By Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.blogspot.com/2018/08/scioscia-cant-go-quietly-into-that-good.html
Mike Scioscia (right) posing proudly with his 2012
American League Rookie of the Year, Mike Trout.The book was barely closed on Corey Kluber's first shutout of the season at the Angels' expense Saturday. Then the word whipped around, thanks to
The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal, that the only manager the Angels have known since the turn of the century plans to leave at the end of the season.
Mike Scioscia's had quite a baseball ride. He hit a game-tying 1988 National League Championship Series bomb off Dwight Gooden to help push the Dodgers toward their eventual World Series triumph, in a year which saw him hit only three out all regular season long. And he became one of only seven non-player-managers to win World Series rings as a player and as a manager.
USA Today's Bob Nightengale says Scioscia really hoped to be able to slip gently into that good gray night after the season, no fanfare, no farewell ceremonies, just a nice quiet departure, until
The Athletic let the secret loose. Leaving Scioscia to call the speculation "poppycock" and say only that he'd deal with the prospect after the season ends.
Scioscia was a great-catch/fair-hit backstop known for his ability to guide pitching staffs and his unorthodox but effective plate-blocking technique of going to both knees instead of one. And he might have remained known for just that, plus the NLCS bomb, if he hadn't done in 2002 what nineteen previous Angels managers couldn't no matter how close they got.
The Angels were as snake-bitten in their way as the Red Sox and the Cubs had been for longer when Scioscia took the bridge for 2000, after the Dodgers rewarded him for long work managing in their system by spurning him as a big-league skipper. Two years later, there Scioscia stood at the helm of the Angels' first and so far only world champions.
But Scioscia's Angels haven't won a thing since their 2014 division title. And that came after four straight seasons finishing either second or third without even a wild card. They've only gotten as far as an American League Championship Series twice (2005, 2009) since that 2002 conquest.
Scioscia has come under increasing criticism in the years since for dubious game moves and lineup arrays, though he hasn't been the sole cause of blame by a long enough shot. The classic Scioscia style of aggression on the bases and relentlessness at the plate (Darin Erstad, who caught the final out of that 2002 Series, phrased it memorably: "As long as we have an out, we have a chance") has been compromised, and it hasn't
all been Scioscia's fault.
Oh, he's as prone to a lapse in judgment as often as any manager is, never mind one who probably has a plaque in Cooperstown waiting for him.* And Scioscia probably stuck too long with catchers he thought were great behind the plate even if they had noodles for bats, while turning his back comparatively on catchers who were only competent behind the plate even if they could hit in the tons.
Scioscia won five division titles in six years plus his pennant and World Series ring off a wild card finish. And he won that Series with adroit management of a mix of kids, veterans, and spare parts who turned up big enough in moments enough.
Has he lived too long off that capital? Maybe. But you can't hang all of that on him. His front office has as much if not more to do with that, when his disabled list hasn't. (This year's Angels were probably done in by a rash of injuries enough to let you mistake them for last year's Mets.) You might have your own thoughts on all that, but these have been mine:
* Letting veteran catcher Bengie Molina---who anchored their championship pitching staff and subsequent division-winning staffs, and who was also a man who could hit in the clutch---walk to the Blue Jays in 2006 was a mistake. A big one. The Angels decided Jeff Mathis was their catcher of the future. He proved a serviceable defensive catcher who couldn't hit if you handed him a garage door and spotted him a 3-0 count, and he wasn't anywhere near Molina's kind of team leader.
* Buying Gary Matthews, Jr., after his only All-Star season and his only two remotely serviceable seasons for five years and $50 million, was a blunder. Nobody could blame Matthews for saying yes to a nut like that, but when the Angels unloaded him on the Mets with two years left on the deal and 0.0 wins above a replacement-level player to show for it overall, people couldn't figure out who was more nuts---the Angels for signing him in the first place or the Mets for actually making the deal.
* Bill Stoneman went from the general manager who built Angel champions to the one for whom making a deal became an exercise in quiet fear, especially when assorted hot-looking prospects turned up inconsistent or injury-addled.
(The classic example: Stoneman passed when he had the chance to trade ultimate third base bust Brandon Wood---expected but failing to fill the gap left by prospect turned injury-addled Dallas McPherson, who was supposed to fill the hole left behind by Troy Glaus---for the young Miguel Cabrera.)
Still, Stoneman's departure left the Angels with a still-solid volume of young and inexpensive talent. Until . . .
* Tony Reagins. Who began well by landing the respected Torii Hunter from the Twins, but who finished disastrously. Among other issues, he couldn't keep Mark Teixiera from walking as a free agent after his successful second-half rental, and he couldn't keep from pursuing Dan Haren in a deal that drained a lot of the Angels' farm.
* The gradual thinning of Angels pitching as the years went passing by, and the most talented arms aging a little before their times (hello, Jered Weaver) when they weren't being compromised by injuries with journeymen at best stepping in for them.
* Scioscia's own ten-year contract extension, the most unheard-of thing anyone ever heard of for a major league manager who didn't concurrently own the team. Especially since such a deal usually bestows enough of a say in organisational decisions managers really shouldn't be worrying about above and beyond certain suggestions, because it often leads to disaster. (Whitey Herzog with the 1980s Cardinals was a notable exception who did both the managing and GM jobs well.)
* The unexpected death of prize pitching prospect Nick Adenhart, after he made the team out of spring 2009 as their number three starter and started his season with six shutout innings against the Athletics. Killed when the car in which he was a passenger was T-boned later the same night, Adenhart's death first motivated (to the 2009 AL West title) but then deflated the Angels. They still miss him even now. And they haven't gone past a division series since---and they've been there only once since.
* The scandal in which they made a sacrificial lamb of international scouting director Clay Daniels. Some of his scouts were caught skimming bonuses in Venezuela; Daniels was made to take the fall, and the Angels concurrently gutted almost their entire international scouting operation. Who knows how much talent they bypassed as a result, after dumping the man whose oversight once brought them the likes of Francisco Rodriguez, Ervin Santana, Kendrys Morales, and Erick Aybar?
* Morales himself was crushed under celebrating teammates after he hit a game-winning grand slam in June 2010. His leg was broken and he was gone for the season, and with Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero having moved on as a free agent when the Angels thought he was nearing the end of the line (he had one or two more blasts left in him before fading at last, as things turned out), the Angels missed his power bat even more.
* The same year, the Angels inexplicably blamed their parched farm system on overall scouting director Eddie Bane. He became the sacrificial lamb for an organisation whose farm drainage was far more the result of bad drafts and worse free agency signings from above, a foolish execution for the man who actually prevailed in urging the Angels to sign a kid named Mike Trout in their last draft with him running the scouting.
* Scioscia's preference for defense
uber alles catchers really hit the Angels where it hurt when they dealt away Mike Napoli, a league-average defensive catcher who could still handle a pitching staff and happened to hit a ton while he was at it.
* The Napoli trade happened in big part because owner Arte Moreno was so furious over his people's inability to convince free agent third baseman Adrian Beltre to come to Anaheim instead of Texas that he all but ordered Reagins to deal for Toronto's Vernon Wells within a day and no longer or else---and the Jays weren't exactly hungering for a Mathis type.
Beltre went on with his Hall of Fame-in-waiting career. Napoli went on to contribute large enough to World Series teams in Texas and Cleveland. Wells was a Matthews-level bust, and the Angels ate a lot of money on Wells's inexplicably backloaded contract to move him to the Yankees.
* Let's be absolutely fair about this: Nobody could predict that Albert Pujols---whom Moreno insisted on signing to Alex Rodriguez money---would be hit with the injury bug so profoundly that he'd turn into a shell of the formidability that punched his Hall of Fame ticket purely by his great Cardinals seasons. Nobody could predict that the first baseman's heels and legs would reduce him to little more than a man who can still hit for distance but can't do anything else near what helped make him a Hall of Famer in waiting.
And thanks to the no-trade clause in the deal, the Angels are stuck with Pujols for the remainder of the deal or until he retires, whichever comes first, even if he did pass 500 and then 600 home runs in Angels silks.
* Pujols was part of an embarrassing clubhouse skirmish during a players-only team meeting in 2012. Veteran reliever LaTroy Hawkins called the meeting after a dugout skirmish between Hunter and pitcher C.J. Wilson. Pujols called out Hunter over the argument not knowing Hunter and Wilson had already kissed and made up, and Hunter needed Hawkins and Wells to keep him from dismantling Pujols one limb at a time when Pujols ordered him to shut up.
* Jerry Dipoto now is in his second season showing in Seattle that he could learn from his mistakes in Anaheim. Dipoto with the Angels didn't know the right way to approach old-school Scioscia with new-school analytics that might have been a huge help to the manager . . . while concurrently emptying what was left of the farm on behalf of rentals and expensive veterans who did little to nothing to help the Angels back to the top.
Dipoto also got onto Scioscia's enemies list when he fired longtime hitting coach Mickey Hatcher without a word to Scioscia until after the execution. Still---it wasn't Dipoto's idea to sign Pujols or to mishandle Josh Hamilton's substance abuse lapse on Super Bowl Sunday 2015.
* That mishandling was Moreno's brilliant idea. After one solid enough season and one injury-compromised one in Anaheim, Hamilton manned up and copped to the relapse without evasion, and baseball government decided appropriately that that was more than sufficient. Moreno decided Hamilton deserved to be run out of town on as many rails as could be laid down, with the Angels paying all but $6 million of the six-figure freight.
Scioscia didn't exactly acquit himself in the Hamilton disgrace, either. He called out Hamilton for not expressing remorse to his teammates, an indication the manager didn't exactly have Hamilton's back from the outset. But it's also possible that Scioscia wasn't that willing to get his own hide into Moreno's cross hairs.
* Wilson revealed in April 2015 that he caught the Angels siccing private detectives on him over his off-duty love for motorcycling. That August, the lefthander announced he would undergo season-ending elbow bone chip and shoulder surgery after trying to pitch through the chips on the season.
It brought Wilson under heavy enough fire from inside the team that some wondered if it wasn't payback because he was one of the only Angels (Trout was another) to stick up for Hamilton. Wilson left them with egg on their faces when he returned in 2016, opened the season on the disabled list, and never came off. He retired that July when facing another season-ending shoulder surgery.
* Current GM Billy Eppler's tenure has been compromised by the horror with which he, Scioscia, and the Angels have watched as one after another promising pitcher has gone down with arm and other injuries, while their hefty payroll and drained farm has left the Angels to bring in reinforcements of lesser deliverance.
What a long, strange trip it's been for a man who once figured to be remembered best for that NLCS bomb off Gooden. And, for merely stabilising the Angels when he took over, after Terry Collins's then-penchant for managing every inning as though the entire season was on the line so alienated his clubhouse that players threatened a mutiny before Collins resigned with the 1999 season still in progress.
Only two Angels managers before him---Gene Mauch and Doug Rader---had a winning record overall on the bridge. Mauch won two division titles and lost two ALCS's with the Angels; Rader's highest finish was third place in 1989. Jim Fregosi, their longtime original shortstop, won their only previous division title in 1979.
Say what you will otherwise, but Scioscia has always had one big point in his favour---he never made private or public excuses for the Angels' recent seasons' shortfalls, even knowing he could have pointed at once to the drained farm and too-often-compromised pitching. It wasn't his idea not to build and coordinate a better team around the single best player he's ever managed.
There's always a chance that it won't be Scioscia's sole decision to make if he decides to leave at season's end. There's always the chance the Angels are deciding even now that it's time for a new captain on the bridge. Nightengale says Scioscia has no intention of managing again if and when he leaves the Angels, even though he might be on the wish lists of teams needing permanent skippers after the season, like the Cardinals or the Reds.
But it'll seem very strange, for all the highs, lows, and controversies, to see the Angels under new field leadership. And, while we're at it, Trout under the stewardship of someone other than the only major league manager for whom he's played so far.
Whomever that leader turns out to be---Joe Girardi? Ron Roenicke? Current third base coach and longtime bench coach Dino Ebel? Former shortstop and third base coach Gary DiSarcina, now the Mets' bench coach, who almost got the Phillies job instead of Gabe Kapler?---has a hard enough act to follow.
*
A classic Scioscia mishap---two seasons ago, he thought it would be smart to let relief pitcher Bud Norris (now with the Cardinals) pitch to Yankee uber-rook Aaron Judge with a man on second, one out, and first base open in the late innings. Norris threw Judge three straight cutters and Judge hit the third one onto the River Avenue El behind Yankee Stadium, almost. The blow gave the Yankees a lead that held up for the rest of the game.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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