Dipoto destroyed this organization

[floplag]

i disagree.
We were right there in recent years, what put us where we are today was the decision to stop spending.  
We were all in acting like a big market team and now we are that young man whose tax return ran out and hes back on ramen noodles 4 nights a week. 

[ten ocho recon scout]

1 minute ago, floplag said:

i disagree.
We were right there in recent years, what put us where we are today was the decision to stop spending.  
We were all in acting like a big market team and now we are that young man whose tax return ran out and hes back on ramen noodles 4 nights a week. 

Thats why i have to cut dipoto slack. 

 

Its not that i think hes blameless, because hes not. But IMO arte is the problem. His heart was in the right place, but where hes been the last two years or so is where the main problem begins.

[Troll Daddy]

You can point the finger at Arte for the Pujols and Hamilton signings all you want but Dipoto was totally on board and supported the signings. I haven't heard any stories of Dipoto trying to persuade him differently. 

 

[Angelsjunky]

24 minutes ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

 

This. He was "better" with better players. He doesnt do anything to make trout good...nor does he do anything to make other guys suck.

 

Hes not eithout blame. His lineups suck, he can be a prick to players. That said, i think he makes a lot of right moves in late and close games...just sometimes he doesnt have the bullpen to do it.

From another perspective, joe maddon who we all love, didnt lead the good rays teams any better than the later ones.

One thing I would flaw Scioscia for is that I don't think he's great with young players, with knowing how to help them feel comfortable and confident.

23 minutes ago, gotbeer said:

The sad thing is.  He did leave the organization in better shape than when he got it.  People forget the absolute mess that Reagins left.  We had no minor league pitching or position players.  At least Dipoto was able to somehow work up the minor league pitching, and the depth of pitching.  Granted it's not 1's or 2's or probably even 3's.  But when you are left with jack, and can at least get some form of depth at the pitching staff.  That everyone seems to have gotten injured or immediately traded by the new guy, doesn't mean that he didn't have a plan.

This is arguable. The farm system was in decline before Dipoto but only got worse. He traded away any and all halfway decent prospects the Angels had.

And of course whether or not Arte is primarily to blame, it was under Dipoto's tenure that the Angels spent half a billion dollars on Pujols, Wilson, and Hamilton.

Five years ago the Angels had a declining farm, a weak major league team, but money to spend. Now they have a horrible farm, a weak major league team, and no money to spend. So overall I'd say the franchise is in worse condition than it was when Dipoto took over.

17 minutes ago, floplag said:

i disagree.
We were right there in recent years, what put us where we are today was the decision to stop spending.  
We were all in acting like a big market team and now we are that young man whose tax return ran out and hes back on ramen noodles 4 nights a week. 

I agree to an extent. Arte and Jerry put the team in a position where the only way out was to spend more - to go forward with the big market team mentality. But Arte understandably grew sick of seeing his money wasted and revealed his hand, that in the end he's more interested in making money off the Angels than winning.

[AngelsLakersFan]

10 hours ago, Erstad Grit said:

Yes, the M's are great and it's all because of Jedi's acquisitions like Iannetta, Lind, Iwakuma, Aiko, Benoit, and Miley. It has nothing to do with Cruz, Cano, Hernandez, etc. 

You mean the guys that were already there?

[tdawg87]

'twas the booze destroyeth this team.

[AngelsLakersFan]

2 hours ago, Angelsjunky said:

Maybe a bit over-exaggerated, but the OP isn't wrong, imo. Remember that saying, "leave the place as good or better than you found it?"

Bottom line: Dipoto left this organization in worse shape than he found it. Does anyone dispute that?

This is true for sure but it's an over simplification of the situation. He inherited a team with a reasonable amount of talent, but nothing in the pipeline. There is still nothing in the pipeline and the talent on the team is mostly gone / injured. He was not able to be a part of the solution, and that is his biggest failure.

[AngelsLakersFan]

2 hours ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

To put it another way, while it would be a hell of a lot better running out a rotstion of richards, heaney and skaggs right now, and he helped put that together, it would also be nice to have morales over cron (or st least have kept vargas), trumbo rotating at 1st/LF, and grichuk in LF.in short, give credit where its due, give blame equally .

This is hindsight. No one wanted Morales, he was a free agent getting his last shot in KC and he made the most of it. We could have signed him for peanuts but as we all are aware we are not signing anyone anymore. Trumbo has not done anything since leaving the Angels aside from a great 5 weeks in a small ball park in a hitters division to start the season. Grichuk was obviously a stupid move from the beginning.

[AngelsLakersFan]

44 minutes ago, floplag said:

i disagree.
We were right there in recent years, what put us where we are today was the decision to stop spending.  
We were all in acting like a big market team and now we are that young man whose tax return ran out and hes back on ramen noodles 4 nights a week. 

Very good point. If we had signed a legit LF and 2B the lineup wouldn't look so bad. That said, Pujols precipitous decline this year is a real problem as well.

[Troll Daddy]

It's obvious that Dipoto resigned out of frustration of his own doing. His desperate attempt to blame coaches and players pushed him over the edge. It's really that simple. 

It doesn't make him a bad guy or GM. He'll learn from his mistakes at the Angels expense. 

Edited May 12, 2016 by Troll Daddy

[nate]

How is that obvious?

It is obvious he quit because the coaches were ignoring him and he wasn't getting support from Arte.

His Mariners are doing pretty well.

[ten ocho recon scout]

30 minutes ago, AngelsLakersFan said:

This is hindsight. No one wanted Morales, he was a free agent getting his last shot in KC and he made the most of it. We could have signed him for peanuts but as we all are aware we are not signing anyone anymore. Trumbo has not done anything since leaving the Angels aside from a great 5 weeks in a small ball park in a hitters division to start the season. Grichuk was obviously a stupid move from the beginning.

To be fair, trumbo was hurt in his arizona year and missed a bunch of time. Last season he had an ugly forst half but his second half was good. Good enough that his year end numbers mirrored calhouns. Either way, a typical trumbo year is similar to albert last year. Obviously flawed, but piggybacked eith trout it can mask a lot of the black hole behind them.

But more ehat im getting at is that between him and morales is that there were no replacements in line for them...dipoto gambled that cron, ibanez and joyce would replace those guys. I dont know enough about young players, but i think ibanez was a pipe dream at best, regardless of his previous season. He was still 40 at the end of the day.

As far as the before dipoto got here, keep in mind that you still had young postion guys like trumbo and bourjos (regardless of today, we havent really brought up anyone better), with guys like richards, calhoun, segura, grichuk, etc in the minors. We dont have anything close to that now. In 4 years at the helm, dipo should jave been able to draft at least one position player legit prospect (outside of newcomb).

Reagins still gets slammed for wells, and the haren trade. Id say under dipotos watch we had some ewually poor moves.

[ten ocho recon scout]

25 minutes ago, nate said:

How is that obvious?

It is obvious he quit because the coaches were ignoring him and he wasn't getting support from Arte.

His Mariners are doing pretty well.

To be fair, i dont think we can have "trumbo will cool off and suck" and "the mariners are doing well" in the same thread.

The mariners are doing very well. But the guys carrying them were there before jerry, just as our roster was jerry, not eppler. And fwiw, as of now, the mariners have had the second soffest schedule so far this year

[ten ocho recon scout]

And by the way, im not saying that to knock dipoto or the mariners. Just saying its too early to grade either.

[gurn67]

Honestly, when is the last time an Angels' team looked prepared to start the season on Opening Day? 2009? I don't know how you can blame any of this on Dipoto.

2010 21-26

2011 30-35

2012 18-25

2013 15-27

2014 11-13

2015 11-15

2016 13-20

[totdprods]

One thing that I think is overlooked often when people talk about how the Angels always start really poorly is that for the last several years, the schedule is unbalanced, and we play a lot of early games against the AL West, and the AL West has been pretty dang tough in recent years. Since the unbalanced schedule was rolled out, we usually play poorly early in the year (when facing mostly AL West teams) then have a great summer (against AL Central/East and Interleague teams) and then falter again down the stretch, once again playing mostly AL West teams. 

I think our gripe shouldn't be that the Angels start poorly, it should be that they do poorly against other AL West teams.

[ten ocho recon scout]

The 2012 team is the only one you can say disappointed i think. Tons of hype because of rhe pujols deal, with lots of solid guys on that team. The problem was the bullpen and haren/santana falling apart.

The 2013 team wasnt really built well, lets be honest. Still had a dogshit bullpen, with frieri the best guy on it. Hansen (rip) loses his brother and goess off the rails, joe blanton is in the rotation, hamilton does his thinh, pujols gets hurt and misses half a year, etc etc. Look back at that teams roster and it tells a story. 14 i think shocked everyone, but when you look closer you see guys like cowgill being a huge part, shoemaker a borderline star etc...smoke and mirrors kind of. But, we finally had a bullpen.

Then in 15 we break the bullpen up. Jepsen, one of the keys to it, flipped for joyce...

 

[stormngt]

17 hours ago, mp170.6 said:

Couldn't it be argued that Scioscia shares in the blame and prevented trades that should have happened but never did?

His obsession with Mathis that left Napoli and Conger going nowhere comes to mind.

Yea everyday I wonder how good we could have been with Conger.

 

Wasn't Trout, Trumbo, Calhoun, Segura, Richards all part of our farm system then?

[Blarg]

Jepsen for Joyce should have gotten Dipoto fired. 

[VariousCrap]

I just don't think it is fair to blame Dipoto.  Arte is the one who made him sign Pujols and Hamilton and those two contracts led to Dipoto having to then make moves to fill other positions without the money to spend.  This led to trades as the only way to improve the team.

[ten ocho recon scout]

^thats a fair enough argumemt, and i agree with it for the most part. My main thing i guess is the state of the farm. In 4 years, thsts time enough to at least recruit 2 solid position players. Not to mention blowing your wad on baldoquin.

And i dont think anyone should downplay that part of it. He and servais go hand in hand. Dipoto brought him over because of his work in texas, and handed him the keys in seattle. Theyre obviously on the same page. So we can speculate sosh having too much say in trades, arte meddling etc, but he obviously had his say and another guy who agreed with his vision in charge of the minors.

[VariousCrap]

Allow me to add that I don't think Dipoto is 100% blameless.  I just really believe he came to the team with a vision and as soon as Arte said to sign Pujols, it changed that plan.  Signing Hamilton the next year made it even worse.

[ten ocho recon scout]

Agreed. The financial problems would have been tough for any GM. 

To be fair though, thinking back, reagins to a point was in a similar boat. We hang him for the wells thing, but off the top of my head what else were the really bad ones? Haren in hindsight. But his dumpster diving for guys like abreu and matsui were better than dipotos. Under the radar moves like piniero were dexent. Kazmir was similar to the grienke move. We basically hate him because of the farm. But 5 years later its no better.

To be fair reagins also inherited a far better team, with a fsr better farm. But we also lost more talent to FA on his watch

[gotbeer]

6 minutes ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

Agreed. The financial problems would have been tough for any GM. 

To be fair though, thinking back, reagins to a point was in a similar boat. We hang him for the wells thing, but off the top of my head what else were the really bad ones? Haren in hindsight. But his dumpster diving for guys like abreu and matsui were better than dipotos. Under the radar moves like piniero were dexent. Kazmir was similar to the grienke move. We basically hate him because of the farm. But 5 years later its no better.

To be fair reagins also inherited a far better team, with a fsr better farm. But we also lost more talent to FA on his watch

 

Looking back.  Reagins absolutely gutted the farm.  He made a lot of trades, getting what turned out to be very marginal players, and gutting our farm in the process. 

[nando714]

12 minutes ago, gotbeer said:

 

Looking back.  Reagins absolutely gutted the farm.  He made a lot of trades, getting what turned out to be very marginal players, and gutting our farm in the process. 

I will never ever forget 

not only Skaggs but also Corbin for Haren