SB Nation User Blog: rspencer

Why America should root for the Angels over the Yankees

rspencer — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:34:03 -0000

Why America should root for the Angels over the Yankees

A refreshingly hip column by Bill Shaikin that I expect will be well-received by my fellow HHers.

6-4-2 reports Angels sign Seanez

rspencer — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:07:27 -0000

6-4-2 reports Angels sign Seanez

According to KXO Radio:

"Seanez threw for the Angels and apparently impressed the team enough that he is now getting in shape at the teams extended spring training facility in Arizona with expectations of moving up to the triple A level to get in game work."

Collateral Damage in the Cable Wars (updated)

rspencer — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:25:45 -0000

Charter Cable and FSW are engaged in a spitting match, and we Angel fans are caught in the middle.

We unfortunate Charter ~~victims~~ customers were left in the dark the first week (sadly, it was Nick Adenhart's start) when a game was blacked out for us with absolutely no explanation offered.

Wednesday Night (the second game in the Tigers series) I checked the Fox Sports HD channel hopefully, as always, but while the info box promised the Angels game, what I saw was the Dodgers-Astros game in progress. That's the problem with surfing cable nowadays: you never know when you're going to happen upon something offensive.

I jumped over to FSW, and there was some kind of rock 'em-sock-em match going on, with a crawl instructing me to call my cable ~~denier~~ provider and ask them why I was not seeing the Angels game.

Well, a lot of us did, and yeswecan finally got the whole truth out of Charter:

Fox wants Charter to charge its customers for certain games. Charter does not. They are in negotiations, and since they don’t have an agreement, the following games are currently scheduled to be blacked out (not available to watch at any price): April 23-24, May 4-8, 12-13,18-19, 25, 27, 29, June 15-16, 22-24, July 6-8, and 10.

Several of us were told that these were "premium" games. As far as I can tell, a "premium" game is one in which our bullpen has a meltdown.

So the situation seems to be this: FSW is pulling a power play with the cable companies, and Charter is digging in its heels. Well, that's their prerogative, but instead of being up front with us customers, they acted coyly, issuing no warning beforehand, feigning cluelessness the first time, and then coming clean after being dimed by FSW, and then only under intense interrogation (well done, yeswecan!)

So what do we Charter Angel fans do? What recourse do we have? I doubt that even if we all demanded the pro-forma $5 credit every time this would force their hand, and in any event they make this so difficult that it's hardly worth the effort. We could cancel their service, and if you have Verizon FIOS available, this is the course I would recommend. I hear the service is fantastic. Unfortunately, it's not available where we live. We could switch to DirecTV, but we'd still have to stay with Charter for their Internet service. Forget calling FSN; they'd just tell us to call Charter.

What do you all think? I don't imagine the Angels have any direct control over this--at least, I can't imagine they would be party to this, given that they have more to lose than anyone--but it is in their best interest to see this matter resolved as quickly as possible, because this affects their ratings, and thus in a way the value of the franchise. So perhaps leaning on them would have the best effect.

Update

I "chatted" online with supervisor Jocelyn, who after some prodding issued what sounds like the official Charter position, once one gets past their protective layer of guile:

Fox Sports has decided to make certain Angels games unavailable unless Charter pays an additional surcharge.

Following your favorite sports team is an emotional experience, so we hear from a segment of our customers that want their team on TV every week regardless of which network carries the game and the price involved. However, we have also heard from a significant amount of customers that appreciate greater choice in channels that would impact their cable prices.

Our priority is to continue providing the best value and choices to our customers. Sports on television is the most expensive programming available to cable operators and cable customers today. Charter has interest in carriage of all MLB programming, however we feel that pricing needs to be reasonable for our cable customers.

We are negotiating with FSN to carry these games and hope to be able to provide these games without raising our rates.

I worked on her for nearly an hour, making all the arguments you all have offered below and putting the flame to her straw-man argument about people who call up with unreasonable or impossible demands, but I couldn't make her budge off the company line.

I did nonetheless get her to knock $10 off our bill, which provided at least some compensation for the time I wasted with her and her underling before her.

Judging by the absolute lack of coverage of this situation anywhere but here, and Charter's apparent willingness to sacrifice some business to win this corporate skirmish, I guess (as Jim Healy might have put it) we have just two chances of getting satisfaction anytime soon: slimski and noneski.

A's to stay put

rspencer — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:56:00 -0000

The Oakland A's have announced that they have canceled plans to move to Fremont.

"After much consideration, today we informed Mayor [Bob] Wasserman and City Council members that the Oakland Athletics will cease efforts to relocate our franchise to the city of Fremont," A's owner and managing partner Lew Wolff said in a statement.

The only reason given for the move was the team's fear of "significant delays" in the completion of the project.

Angels games to be simulcast on KFWB

rspencer — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:50:43 -0000

According to a team press release, KFWB will carry 110 weekday Angels games.

Postseason games are included in the deal.

"The ability to provide fans unprecedented coverage throughout the Greater Los Angeles market has been a priority for us," said Angels President Dennis Kuhl. "This partnership with KFWB and the CBS Radio family is an important one for our respective sponsors and advertisers, but more importantly, for our fans throughout the Southern California region."

Kudos to the Angel front office for following through on yet another promise to the fans. Now, if we can just get them to broadcast weekday Cactus League games live. . . .

Spring Training weekday game broadcasts to be delayed

rspencer — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 07:32:18 -0000

According to the broadcast schedule posted on the KLAA AM 830 Web site, the Angels' Cactus League games played on weekdays will all be delayed. The regular start time for the broadcasts will be 6 PM unless there is a conflict with Ducks games, in which case the start time will be pushed back to as late as 10:30 PM.

Weekend games will be broadcast live, unless there is a conflict with Ducks games.

Weekday games to be played live on KLAA

rspencer — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:14:52 -0000

Start spreading the news!

According to Terry Smith on Angels Tonight just now, starting next Monday the weekday games will be broadcast live.

A long national nightmare is over. [editor's note, by rspencer] Sorry about the non-poll below; I have no idea why this happened.

Pray for some Black Magic

rspencer — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 08:00:32 -0000

Who knows what lurks in the mind of Mike Scoscia?

Wow. Santana against Beckett in the Heart of Darkness. What can Mike be thinking, putting an excitable head case in the worst possible situation for him, thereby seeming wilfully to ensure a loss? I'm the lousiest baseball analyst on HH, so I can only guess.

Perhaps his main goal is to set up the best possible situation for the Angels in the other game. I mean, I'd be happy if we came out of tomorrow with a split. If he switched pitchers, the chances of losing both seem significantly greater.

Moreover, I don't see who else on the 40-man roster he could put in for a spot start besides Santana. Am I missing someone obvious? No one in the pen is stretched out much beyond two innings, and I don't see any other available starters on the 40-man roster.

So unless I'm missing something obvious, I think the only thing to do is pray for some Black Magic. We know that Ervin does have an inner Panther. He has won a much bigger game for us in a much more harrowing situation, in the '05 ALDS at New York.

Maybe it's that inner Panther that Mike is hoping to awaken. Maybe Mike is attempting a Lasorda-esque Hail Mary play here. Perhaps by putting his faith in Ervin at this narrow pass for the team, he's hoping Ervin will rise to the occasion.

Or maybe he's just mad at him.

Poll

How will Ervin do tomorrow?

Well enough to win

7 votes

Well enough to justify bringing him back up

5 votes

Better than last time

16 votes

Déjà vu all over again

14 votes

42 votes | Poll has closed

One schlub's opinion

rspencer — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 23:41:59 -0000

My uneducated opinion regarding the off-field management errors made in the Stoneman era.

I'm no statistician, I've never played baseball professionally, and I'm not a sports journalist. My only qualifications to make the following observations are my long tenure as an Angels fan and career experience in management.

Like any Angel fan, I am distressed by the team's performance this year. While the team would be contending if it merely played up to its defensive potential, an objective analysis of the team's performance reveals a weakness in offense that was quite forseeable. The cause for this lies squarely on the shoulders of the off-field management, most obviously Bill Stoneman. I realize that he may be getting flawed information from his scouting staff and some unproductive direction from Arte Moreno, but for the moment let's just put it on Stoneman for the sake of argument.

Obviously I don't have the knowledge of the game that Stoneman has, and I certainly don't have access to inside information. I'm thus not going to criticize his trading acumen in general, other than to say that it fair to characterize him as timid and perhaps a bit unimaginative.

There are two aspects to his record, however, which I feel are undoubtedly deleterious to the team's on-field performance. The first is his obsessive clinging to minor-league prospects. At first I supported this quite enthusiasticaly, because I was heartsick at the team's historic propensity for trading away the future for washed-up veterans. I took great pride in the fact that the 2002 team was substantially home-grown.

Nevertheless, when a team has a declared philosophy of drafting the best available athletes, irrespective of organizational needs, inherent in that philosophy is the constant effort to trade surplus talent to fill these needs, at least at the minor-league level. This has simply not been done, and as a result we have (for example) virtually no top-level outfield talent apparent in the minors, and a laughable glut of middle infielders. Even a little kid trading baseball cards is liable to do a better job.

The other trait that Stoneman has is a bad temper. Whenever he loses patience with a player, he simply dumps him unceremoniously with no apparent attempt to secure anything in return. The only exceptions that come to mind are Mo Vaughn (admittedly a crucial exception) and Jose Guillen. He did a great job with these two, which shows that he is capable of a shrewd trade now and then. But there are many more examples of good players let go for nothing. The most recent and glaring examples are Bobby Jenks and Derrick Turnbow. Now, I think it was a good idea to let Jenks go, because he is obviously substandard in the character department, and despite our virtually wet-nursing him through the system he showed no real willingness to respond in kind. But the rational thing to do is sell such a player's strengths to another team and let them deal with the problems, not banish them from the kingdom petulantly.

Turnbow was a less understandable move; we had him up for a whole year dragging down the bullpen as a Rule 5 draftee, and later he had shown distinct promise in brief callups. We had a lot invested in this guy, and just when he was ripe we cast him off, apparently because of a positive test in the Olympic tryouts for a substance that was not banned by MLB at the time. While I respect the ethical considerations involved, why is it that we apparently cut him no slack when we were so indulgent with Jenks? The message sent to players here is at best mixed.

As I said, I don't know for a fact that Stoneman is entirely responsible for these two organizational flaws, and so I don't know whether simply replacing him would fix things. What I am sure of, however, is that these flaws have led to the problems we now see on the field. They must be corrected, and until I see some positive movement in this regard we will not achieve the perennial contender status so publicly valued by Arte Moreno.