2014 MLB win totals -angels

Search

Member
Joined
May 22, 2005
Messages
31,627
Tokens
josh-hamilton.gif
 

Member
Joined
May 22, 2005
Messages
31,627
Tokens
Los Angeles Angels: UNDER 87 wins

The Angels will almost certainly win more games than they did last year, when they went 78-84 but scored just four fewer runs than they allowed, a profile that tends to suggest something closer to a .500 team.
A run of miserable performances and injuries sparked the Halos’ struggles. A foot injury curtailed Albert Pujols’s production and ultimately limited him to just 99 games played, an especially brutal result given the size of his contract. Josh Hamilton’s first year as an Angel was also a bust; he was healthy, but hit just .250/.307/.432 after putting up MVP-caliber numbers the year before with the Rangers. And don’t discount the negative effect of bit players faring poorly: 132⅔ innings of a 6.04 ERA from Joe Blanton hurt a lot.
If Pujols and Hamilton bounce back, and newly acquired young lefties Hector Santiago and Tyler Skaggs deliver even half-decent showings at the back of the rotation in place of Blanton & Co., the Angels could easily tack on six or seven wins. Moreover, the team’s offseason moves could produce even better results than some are speculating. For starters, the Peter Bourjos–for–David Freese swap isn’t nearly as bad as some analysts made it out to be; it’s widely known that the Angels shopped Bourjos around and generated only a few subpar offers of fringe talent before settling on Freese, thus using their surplus of quality young outfielders to fill a gaping hole at third base. What’s more, losing Mark Trumbo might not hurt that much, since Trumbo offers little beyond his tremendous power, and makes a frightening number of outs when he doesn’t hit the ball to the moon.
Still, this team carries a lot of “ifs.” Santiago, Skaggs, and Garrett Richards offer a modicum of upside given their youth, but they’re also so untested that the Angels are reportedly considering an eight-man bullpen, which would be a silly misuse of roster space. We can’t ignore Pujols’s age concerns or the possibility of more injuries this year, nor the chance that Hamilton’s swing-at-everything approach might not play that well if his bat speed and reaction time have truly started to slow. The bullpen has been shaky for several years now, and the acquisition of Joe Smith might not be enough to compensate for the pedestrian relievers around him. Throw in some very tough AL West competition, with Texas and Oakland likely vying for the division crown again and the Mariners improving their offense by leaps and bounds, and we get an Angels team that could win the 88 games required to lose this bet, but that would need to have almost everything go right for that to happen. Well, everything, or a Mike Trout cloning program.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
1,106,765
Messages
13,438,762
Members
99,335
Latest member
webgiginfoservices
The RX is the sports betting industry's leading information portal for bonuses, picks, and sportsbook reviews. Find the best deals offered by a sportsbook in your state and browse our free picks section.FacebookTwitterInstagramContact Usforum@therx.com