do the Angels say “Hey, he’s a star hitter, let’s just be happy with that?” I want a pitcher who is one part Roger Clemens and one part J.D. Martinez.

For the pitching projection, I told ZiPS ahead of time that Ohtani is missing the 2019 season. For the “official” projections, I don’t usually tell ZiPS about “future” injuries, but as its creator, I’ve reserved the rights to be both benevolent and arbitrary.

ZiPS Projections – Shohei Ohtani, Pitcher

Year W L S ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA+ WAR

2020 5 5 0 4.02 16 16 94.0 86 42 12 40 97 101 1.1

2021 5 5 0 3.91 16 16 94.3 84 41 12 39 99 104 1.4

2022 5 4 0 3.86 14 14 86.3 77 37 11 36 91 106 1.3

2023 5 4 0 3.86 14 14 84.0 74 36 11 34 90 106 1.3

ZiPS Projections – Shohei Ohtani, Hitter

Year BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ DR WAR

2019 .268 .344 .518 332 57 89 19 2 20 64 40 111 8 136 0 2.4

2020 .262 .342 .524 332 59 87 20 2 21 66 42 117 7 137 0 2.4

2021 .260 .343 .528 335 60 87 20 2 22 68 44 121 8 138 0 2.5

2022 .259 .346 .536 332 61 86 19 2 23 68 46 123 8 141 0 2.6

2023 .256 .348 .540 324 60 83 19 2 23 67 47 120 9 142 0 2.6

September 25, 2018 Page 28 of 29

FROM FOR THE WIN

Mike Trout Monday: Mike Trout's mom offers simple, accurate take on AL MVP field

By Ted Berg

This installment of Mike Trout Monday will be a brief one, but don’t blame Mike Trout for that. Trout homered in four of his five games since last week’s Mike Trout Monday to up his season total to 38. With less than a week left to play in the regular season, Trout now leads the Majors in both on-base percentage and slugging.

But in an MLB Network tweet showcasing the AL and NL MVP races last week, one face was noticeably absent:

Many people — and many MVP voters — believe the most valuable player awards should always go to guys on playoff-bound teams, and Trout’s Angels will fall short of October. All five of the guys included in MLB Network’s list of AL MVP candidates will likely see postseason action.

And Betts, especially, has a strong case for the award regardless of Trout’s excellence this season. Betts leads the AL in batting average entering play Monday, ranks second behind only Trout in OBP and slugging. He plays outstanding outfield defense, and maintains a small but likely insurmountable lead over Trout atop the MLB Wins Above Replacement rankings. He is the best player on the best team. He’ll probably take the hardware.

The rest of the guys there are having great seasons, too! But it’s just absurd to consider any field of 2018 AL MVP candidates that doesn’t include Mike Trout. Trout is the best player in baseball, and he’s having the best offensive season of his career. Luckily, his mom Debbie is around to take the Network to task:

@DebbieTrout27

indeed.

UPDATE, 9/25: A spokesperson for MLB Network clarified that the tweet was a snapshot from a brief discussion on the show MLB Tonight highlighting the candidates included. It was not meant to represent the entire AL MVP field.

September 25, 2018 Page 29 of 29

FROM NBC SPORTS

Report: Eric Chavez the favorite to replace Mike Scioscia as Angels manager

By Craig Calcaterra

USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reports that former big league third baseman Eric Chavez is favored to be the next Angels manager. That is, if Mike Scioscia does not stay in the job. Whether he does or not is currently unclear.

A month ago Ken Rosenthal reported that Scioscia would not return for his 20th season at the helm. Scioscia denied that report, but it’s unclear if the matter is in his hands. Given that last week he told Terry Smith of KLAA that that he’d like to continue managing beyond 2018, I’d guess that it’s not in his control. There has been no definitive word from Angels’ brass either way.

Chavez, who retired after the 2014 season, is a special assistant with the Angels. Before that he was a special assistant with the New York Yankees, both under current Angels GM Billy Eppler who used to work for the Yankees. Chavez managed the Angels’ Triple-A team in Salt Lake City for the final month of this season after their manager was promoted to the big league coaching staff. An audition? A coincidence? I guess we’ll find out soon.

Scioscia, who turns 60 in November, took over the Angels before the 2000 season. In his third year the Angels won the World Series and his clubs have made the postseason seven times in his 19 seasons. He was named the AL Manager of the Year in 2002 and 2009. The Angels have not finished over .500 since 2015, however, despite employing the best player in baseball.

Some think it’s time to move on from Scioscia. Whether the Angels think so will likely not be clear until the season is over next week.