The Angels continue to be a franchise in flux; embracing a youth movement but not fully committing to a rebuild. Zach Neto (SS) is the leader of the team in many regards and looks to be a cornerstone for years to come. Jo Adell cracked 38 home runs last season. Where the Angels youth is really on display is the rotation. Jose Soriano, Reid Detmers, Ryan Johson, and Jack Kochanowicz are all young and homegrown. The addition of Mike Maddux as the pitching coach could not have come at a better time.<\/p>\n
Shoring up second base with the veteran Adam Frazier was a really nice move by GM Perry Minasian. Last year the Angels received no WAR at the keystone. The team also led the majors in strikeouts. Getting a steady veteran with a low K rate should help in that regard. Josh Lowe in left should strike out less than Taylor Ward did last year but he will also hit fewer home runs. Still, adding two lefty bats with solid contact profiles gives much more balance to a boom or bust prone lineup.<\/p>\n
Mike Trout back in center field is making Angels fans nervous but the fact of the matter is they have no better option until Nelson Rada is ready. Trout is hitting 30 feet per second sprint speed for the first time since 2023 (before his knee injury) and made some swing adjustments that paid off at the end of last year. So there are reasons for hope on the Trout front.<\/p>\n
As usual, the lack of organizational depth will doom the team to another losing season. The bullpen is already a bit of a mess. However, there are enough young arms on the farm in George Klassen, Tyler Bremner, Caden Dana and Trent Gregory-Alford to dream on a good, homegrown rotation in a couple of years. Bullpen candidates like Chase Shores, Christ Cortez, and Joel Hurtado could join Walbert Urena and Sam Bachman at the MLB level as soon as this year to shore up that unit.<\/p>\n
The Cubs are the superior team and should win the series but will face the Angels\u2019 two best pitches in Soriano and Yusei Kikuchi. Let\u2019s just hope the weather holds and we get to see the full series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Angels continue to be a franchise in flux; embracing a youth movement but not fully committing to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,81311,7536,4245,161,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-652965","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-chicago-cubs-game-information","12":"tag-chicago-cubs-series-previews","13":"tag-chicagocubs","14":"tag-cubs","15":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116319627725929066","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}