Angels order mostly weak through June

Last season, the Angels won 98 games and led the American League with 4.77 runs per game. This season, they averaged only 4.10 runs per game through June before general manager Jerry Dipoto resigned. Here's a look at the Angels' batting order, spot through spot, through June.

Kole Calhoun has performed quite well for the Angels this year leading off, and not as well batting clean-up (Dave Sizer [UC International crop]/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

Let's go through the Angels' batting order, using numbers from baseball-reference.com to illustrate how easy it must be for opposing pitchers to work this lineup. All numbers account for games through July 1, the day Jerry Dipoto stepped down as general manager and was replaced by Bill Stoneman.

The bottom-line takeaway is this: In two-thirds of the positions in the batting order, the Angels are in the bottom two-thirds of production across the Major Leagues, based on OPS. Any place where Mike Trout or Albert Pujols bat, the Angels will be strong, Johnny Giavotella gave them more in the No. 9 spot than most clubs are getting, and though Kole Calhoun might not be your ideal leadoff hitter, he's not bad there, either.

But the offensive talent in the midsection of this order is so thin that manager Mike Scioscia has tried papering it over by mixing in Calhoun, which hasn't worked out, then replacing Calhoun at the top with Giovatella, and that hasn't worked, either.

Anybody watching this team knows the Angels would be considerably improved if they can find someone to stick in left field who can catch the ball and produce something offensively. He doesn't have to be a multi-dimensional threat offensively, but he has to do something – either get on base from the top of the order or drive the ball from the middle. Ideally, he's someone who enables you to put the best hitters, Trout and Pujols at No. 2 and No. 3.

Remember when guys like Juan Pierre and Kenny Lofton were floating the game around looking for work? Someone like that would be just about right. Through the July 4 weekend, Marlon Byrd is batting .245 (108 OPS-plus) with 14 homers for the Cincinnati Reds. He might be available and he probably would help. The Angels also have reportedly been in trade talks with the Milwaukee Brewers for Gerardo Parra, who also would be an upgrade. The Angels don't need a star, but they do need a threat.

As it happens, left field isn't as strong of an offensive position across the game as it has been in other years. As of July 1, left fielders were OPSing .715, behind first base (.791), right field (.759), designated hitter (.758), third base (.749) and center field (.725). Typically, left fielders will produce a little more than center fielders offensively. Last season, for example, left field OPSed .724, behind first basemen (.757), DHs (.736) and right fielders (.735), but ahead of center fielders (.719) and third basemen (.715). It's just slightly down year so far for left fielders.

Anyway, here's how the Angels were performing in all of the positions in the batting order, one through nine, compared with the other 29 Major League clubs through July 1.

Leading off, the Angels have a .619 OPS, 29th out of 30 Major League teams. The most frequent lead-off hitters have been Erick Aybar (35 games) and Cole Kalhoun (28 games). Calhoun began the season as the lead-off hitter, and actually was pretty good in the batter's box – .306 batting average with an .806 OPS. But he doesn't exactly fly around the bases and Scioscia can't put the game in motion the way he'd like with Calhoun batting in front of Trout and Pujols. With those two hitting behind him, Calhoun still scored only 14 runs in 28 games leading off.

Additionally, the Angels needed support down the order, and a line-drive machine like Calhoun stands to be useful that way. Last year, the Angels most frequently had Hamilton batting fourth, Howie Kendrick fifth, Aybar sixth and David Freese seventh. This year's middle order, as we shall see, is not nearly so strong.

By mid-May, Scioscia dropped Calhoun down the order – to fourth through mid-June and to second from mid-June to now – moving Aybar to the top. Aybar's energy is one of this team's most valuable qualities, and he has been a decent lead-off hitter at times during his career. But he's batting only .206 from the top spot this season. Historically, Aybar is better the more you can drop him down the order. Aybar is back now to batting fifth or sixth and the most frequent lead-off hitter for the last two weeks is Giavotella, who is batting .196 with nine hits and three walks in 51 plate appearances from the top spot.

At No. 2, the Angels are fourth across the big leagues with an .853 OPS because the guy there has mostly been Trout. Nothing more needs to be said about him. In the last couple weeks, though, the Angels have dropped Trout from second to third and Pujols from third to fourth, placing Calhoun in the two hole. Calhoun has struggled there, batting .200 (12 for 60) as the No. 2 hitter.

At No. 3, again, the Angels are riding high – third across the game with a .923 OPS, behind only the Arizona Diamondbacks (Paul Goldschmidt) and the Detroit Tigers (Miguel Cabrera). The spot has belonged to Pujols, then Trout. No problem.

At the clean-up spot, we start seeing big problems. The Angels have a .686 OPS from their clean-up hitters, 27th across the Major Leagues. By the way, that's with Pujols kicking in a 1.001 OPS in 15 games from that spot, which has been his alone since June 15. Pujols is, however, batting only .223 (11 for 50) cleaning up, though with six homers. Before Pujols, it was Calhoun, who OPSed .689 as the cleanup hitter. Before Calhoun, it was even worse – a combination of Freese (clean-up OPS .691) and Matt Joyce (clean-up OPS .344).

From here, it only gets little better, and maybe a little worse. At No. 5, the Angels OPS .698, 23rd in the Major Leagues. Freese has the most time there, OPSing .703 in 191 plate appearances batting fifth. But Aybar has the better performance, batting .342 with an .820 OPS in 77 plate appearances as the No. 5 batter. All others: .207 batting average (11 for 53) no homers, three RBI.

At No. 6, the Angels OPS .651, 23rd in the Major Leagues. They actually have a couple of players who have succeeded a little there. Joyce is hitting only .227 in 106 plate appearances from the six hole, but he has walked 15 times, so he has a .352 on-base percentage. Freese has been there for the last couple of days and has six hits in 19 at-bats hitting sixth this season. The Angels have run a dozen other guys to the six hole this year. Between them, they have 195 plate appearances with 41 hits, 14 walks, no homers and 13 RBI.

At No. 7, the Angels have a .615 OPS, 24th out of 30 Major League clubs. It has been a good spot for the catchers. Chris Iannetta has really declined at the plate this year, batting .184 with a .558 OPS. In the seven hole, though, he has a .703 OPS in 71 plate appearances. And the new back-up catcher, Carlos Perez, is OPSing .778 in 49 plate appearances batting seventh (Overall, Perez is OPSing .583 in 109 plate appearances). Iannetta and Perez account for about 40 percent of 304 plate appearances for the Angels batting seventh. Everyone else with any kind of trial there has failed miserably.

At No. 8, the Angels OPS .474, 29th of 30 Major League clubs. Only the Chicago Cubs (.358) are worse, and that's because their manager, Joe Maddon, likes to bat his pitcher eighth. Kyle Kubitza (.769 OPS in the position) and Efren Navarro (.878) both have performed well there, but in a combined 30 plate appearances. Of the players with 10 games or more, Perez leads the way at .511.

The Angels have good news at No. 9, where their .608 OPS is seventh in the Major Leagues. Giavotella was batting .311 with a .789 OPS from the bottom position, but he was moved to the top of the order and the Angels have no one else who has distinguished himself as the ninth hitter. Naturally, the top 14 teams are American League teams. The Seattle Mariners, 17th at .509, are the only AL team in the bottom half of the Major Leagues, trailing the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies.

First Division: Three ways the Rays do it

The Tampa Bay Rays weren't supposed to win this year, but they lead the American League East and they're thick in the race for the First Division and the East League. The Rays succeed by doing a lot right under the radar.

Tampa Bay pitching coach Jim Hickey is one of the main reasons the Rays keep winning (Wknight94/Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

We all thought it must have been good while it lasted, but we also thought it must be over. We all thought the Tampa Bay Rays couldn't win anymore.

After six straight winning seasons – five with 90 or more wins – the Rays fell to 77-85 in 2014, and the losses didn't end there. Within the same four months in 2014, the Rays traded pitching ace David Price, lost manager Joe Maddon to the Chicago Cubs and lost general manager Andrew Friedman to the Los Angeles Dodgers. That's a No. 1 starter and a brain trust gone from a team playing in a stadium no one likes, a team that couldn't afford big free agents even if it could attract them, and a team with little apparent appeal within its region.

But the Rays are back on top this year, leading the American League East and, incidentally, contending hard in the First Division. The question of the day: How do the Rays do it?

We don't have the answers, but here are three aspects of the Rays that we like, and which might, at least, pass for clues:

1. The pitching coach. About 10 years ago, it seemed as though FOX Sports was on a mission to make a media star of Jim Hickey, the Houston Astros pitching coach back then. Some of us got kind of tired of looking at him, and, anyway, who couldn't coach that pitching staff? The Astros has Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Brad Lidge, among others.

Hickey became Tampa Bay's pitching coach in 2007. The Rays don't have guys like Clemens, Pettitte and Lidge this year. They don't even have Price or James Shields. But, according to baseball-reference.com through June 24, they have the best ERA (3.28) and the best ERA-plus (121) in the American League, and they've thrown the second-most strikeouts (617).

None of this is unusual in Tampa Bay. In Hickey's first eight seasons as the pitching coach there (2007-14), the Rays led the AL in strikeouts (9,924), WHIP (1.28) and opponent's batting average (.247), while running second in ERA (3.94). That WHIP, according to the Rays' website, is the lowest over an eight-year period by any team since the New York Yankees hit the same number from 1976 through 1983.

By the way, the Rays are doing it right now with Matt Moore, Alex Cobb, Drew Smyly and Jake Odorizzi – all of whom would be in this rotation if they were healthy – making a total of 15 starts this season. Put those four healthy with Chris Archer and you've got an enviable rotation.

Jim Hickey can get it done without Clemens, Pettitte, Lidge, Price, Shields or any stars. This man can coach up a pitching staff. And he might be Reason No. 1 why the Rays are where they are.

2. Strong defense up the middle. So many teams under-estimate the importance of having guys who know how to defend behind the plate, at second base, at shortstop and center field. But if you're looking for a cost-effective improvement with under-valued skills – let's just say the whole world has caught up to on-base percentage by now. Strong defense up the middle is another matter.

The Rays are paying catcher Rene Rivera, second baseman Logan Forsythe, shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera and center fielder Kevin Kiermaier a combined $10.3 million this season – $7.5 million of it for Cabrera, who they signed this year as a free agent. By the count of baseball-reference.com through June 24, they combined for 3.0 defensive WAR. All of these players are plus defenders through their Major League careers.

You don't see the Rays give up many bases defensively. They don't hit enough to get away with that, and everyone knows it. When the Rays give up bases defensively, they lose. With good pitching and good defense, the Rays win, even if they are 13th in the American League with 273 runs scored.

3. Prime-aged players. Maddon made a fascinating remark when the Rays signed James Loney as a free agent before the 2013 season. It's safe to say that Loney's previous two franchises, the Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox, did not engage the Rays in a bidding war. But the Rays were glad to sign him, and Maddon noted at the time that Loney was 29, an age when a lot of players, Maddon said, start to figure it out.

Why don't the rest of us think like that? We'll see a player who's 27, 28, 29 and never made much impact in the Major Leagues, and we just suppose he's not worth the trouble because ... what? Because he's not going to have a Hall of Fame career?

We must be crazy. The Rays have it exactly right. They don't shop for Hall of Famers. But they will run a guy out there in his late twenties athletic prime so long as he can produce a little bit and not kill them fundamentally. They're happy to take his two or three good seasons, then move on. There are always a few guys lying around who are 28 or 29, just now figuring it out, and they're not expensive.

Every heard of Joey Butler? That's because he's 29 and never done anything. Until this year, when he's giving the Rays a 140 OPS-plus (.840 OPS), mostly as their designated hitter. Forsythe was a first-round pick by the San Diego Padres in 2008 and has never distinguished himself. But he's 28 now, playing a good second base and OPSing .824.

Rivera is 31, Loney is 31, Cabrera is 29, Evan Longoria is 29, David DeJesus is 35, Kiermaier is 25, Steven Souza is 26, Brandon Guyer is 29 and Jake Elmore is 28. That's the lion's share of Tampa Bays at-bats and defensive innings. It's a no-name group, and definitely not a young group. It's an experienced group and, to be sure, those experiences haven't all been glorious throughout their lives in professional baseball, but it is experience and it does matter. At the same time, it's not so much experience that the players are flat-up old.

The Rays do an awful lot well under the radar. That's why they're above everyone else in the American League East.

Mattingly is winning ... or is he?

It would seem that Dodgers manager Don Mattingly's decision making is on permanent probation, and that he has a negative margin for error. In 2011 and 2012, he took poor Dodgers teams to winning records. In 2013, he took a good team to a division title before the end of August and now he has won the first round of playoffs in four games. But we still don't know if he has a 2014.

Dodgers manager Don Mattingly has marked winning records with poor teams, and now he's taking a better team to the National League Championship Series (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).


By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

Do we get the idea that people are trying to fire Don Mattingly, no matter what?

When Juan Uribe hit that hanging slider about 500 feet Monday night, and Dodger Stadium shook, and the Dodgers snatched victory from dread to advance in the playoffs with a 4-3 win against the Atlanta Braves in Game 4 of their National League Division Series, we still didn't know if Mattingly was saved, and we still don't know. The Dodgers still haven't picked up his option for 2014. There's still a sense that Dodgers president Stan Kasten has someone else in mind, perhaps Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon, who was eliminated from the playoffs Tuesday night. And Mattingly still is being second guessed in the media for sensible decisions after a win.

What does this man have to do? In 2011, his rookie season, Mattingly guided a terrible ball club under dreary circumstances to a winning record. That already told us that he has an affinity for this work. In 2012, he had a nothing team for half the year, and a haphazardly unmeshed group of talent for the other half, and he came in with a winning record. This year, he made the pieces fit, all but wrapped up the National League West before the end of August and won the first round of playoffs in four games.

Do we agree with every lineup he writes? No. Do we agree with every decision he makes within games? No. Do the players play for him? Yes. Does he win? Yes. Those last two are the really important questions about a manager. Yes to both. Has Mattingly earned his job? Yes. But will Mattingly keep his job? Don't know.

Here's the big question about your manager: Would you rather have a manager who is great from the first pitch of the game to the last, or would you rather have a manager who is great from the last pitch to the first pitch of the next game? Over here, we vote for the second, and every indication from player remarks and their performances on the field tell us that Mattingly has that part of it right. In that room with the lockers, the Dodgers have a lot of famous names, a lot of big contracts, a lot of hefty egos, and no dissension. That's the manager.

We all love to second guess the manager. It's the American way. But if you've been around the Major Leagues just a little, that's enough to tell you that your second guesses are wild guesses. There's never any telling what's going on between the field manager and the front office. There is so much happening between the manager and the front office, and between the manager and the players, and there is so much information the manager has that we don't; in short, we operate from a standpoint of such all-but-complete ignorance about the considerations from which the manager makes a decision, that we really don't know what the decision is. We only know what he decides, and if the players go hard for him, and if the team wins.

And when the Dodgers decide what they will do about Mattingly, it will be for reasons that we don't know. The reporters on the ground, covering the team, will get as much of it to us as they can, and they will know more about it than we do, but they, too, will be left with gaps in their knowledge to be filled with speculation. We can always speculate with them, and with their help, and we should, and we will. We can speculate and criticize, rightly and wrongly. Many of us have done it both ways, and we will continue to do so. If we didn't speculate so freely about our baseball teams, the baseball business wouldn't be nearly so lucrative. And even years down the road, when the central actors publish their self-serving books about what happened, it's still going to be guesswork.

Much of our guesswork issues from the reality that baseball management has become quite complicated. In the not so old days, maybe as few as a dozen years ago, the common division of labor had it that the general manager put together the team and the manager ran the game. That's a rough characterization. The lines were never precise. If, for example, the manager was a big star who had pull with the club owner, the general manager was weakened. In the very old days, when club owners might be baseball lifers going back to the origins of the major leagues, they might run the whole front office and write out the lineups. A fellow like Connie Mack would wear his coat and tie in the dugout and run the game.

In recent years, management structures within baseball teams are more complex, new techniques for understanding the game gained currency, and guys who never wore jockstraps began thinking they understood the game better than guys who never didn't wear jockstraps. Back when he was the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, it occurred to Sandy Alderson that the guy wearing pajamas and arguing with umpires was a middle manager, and it's just a small step to realizing that crucial business decisions were being made by middle managers, and in no other business do middle managers make so many crucial decisions. So, upper managers began assuming more control. Now, we get reports to the effect that field managers are being lectured by Harvard MBAs about who should be in the lineup.

In short, the field manager doesn't have the say that many of us think he does. A highly intelligent and successful field manager who makes a decision that goes badly will almost certainly catch hell from the front office, because there's always another decision that could have been made for reasons that are just as good. The event matrix within a baseball game can never be so precisely and specifically partitioned that a clear percentage move emerges from the data. And even if it could, the percentage is never going to be scientifically significant. In the end, players make plays. Or they don't. The manager's job is to put players in position to succeed, and that involves quite a lot more than lining them up in high percentage circumstances.

So, the Dodgers started left-hander Clayton Kershaw in Game 4 against the Atlanta Braves Monday night on three days of rest, the first time Kershaw has ever pitched on fewer than four days of rest. It has since emerged that Kershaw campaigned hard for the start during the course of several days. And he came through, pitching six innings without giving up an earned run. But guess what? After six innings and 91 pitches, he was tired. So, the Braves took a 3-2 lead in the seventh inning against reliever Ronald Belisario.

And we could see the flies circling around Mattingly's head as we envisioned the anxious Dodgers right-hander Zack Greinke taking the ball for Game 5 in Atlanta. The question even came from TBS play-by-play man Ernie Johnson, an Atlanta guy who inflected a noticeable fondness for the Braves: Where's Kershaw? Deciding to start Kershaw was cutting against Mattingly both ways. On one side, Kershaw on three days of rest tired after six innings, and now he wouldn't be there for Game 5. On the other side, Mattingly removed Kershaw too quickly in Game 4, especially after Atlanta manager Fredi Gonzalez spared the Dodgers manager a decision by pitching to the No. 8 hitter with two out and first base open when the Dodgers threatened in the bottom of the sixth. A.J. Ellis grounded out to end the inning.

Then the Dodgers batted in the bottom of the eighth, down, 3-2, and leading off with Yasiel Puig, the night's goat after hitting into a rally killing double play and misplaying a ball in the right field corner into a triple that later became the lead run. Puig atoned somewhat, smoking a pitch by Atlanta reliever David Carpenter into the right-center field gap for a double. And up came Juan Uribe.

Now, if you're the Dodgers, there is one scenario that you absolutely can't have. You do not want to be down by any amount going to the bottom of the ninth inning, because the Braves will use relief ace Craig Kimbrel, and that ends it. Like almost every team, the Dodgers are helpless against Kimbrel. The Dodgers actually are more helpless than most. Counting Game 2, the Dodgers were two-for-18 with 11 strikeouts and no runs, inherited or otherwise, against Kimbrel in 2013.

However, if you can tie the game, Kimbrel might stay seated. During the regular season, tied on the road, Kimbrel would certainly stay seated. Facing elimination, the Braves might use Kimbrel in a tie game on the road. But in that case, he has to get six hitters out to succeed, and he didn't get more than four hitters out all year.

So, Mattingly played to tie. Perfectly sound strategy. Absolutely correct. That's what The Book says. Play to tie at home. A lot of fans today with analytical pretensions hate The Book, but The Book has sound reasons behind it. Every move carries a little risk, but if you put the runner at third with one out, you have two cracks at getting him in to tie the game and minimize the effect of Atlanta's closer. You would rather not have the bottom of the order coming up, but you also can't expect Kimbrel to come in for five outs. Maybe four.

Mattingly ordered up a bunt. Carpenter knew it and threw two pitches high and tight. Uribe couldn't get either one of them down and fell behind, 0-2. The swarm of flies around Mattingly's head now was thicker than ever. Next, Carpenter threw a fastball way high and Uribe let it go for a 1-2 count. Then a slider in the dirt and Uribe let it go for a 2-2 count.

Perhaps Carpenter wanted to get the next slider up a wee bit. Perhaps, he overcompensated. The next pitch, a lollypop slider, 84 miles per hour, tumbled into the hitting zone letter high. Uribe hit the ball so hard that you could practically hear it explode. You could definitely hear the stadium explode. The ball landed well beyond the left field fence and in the back of the Dodgers bullpen. The Dodgers were winning this game, 4-3.

One redemptive swing of the bat. Uribe has been a bum in this town for three years, but he's a hero now. Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti will never hear another bad word about signing Uribe for three years and $21 million. The Dodgers are advancing. Mattingly is saved. For now. More or less.

But he still gets cat calls for bringing back Kershaw on three days of rest, and he's still second guessed for bunting with Uribe. And there's this idea going around that talent saved the Dodgers from Mattingly, as if he doesn't set a tone to maximize that talent. We're supposed to believe that Mattingly is no better than a lucky fool who fell into a pot of gold when the right decision was made wrong, then that wrong decision was made right by one redemptive swing of the bat.

So, the speculation continues about Mattingly in Los Angeles, and, perhaps, also around back rooms in the Bronx, USA, where New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi's is deciding if he will return. It stretches no part of the imagination to suppose that the Yankees are waiting this out, rather intrigued with the thought of bringing back Donny Baseball, who is more popular there than he ever will be here, no matter what he does.

Angels still in hunt -- for wild card spot

We suppose by now that the Angels probably won't put enough of it together this year to catch the Texas Rangers in the American League West. But can they finish with the 85-90 wins they need to make the easy new standard as a wild card team?

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

Much doom is spoken these days about the Angels, who have failed to meet not just the super-powered expectations that came with Albert Pujols, but even the more reasonable expectation that they might win around 92 games and contend for a wild card position.

The Angels have put their public to sleep with a 20-25 performance. At the very moment when they signed the top offensive producer of the last ten years, they became one of the very worst offensive teams in the major leagues. The Angels have been shut out eight times, the most in baseball. Last week, they were twice outscored by the San Diego Padres, 3-2 each time, at Petco Park.

No question, the Angels have been disappointing. They seem sleepy because they don’t hit. But from a pitching and defense standpoint, they’re wide awake. They’re not doomed. Viewed realistically, the Angels are just a little behind schedule for a postseason bid, which was all we should have expected in the first place.

Can the Angels roar back to win 100-plus games, make the baseball world forget the Texas Rangers and rally to the World Series championship? Of course not, but that kind of prediction always depended on too much going right. Two years of results have shown us clearly that the Angels were ten games worse than the Rangers. Signing Pujols and C.J. Wilson wasn't going to get them all the way there.

In an off-handed way, the optimistic scenario added up. The Angels last season won 86 games. Figure that the Angels' most significant moves since the end of last season consist in clearing out Bobby Abreu, Jeff Mathis, Tyler Chatwood and Joel Pineiro, and giving those innings or at-bats to Pujols, Wilson, Chris Inannetta and Jerome Williams, which is close enough to right. Just off the 2011 numbers, the second group combined for 13.0 Wins Above Replacement (WAR), while the first group combined for a WAR of minus 0.5. So, the Angels should have been 13 wins better right there.

Of course, that's only if everybody does exactly what they did last year. But everybody isn't even the same everybody. So, being cautious and splitting the differences, figure on half of that gain if all goes badly, six or seven wins in a worst case scenario. That would put the Angels at 92 or 93, which was a reasonable expectation for this club. Even if the Angels wouldn't thereby overtake the 96 wins Texas might be expected to repeat from 2011, the Angels would be in the mix for the wild card, which now is expanded.

(All numbers herein either are or are extrapolated from the numbers on baseball-reference.com. Any errors in the extrapolations belong to the author.)

So, what's happened? With a few obvious exceptions, the Angels are under-performing their 2011 WAR numbers across the board (Is that really what's happened?). The new group of players mentioned has a combined WAR of 1.7. We're a nudge past the quarter pole, so multiply that by four and they would come in at 6.8. The Angels have certainly gotten the worst case scenario, but even that should have them in playoff position. Why, then, are the Angels five games below .500 when they should be making a bid to win 92 or 93 games?

Take a look at the following group of players: Erick Aybar, Peter Bourgos, Alberto Callaspo, Dan Haren, Maicer Izturis, Howard Kendrick and Ervin Santana. Three of these players are in the lineup every day, two are starting pitchers and another is a key utility player. All are holdovers from the Angels of 2011. Their combined WAR last year was 23.9. Their combined WAR so far this year is 1.4. Multiply by four and you have about five WAR for the season. Thus, that group of Angels players is a good 19 games worse than they were in 2011.

Add it all up, then, and the new players are six or seven games better than the guys they replaced and the guys who weren't replaced are about 19 games worse than a year ago. In the aggregate, the Angels drop from an 86-win team to a 74-win team, if unmentioned pluses and minuses are equal.

That's how WAR puts it, by this rough application. The Angels' winning percentage of .444 projects to 72 wins in 2012. The Rangers are paced to win 99 or 100.

So, forget about catching the Rangers. The Angels weren't going to be that good, anyway. Now that they have left no doubt about it, we might embrace the new reality, which is a playoff format that puts the postseason reasonably in reach of teams going as badly as the Angels.

Can the Angels still attain the more realistic benchmark of having, in effect, the fifth-best record in the American League? That's an invitation to participate in the new wild card round with the first wild card team. It's a one-game playoff, so getting in either way is just as good. But you have to cook your best starting pitcher to win that one game, so, if you win, you go to the playoffs as a road team with a disconfigured pitching staff.

That's the bad news. The good news? Today, Toronto holds the fifth position with a .533 winning percentage (24-21). Supposing that much remains equal and .533 is the magic number, then that's 86 wins, maybe 87. Can the Angels still get to 87?

They would have to go 67-50. Is that really hard? And can the Angels do it?

It's not really hard. Through Wednesday, the Angels were 13-10 in their last 23 games. They've taken some lumps, had disappointments, played the rich and the poor, and they're 13-10. Nothing spectacular. But 13-10 is .565. If the Angels do that for the rest of the season, they come in at 86-76.

They need to win at that rate of 13 of every 23 games. And then, once every month during the rest of the season, they need to win one more game. That gets them to 90. That's all there is to it. If the Angels were ever going to be any good, they would have to play that well.

That pace isn't out of the question for any team that aspires to the playoffs. Lots of teams go to the playoffs with a stretch like 20-25 during the season. They make up for it when they're going well. Last year, recall, the Dodgers at one point were 37-51, then they finished 45-28 to reach a winning record. The Angels won't have to do nearly that well to reach the playoffs.

As the above references to players remind us, though, the Angels have a lot of players who aren't going well. However, they have done better -- 19 games better between those players just last season. So, there is room for improvement. And most teams they have to catch on the way to the wild card can't say that. Look at the rosters for Oakland, Seattle, Toronto, Tampa Bay and the Chicago White Sox. One doesn't see so many proven veterans underperforming.

As it stands now, Tampa Bay holds the first wild card spot at 27-18, a 60 percent victory rate. But the Rays aren't a .600 club. They have a good pitching staff and an average offense. Like two other wild card contenders -- the Tigers and the Yankees -- the Rays are a poor defensive team right now. Joe Maddon is doing it with mirrors. How long can it last? The Rays are five games ahead of their Pythagorean prediction and they're 11-3 in one-run games. They're winning more than they're producing, and those good times don't often last long. If Maddon can keep the wolf away from their door, then he's the manager of the year again.

Toronto is a solid club all the way through -- top four across the American League in runs scored per game, fewest runs allowed per game and defensive efficiency. Toronto has the second wild card spot right now, but the Yankees, Athletics, White Sox, Red Sox, Tigers, Mariners and Angels all are within four games.

The Angels, Yankees and Red Sox should be better than they are. Can Toronto hang tight with these other clubs that have recently been in the playoff mix? The Tigers have been dropping fast, losing two of three like clockwork for the last month.The Athletics, White Sox and Mariners all figure to stay camped around .500, if that. So, the Angels have some teams to pass, but a few will drop off naturally and, in the end, we could be looking at the Angels in a wild card division with the contenders from the AL East. The Angels, badly as they started, are within one good week of jumping right into the middle.

The Angels also are way ahead of the other wild card contenders with their pitching. They were fifth in the American League with a 3.60 staff ERA. If only they could crank up their hitting. In their last six games, the Angels have allowed 11 runs. They still lost three of those games. If their bats crank it up just a little, those become wins. That’s been the “if” with this club from the start.

To make the playoffs, the Angels will need more than they've been getting from everyone they've got. But history tells us that much of what they need to be getting is in there somewhere. The question is whether they will find it. But the question is not whether the 2012 season is a lost cause. It isn't.

Angels firing of Hatcher signals extinction of Mikeyball

The Angels under Mike Scioscia have succeeded for years by eschewing the walk and swinging the bat. But now that defenses are increasingly moved to where the ball is hit, the Angels ought to change their approach. In a move widely viewed as a power play against Scioscia, general manager Jerry Dipoto fired hitting coach Mickey Hatcher this week.

Fired Angels hitting coach Mickey Hatcher (Dave Dorman, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. http://flickr.com/photos/37744772@N06/5513887600 ).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The book and the movie, even the term itself, Moneyball, is about the 2002 Oakland Athletics, compelled to athletic glory by the insights of a front office that loaded up on an under-valued skill (reaching base by walk) and won the American League West for pennies on the dollar.

Well down the road and a lot closer to Hollywood, we witnessed a Disneyland response to the realities of baseball at the turn of the century. Under manager Mike Scioscia, the Angels took advantage of a sadder truth: a lot of players were in the game to crush the ball, and not to catch it. Some of these guys might hit the ball as hard with their gloves as with their bats. Teams could be beaten by putting pressure on their defenses. So, don't slow the game down by walking and striking out. Speed the game up by making contact. Why not put the ball in play, run like mad, make the other team catch it and throw it, mix in a home run and see what happens?

Mikeyball came of age in 2002, but that team is not immortalized by a book or a movie. That team is immortalized by the 2002 World Championship. Mikeyball didn't just peak higher than Moneyball, but it also lasted long after wealthier teams caught onto Oakland's insight. Mikeyball was winning divisions in Anaheim all the way through 2009.

Now, Mikeyball is spent. Mikeyball is dying because the game is changing. The steroid police have kept the ball in the park. Now, teams are relying more and more on defense, using ever more precise data to position their players right where the ball is most likely to be hit. We see more infield shifting and infielders moving around all over baseball, particularly the American League.

If you’re basing an offense entirely on putting the ball in play, like the Angels, then you’re playing into the hands of the defense, which is already waiting for the ball. In today's baseball, the batted ball not only is more likely to stay in the park, but the ball that stays in the park is more likely to be fielded. Teams that can't hit through the infield need to put people on base to make defenses play it straight. Thus, the Angels, given their general disdain about walking, are at a disadvantage. Their on-base percentage, .302, is 12th in the American League. They have walked 93 times, fewest in the AL. They are 17-22 as they begin inter-league play Friday night in San Diego. The Angels need to diversify their palette for starting the offense.

Tuesday, Angels general manager Jerry Dipoto fired batting coach Mickey Hatcher. The move was widely perceived as a power play by Dipoto against Scioscia, who hand-picked Hatcher as his batting coach in 2000 and has kept him there ever since. Whether it really means the Angels are changing their hitting philosophy remains to be seen. The new hitting coach, Jim Eppard, has been in the organization for long enough to tutor every homegrown player on the big league roster. Doesn't sound like much of a change, although player quotes saying Eppard is attuned to the mental side of hitting are promising.

The one constant about the Scioscia/Hatcher Angels, from the start, is that they put the bat on the ball more than anyone. Every year from 2001 forward, the Angels have drawn less than the league average in walks, and they also have struck out less than the league average each of those years. Some years, they are at the bottom in one or both categories. Their game was to make the fielders work.

But now that everyone is applying ever more detailed probabilistic knowledge of where batters are going to hit the ball, much of the work has been done in the scouting report. It stands to reason that if fielders are positioned where hitters are most likely to hit the ball, then the ball is more likely to be hit to a fielder.

In 2009, the last time the Angels had a good offensive team, their batting average on balls hit in play was .322, best in the league, which averaged .300. In 2010, the Angels fell to .281, 13th in a league that averaged .295. In 2011, the Angels came up slightly to .288 and the league averaged .294. This year, the Angels are averaging .290 and the league averages .287. In three years since they won the AL West in 2009, the Angels have declined from the top of the league to a league average team at finding holes with batted balls.

Notice, also, that the league-wide batting average on balls hit in play has declined quickly. In 2006 and 2007, it was .305. But it dropped to .302 in 2008, then to .300 to .295 to .294 to .287 today. Almost 20 points down in the last five years. For the Angels, it has declined even faster, down more than 30 points in three years. The numbers correlate with increased infield shifting since 2006, when Joe Maddon left Scioscia’s side as the Angels’ bench coach and began sliding infielders around as the manager of the Tampa Bay Rays.

Now, he's shifting against right-handed hitters. Increasingly, we see second basemen making snags on both sides of the outfield. If you know the right-handed hitter will pull the ball on the ground because he wants to hit home runs, then move your infielders around to the left. If you can make him hit the top of the ball, he's an out. You can imagine how a general shift in defensive strategy might affect a team as right-handed hitting as the Angels.

Teams that shift are happy to pitch to contact. Maddon is something of a national sensation this year, loading one side of infield about three times per game. The Rays, the New York Yankees, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Baltimore all are paced to shift more than 300 times this year, according to Sports Illustrated. Last year, the Rays led everyone by shifting 216 times. This year, according to SI, the Rays already had shifted 126 times by early May.

We're also seeing a lot of infield hits throughout the game on plays for which the fielders are positioned just well enough to reach the ball, but not well enough to make a throw. The net result might be the same as if the ball scooted through a normally positioned infield, but it changes the game qualitatively for a team that likes to run and hit, like the Angels.

To make Mikeyball work and really wheel those runners from first to third, you need those hard hit ground balls that rocket through the infield. The runner on first is forced to run, so he's off. The ball gets to the outfielder more slowly than a line drive, so the runner is thinking third base. But now, with infielders placed where they can at least keep the ball in the infield, many of those hard hit ground balls aren't going through to the outfield, and the first-to-third running game is all but taken away.

The only way to make defenses play more honestly is by putting people on base. That way, defenses can't load up on the hitter. For that matter, pitchers can’t load up so much on the hitter, either. We love that the game is about swinging the bat -- until it isn't. There is a way to reach base without swinging the bat, and that’s by not swinging the bat. The Angels need to be a lot better at it.

There seems to be a difference of opinion among the Angels brass about the virtue of plate discipline. Dipoto seems to believe plate discipline is good because it leads to walks, while Scioscia believes plate discipline is best when it leads to a good pitch to hit. Scioscia's way, with notable qualifications, has worked well. However, it's easy to see why it might no longer work as well when opponents are positioning themselves more specifically than ever.

Given what Dipoto has said about wanting to improve the Angels’ on-base percentage, they’re not walking enough for his taste. Truth be told, they're probably not walking enough for Scioscia's taste, either. They don't walk enough, period.

Walking less than the league average every year says something about the Angels' general approach. But being dead last in the league certainly isn't part of the plan. The Angels' better clubs usually have approached the league average in walks, and those same teams often were near the bottom in strikeouts.

An interesting comparison might be made with the 2004 Angels, who finished last in walks. That team also finished first in batting average (.282), second in batting average on balls hit in play (.312) and last in strikeouts (942). That team won the American League West at 92-70.

This year's Angels who are last in walks are on pace to strike out nearly 1,100 times and are basically a league average team in batting average (.252) and batting average on balls hit in play. They simply don't hit enough to walk as little as they do.

In the past, the Angels would bring veteran players to their team, and if the culture favored contact hitting, the veterans still stuck to the approach that made them valuable. Bobby Abreu came to the Angels at 35 in 2009 and showed a little decline in his walking prowess, but he still took about 90 per year for a couple years. If anything, Torii Hunter has become a little more inclined to walk since joining the Angels at 32 in 2008. Even free-swinging Vladimir Guerrero was willing to accept a walk every couple of days.

But these last couple veterans to join the Angels have picked up the local customs since arriving. During his career with Toronto, Vernon Wells would strike out eight or nine times for every five times he walked. He would come in with well less than two strikeouts for every walk. Since joining the Angels, Wells has walked 25 times and struck out 103 times -- more than four strikeouts for every walk.

Before coming to the Angels, Albert Pujols was known for his plate discipline. He would walk 100 times in a year and strike out 60 times. Pujols began to lose that edge last season, and now, with the Angels, he has only seven walks and 20 strikeouts. He's not forcing pitchers to throw strikes even when it might be worth a free pass. During his career, Pujols had a .664 on-base percentage on three-ball counts. Out of 1,938 plate appearances running to three-ball counts, Pujols has walked 981 times -- more than half. This year, though, Pujols has 31 plate appearances reaching three-ball counts, and he has walked seven times. His on-base percentage with three-ball counts is .387.

The Angels certainly could use an adjustment in their approach to hitting. Perhaps a new batting coach will have some magic words. But the Angels also need to do a much better job upstairs at batter acquisition. They could do with some pure left-handed hitting, of which they did have not one instance on their active roster until they just now brought in Ryan Langerhans, a career .226 hitter. Their only hitter who is any kind of threat from the left-handed box is switch hitter Kendrys Morales. The other switch hitters on the club are equally punchless from either side of the plate. The Angels batting order today is an endless procession of right-handed power hitters who strike out and switch-hitting middle infielder with no pop.

The Angels' problems don't end there. For example, there's no one around who resembles Troy Percival or Frankie Rodriguez in that bullpen. But the Angels do have players around who should hit -- or walk. Maybe Jim Eppard can talk them into it.