It was an intriguing turn of phrase the other day when Angels manager Joe Maddon compared the heretofore waste of Mike Trout’s talent by the Angels to “almost like a mortal sin in the Catholic faith. You just can’t miss out on that kind of an opportunity when you have that kind of generational talent.”
I am assuming Arte Moreno got the reference. It’s just not always easy to assume his ballclub is able to do something about it.
The difference between the Dodgers and the Angels, the gap between a team that has won eight consecutive division titles and a World Series and one that has reached the postseason once since 2009, is this: One has operated with a plan and built its infrastructure accordingly. The other has operated on hope from year to year.
Everything runs on hope in spring training, of course. The Angels have a new general manager. They have a couple of new pitchers who were good previously and hope – there’s that word again – to unlock that magic formula. They’ll have a full season under Maddon, COVID-19 pandemic permitting, and an opportunity to build and reinforce the type of culture over which Maddon presided in Tampa Bay and on the North Side of Chicago.
They will also operate under this burden: to prevent Trout, the consensus best player in the game, from also being the Ernie Banks of his era. It’s a backhanded compliment to be known as the Best Player Never To Get To A World Series – or worse, the Best Player Who Hasn’t Won A Postseason Game – and it can be wearing on a player who has already won three MVP awards by age 29.
“If that’s not the mindset, you shouldn’t be here,” Trout said earlier this week. “Every year, I put that in my mind. We’ve got one goal, to get to the playoffs and World Series here.”
Whether opportunity wins out over burden might depend on Maddon’s ability to continue building the type of winning culture he did with the Rays and Cubs. Some of that, strangely enough, might depend on a deader baseball.
Keep in mind, during Maddon’s first tenure with the Angels, he was part of a staff that came in with specific ideas about playing the game that took the rest of the American League by surprise. Remember the early Mike Scioscia years? Going from first to third on singles with impunity? Division championships? That 2002 World Series championship pennant that still flies over Angel Stadium? That era when someone would say “Angels baseball” and you knew exactly what they were talking about?
It didn’t take much to connect the dots this week when someone asked Maddon about the prospect of a less lively baseball this season, commissioned by MLB in an attempt to make the game not so much of a home run derby.
“We’ve got the situational field out there” in Tempe, he said via Zoom. “For the first camp last year, we really got involved in it. The second (July) camp, it was much more difficult. But I want that to be in the forefront of everybody’s minds.”
Some of the tenets being stressed this spring: Attack early in the count when appropriate. Adjust with two strikes. And by all means, be willing to ignore the Three True Outcomes crowd. He didn’t say the words “hit and run” or spell out “b-u-n-t,” but be prepared.
“I think the game has really been reduced to a couple of methods that everybody’s attempting to employ,” he said. “With that, individual methods have gone to the wayside. Organizations don’t have an identity like they once had. However, I think if in fact the baseball is reduced, you’re going to see people or groups attempting to create their own methods and not follow a couple of rules (or) methods that have been permeating the game.
“I want us to do what we think is important to us, regardless of what anybody else thinks. You circle the wagons, you create your own culture, your own methods, your own ways, and then you go out there and you attempt to enact them.”
Suggested marketing slogan: Aggressive baseball is back in town. (You’re welcome, Arte.)
“You’ve got to dictate the action,” Maddon continued. “I don’t want to be dictated to. That’s something I’ve always talked to the guys about, and you only do that if you create that edge.
“What is edge? I was trying to think about this. I think the edge includes intensity and it includes passion. It might include irreverence and it might include a little bit of quirkiness, to create and set an edge … because you’re not worried about what others may say or the overall scuttlebutt, the talk, the banter, the Twitter world.
“You just do what you think is right. Within the group, this is who we are. This is how we do it here. That’s setting the edge, and I really want us to be able to do that.”
The Angels have lacked a discernible philosophy and identity for the better part of the past decade. Maybe going 17-12 over the last 5½ weeks of last season’s shortened season, and fighting from the American League’s worst record to actually having a shot at a playoff spot before being swept at Dodger Stadium on the final weekend, was a good sign.
Maybe additions to the rotation, like veterans José Quintana and Alex Cobb, have enough left in the tank. Maybe 34-year-old Dexter Fowler will have a career renaissance, a return to the production he had under Maddon with the Cubs in ’15 and ’16. Maybe, with a full season, that “edge” fully kicks in.
“There’s a lot of similarities,” Fowler said Wednesday. “They underestimated us in ’15 when I was with the Cubs, and we went to the National League Championship (Series) and then next year won it. These guys here have a lot of talent and they’ve been there. They’ve been there, and they’re itching to get back.”
Hey, if it gets Mike Trout to the postseason for the first time since 2014, quirkiness is the way to go.
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