|
|
|
|
 |
| ||
|
Scores Schedules Standings Statistics Transactions Injuries: AL | NL Players Weekly Lineup Message Board Minor Leagues MLB Stat Search Clubhouses | ||
| Sport Sections | ||
|
| ||
| TODAY: Monday, May 15 | ||||||||||
| Anaheim Angels Special to ESPN.com | ||||||||||
Record: 70-92, 23rd overall Payroll: $51.3 million, 13th overall Runs scored: 711, 13th in AL Runs allowed: 826, 4th in AL What went right? Good question. Randy Velarde had his best season ever at age 36 ... and got traded to Oakland. Omar Olivares had the best ERA in the rotation ... and got traded to the A's as well. Troy Glaus was either on a tear or in a slump all season, but left little doubt that he's one of the best young third basemen in the AL. Garret Anderson was forced to play center fields and surprised everyone by doing a very nice job. Ramon Ortiz made a promising, if erratic, debut in the Angels' rotation. What went wrong? Mo Vaughn played hurt from the first inning of the Angels' first game on, and it showed. Tim Salmon had his worst year ever, and Jim Edmonds played in only 55 games, hitting .250 with five homers. Darin Erstad was awful, and even worse, nobody had a good explanation why. Free agent Tim Belcher bombed in the biggest way (6.73 ERA). Highly-touted catcher Todd Greene couldn't catch and couldn't hit. The organization's awful minor-league system was exposed, as the team was unable to come up with replacements when injuries struck. In retrospect, the critical decisions were: 1. Signing Vaughn. The Angels were hailed as big winners for signing Vaughn to a 6-year, $80 million contract last offseason, and the Red Sox looked like they dropped the ball once again. But a year later, Vaughn looks like a 32-year-old DH with injury problems. He's almost sure to bounce back this year, but he doesn't look like a $13 million-a-year player anymore. 2. Holding onto all four outfielders. The Angels went into last winter with Erstad, Anderson, Edmonds, and Salmon, and a trade of one of them looked imminent. But the Angels held on to all of them, and while the expected fight for playing time never happened, only Anderson had a good year and kept his trade value. Now, the Angels are trying to move Edmonds, but are having trouble finding a taker. 3. Holding on to Chuck Finley. The Angels were going nowhere at the trading deadline, and several teams, particularly the Indians, were interested in the services of Finley. The Angels asked for too much, the Indians called their bluff, Finley remained in Anaheim, and everyone lost. Finley didn't reach the playoffs; Cleveland couldn't put the Red Sox away in the Division Series; and the Angels got nothing for Finley, who signed with the Indians after the season anyway. Looking ahead to 2000 Three key questions 1. Can the lineup stay healthy? Anaheim finished next-to-last in the AL with 711 runs scored, but if Salmon, Edmonds, and Vaughn avoid injuries all year, the Angels could score another hundred runs this season. 2. Can Ramon Ortiz be their ace? With the loss of Chuck Finley, Ortiz is the only pitcher on the staff with the ability to be a true No. 1 starter. But he's only 23 with nine major league starts thus far. He has also had elbow problems in the past. If Ortiz flops, the Angels' rotation won't be just bad -- it might be the worst in baseball. 3. Is the organization prepared to rebuild? Even with a healthy lineup and even if Ortiz pitches well, the fact remains that the rest of the rotation is just too weak to contend in the AL West, and there doesn't appear to be much help coming from the minor leagues. The Angels have little choice but to rebuild, and the franchise has to take a hard look at a scouting department that has blown too many high picks and developed too few quality players. It also means that they need to trade for younger players, meaning none of their veterans -- not even ones signed to six-year deals for $80 million -- are safe. Can expect to play better Fortunately for the Angels, about half their lineup. Vaughn, Salmon, and Edmonds should all be healthier than last year, and Erstad can't be any worse. But watch out for Troy Glaus. He only hit .240 in his first full season, but the important numbers for him are his 29 homers and 71 walks. Contrary to popular belief, learning to hit for average is actually easier for a young player than learning to draw walks or hit for power, and Glaus is just 23. By the end of the season, Glaus might be the best player on the team. Can expect to play worse Garret Anderson hit .303 with a career-high 21 homers, but he still has no concept of the strike zone, and he's coming off his age 27 season, the most common age for hitters to have a career year. Projected lineup 1B Darin Erstad CF Jim Edmonds DH Mo Vaughn RF Tim Salmon 3B Troy Glaus LF Garret Anderson C Matt Walbeck/Todd Greene 2B Scott Spiezio/Trent Durrington SS Gary Disarcina
Rotation/closer Ken Hill Ramon Ortiz Tim Belcher Jarrod Washburn Brian Cooper Troy Percival A closer look Chemistry. It's a word that's frequently used, but rarely defined. It's such an important concept that teams make it as high a priority as drafting the big prep star or signing that free agent closer. Yet it's such an elusive goal that a team with great chemistry today may have terrible chemistry next week -- and no one can predict that it will happen. So what, exactly, is chemistry? What baseball teams mean when they talk of "chemistry" is a team that somehow plays better, as a whole, than the individual sum of the parts. It is assumed that players who like and respect each other, who go out to dinner with each other and play cards in the clubhouse (before games, Mr. Bonilla), will also bond on the field, and those close relationships will give the team the confidence to come back from three-run deficits and the perseverance to give 100 percent during the dog days of August. If only it were this easy. There are two problems with chemistry. The first is that it isn't nearly as important to a team's success as you might think. For every team like the 1996-1999 Yankees, who seem to dominate the majors in congeniality and professionalism as thoroughly as they dominate on the field, there are teams like the 1972-74 Oakland A's, who took enough time out of their busy schedule of clubhouse fights to win three straight World Championships. That's the smaller issue with chemistry. The bigger issue is this: It doesn't exist. OK, that's not entirely true. Let's be more specific: chemistry only exists in the moment, as an explanation for why a team is doing better or worse than expected. The problem is that good chemistry is only used to describe why a team is doing better than expected. It can't be used to predict what a team is going to do in the future. For example, the Milwaukee Brewers get off to a 17-10 start and lead the NL Central this May? Someone will talk about how great the chemistry is in their clubhouse -- after they've started winning. If the Brewers then go into the tank and are under .500 by June, you'll hear some analyst explain their losing streak by talking about how the team's chemistry isn't as strong as it was at the beginning of the year. Start winning again? Well, of course -- their chemistry is good again. Another slump? Bad chemistry. It's the same story with chemistry's cousin, momentum. You hear more about momentum when you're watching a football or a basketball game. A football team down 14 points at halftime may go on a long drive to start the third quarter, and the broadcasters will talk about how the team now has the momentum. Then the quarterback will get intercepted in the end zone, and the broadcasters start talking about how the momentum has suddenly shifted. Well, if the momentum can shift at any moment, it must not have been that important to start with, right? And if a team that's playing better than expected (and so must have good chemistry) suddenly starts playing poorly (and so now has poor chemistry), then chemistry must not have been that important, right? Which brings us to the Anaheim Angels. This may be hard to believe, but prior to the 1999 season the Angels were thought to have great chemistry -- one of the reasons why they were picked by most analysts to win the AL West. Mo Vaughn, who was so respected in Boston for his influence on the field and in the community, was expected to help elevate the play of his new Angels teammates and lead them to the playoffs. Plus, he was expected to have help in the clubhouse. Darin Erstad, the former No. 1 overall pick, had received nothing but rave reviews for his work ethic and determination, and longtime Angel Gary DiSarcina was called the "glue" that kept the clubhouse together and motivated his teammates to play better. The organization took pride in the fact that they had built a team with the best chemistry in the division, if not the league. So what happened? DiSarcina may have been the leader in the clubhouse, but he continued to be one of the worst-hitting shortstops in baseball. Erstad, the young firebrand, didn't hit. Vaughn injured his ankle and suffered through a disappointing season. And all their "chemistry" didn't protect Tim Salmon or Jim Edmonds from injury, or mold Todd Greene into a great hitter, or prevent Tim Belcher from snapping off more hangers than you'll find in Julia Roberts' closet. Naturally, the Angels' chemistry collapsed along with their won-loss record. The team came close to revolting against Terry Collins' hard-handed style of managing, openly complaining when the organization began discussing a contract extension with him. Collins got his contract anyway, the team continued to play poorly, the clubhouse atmosphere continued to disintegrate, and Collins got canned just weeks after he was given a vote of confidence. That's not to say that the atmosphere in the clubhouse is completely irrelevant. Bad chemistry can still be destructive. Those Oakland A's aside, when teammates don't get along off the field, it can become difficult to work together on the field, resulting in bad defense, poor baserunning, and missed hit-and-runs. There has never been a manager in history that led his team to the playoffs without commanding the respect of his players. Dick Allen was one of the best hitters in baseball in the 1960s and 1970s, but he was considered such a disruptive influence among his teammates that it's debatable how much he helped his teams. And it's hard to imagine that John Rocker's relationship with his teammates isn't going to affect his -- or their -- performance on the field. But good chemistry? That's hard enough to identify, and almost impossible to keep bottled up for long. The problem stems from the real definition of chemistry. It's not just a team where everyone pulls for each other and the players share cabs back to the hotel. Many bad teams have that. They're not losing because of bad chemistry, but because they're not experienced enough, or not healthy enough, or just plain not good enough to win. No, the real definition of "chemistry" is this: Chemistry is what a team has when they're winning and it's not immediately obvious why. If the Indians win the AL Central again this year, no one's going to attribute that to chemistry. They've won before. They're expected to win. That's not chemistry, that's just a talented team. But if the White Sox are leading the division at the All-Star break, that's chemistry. It doesn't matter that there will be solid baseball reasons why they're winning; maybe Frank Thomas is hitting .400, or their young arms are leading the league in ERA. All that matters is that it wasn't expected, and we don't like to admit that we should have seen it coming. So we call it good chemistry. But teams don't win because they have good chemistry; they have good chemistry because they win. And if you want to win, you better get players with talent. If you want chemistry, get a job with DuPont. Rany Jazayerli, MD, is co-author of the annual Baseball Prospectus, a hard-hitting, irreverent, no-holds-barred look at our national pastime. Look for the 2000 edition in bookstores Feb. 1. He can be reached by email at ranyj@umich.edu. | ALSO SEE Angels minor-league report ESPN.com's Hot Stove Heaters  | |||||||||
