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March 9, 2016 Winter Is LeavingLos Angeles AngelsIf you were going to make a list about why the Angels might surprise in 2016, it’d probably start off something like this: 1. They have Mike Trout. 2. They have Andrelton Simmons. 3. You can’t predict baseball. PECOTA projects Trout and Simmons to combine for 10.7 WARP, the second-highest total for any tandem in the majors (behind Clayton Kershaw and Yasmani Grandal)—and that’s with Trout projected for a career-low 7.4 WARP, 2.1 wins off his career average. When you employ two players this good—and, really, when you have Trout, with anyone playing Robin—you get plopped into the fringe contender bucket before the identities of the other 23 guys are revealed. Let’s focus on Simmons, acquired from Atlanta for Erick Aybar, Sean Newcomb, and Chris Ellis in November, because he’s new and because there’s not a whole lot left to say about Trout, ignoring his exploits in the field of meteorology. He’s too obvious. Trout posted one of his finest offensive seasons last year, slashing his strikeout rate while adding nearly 50 points of ISO to his 2011-2014 power output, and he’ll probably steal 30 bases in 2016 just because he can. He even turned in his best defensive performance to date last season, per FRAA, at +9.9 runs, and . . . Sorry, sorry. Back to Simmons. If the upgrade from former shortstop Aybar to Simmons isn’t clear enough at first blush, consider this table (or watch this video):
Perhaps not surprisingly, with Aybar entrenched at short and a generally old supporting cast flanking him (the average age of the LA’s starting infield since 2013 has been 30.4), recent iterations of the Angels’ infield defense have struggled:
It’s easy to criticize the Angels here. They went out and traded Newcomb, the last name in the farm system that even prospect hounds were familiar with, for a defense-first shortstop, then they followed that move by doing absolutely nothing to modify their pitching staff to get the new guy more groundballs. That’s a pitching staff, by the way, that’s already viewed as a weakness. You could easily argue that Newcomb, trade chip, would have been more effectively bartered to fill a more pressing hole, like third base or left field. Those are valid criticisms, and when the Angels finish the season with 70-something wins despite the best efforts of Trout and Simmons, we’ll look back and wonder what they were thinking in the first place. But maybe there’s a silver lining here, too. Consider first that groundballs are still a common occurrence, even on teams that try to avoid them. The Angels got 1,881 groundballs last year, and the difference in the amount of grounders they saw last season compared to the average team was just 164—or about one a game. Consider also that the Angels’ lefty-heavy starting rotation should coax teams to bat more right-handed hitters against them, which ultimately should result in a higher-than-normal percentage of those groundballs heading in Simmons’ general direction. Simmons’ value won’t be maximized in Anaheim, but he’ll receive plenty of opportunities to do his thing. Consider finally the defensive spectrum, and the idea that the Angels have taken the stars and scrubs approach to the extreme. The Angels have Trout and Simmons manning hard-to-fill positions , but they’ve also left gaping holes at easier-to-fill positions first base, second base, third base, and left field—not to mention two- or three-fifths of the starting rotation, depending on your view of certain pitchers. What might look like organizational incompetence at first—and, shoot, it might be—could really be something headier, something bordering on a coherent path to success: Acquire really good players at the right end of the defensive spectrum and figure out the rest later.
Dustin Palmateer is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @sacbuntdustin
5 comments have been left for this article.
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It's amazing to think that Simmons could be +20 runs on defense, and their left side of the infield could combine for 0 runs saved.
Maybe Simmons can play short and third.
In all seriousness, having Simmons should help Escobar some on his glove side, and my guess is that if he performs near where the fielding projections peg him, the Angels will move on to someone else relatively soon.