SI:AM | The Angels Are in Freefall
Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I can hardly wait for Game 3 of the NBA Finals tonight.
In today’s SI:AM:
💰 Broncos agree to sell for a record fee: $4.65 billion
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A season from hell
Less than a month ago, the Angels were on top of the world—or at least the AL West. Now, not so much.
Ever since Mike Trout’s emergence as the best player of his generation, the Angels have been the most frustrating franchise in baseball. They employ one of the best all-around players in history and even added two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani and yet they’ve still finished below .500 in six straight seasons. But things were looking different early this season. Los Angeles got out to a 24–13 start and sat in first place on May 15. Then the wheels fell off.
The Angels are 3–17 since that date, including a losing streak that was extended to 13 games after falling to the Red Sox last night. It’s their longest single-season losing streak in franchise history.
The first head to roll was manager Joe Maddon’s. He was fired yesterday before the game against Boston, 56 games into his third season in charge. (Phil Nevin was named interim manager.) The manager is an easy scapegoat when a team’s season goes sideways but it’s difficult to see how Maddon—an accomplished, World Series–winning manager—was the right guy to lead this team when it was in first place in May and yet deserves to be unemployed in June. Nick Selbe writes that it’s just another example of the Angels’ front office being impatient:
“[General manager Perry] Minasian is only in his second year with the organization, but that type of impulsive decision-making fits right in line with the club’s recent past. From 2000 to ’07, the Angels had one manager and one general manager: Mike Scioscia and Bill Stoneman, respectively. In the midst of that stretch—during which the team made the playoffs four times and won its only World Series title—[Arte] Moreno purchased the franchise from the Walt Disney Company. In the years that have followed, what was once a sturdy foundation has eroded into a volatile operation marred by dysfunction at nearly every turn.”
The good news for the Angels is that it’s still relatively early in the season. There are still 105 games left to play—plenty of time to turn things around and start playing like they did to start the season. With an expanded postseason that includes three wild card teams, it’s still not out of the question that they could make the playoffs for the first time since 2014. (Fangraphs puts their playoff odds at about 26% right now.)
Sneaking into an expanded playoff field shouldn’t be enough to let Moreno off the hook, if that even happens. He’s run this team terribly ever since he bought it and squandering the careers of Trout and Ohtani is an embarrassment. Trout is under contract through the end of 2030, but Ohtani has only one more season before he hits free agency after ’23. Will he want to stick around if Moreno and Minasian haven’t gotten things under control and built a strong foundation by then?
The best of Sports Illustrated
In today’s Daily Cover, Chris Mannix goes inside the Celtics’ dramatic turnaround from a turbulent start to the season:
“On January 1 the Celtics were 17–19, lingering among the teams battling for a play-in berth. Of course, they closed the season 34–12 and are now three wins away from the franchise’s 18th championship. The story of how they did it involves a coach pushing the right buttons, an executive making the right deals and a roster that stopped fighting Udoka’s methods and finally coalesced.”
The latest episode of SI Weekly features Mannix talking about the Celtics and Howard Beck discussing how the Warriors rebooted their dynasty. … Avi Creditor argues that the USMNT’s World Cup group could be the most difficult in the entire tournament. … Emma Baccellieri previews the Women’s College World Series championship series between unstoppable Oklahoma and underdog Texas.
Around the sports world
Deshaun Waterson reportedly booked massage therapy sessions with 66 different women between fall 2019 and spring 2021. … The Broncos are reportedly being sold to Walmart heir Rob Walton for a record amount. … The injuries keep piling up for the Mets. Starling Marte and Pete Alonso left last night’s game injured. … The Lightning beat the Rangers handily to even the Eastern Conference final at two games apiece. … Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed will reportedly join LIV Golf for the tour’s first U.S. event.
The top five...
… things I saw yesterday:
5. The Phil Mickelson–inspired memes from the LIV Golf press event.
4. The long home runs by Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton as the Yankees beat the Tigers to become the first team to notch 40 wins this season.
3. Jazz Chisholm getting the green light on 3–0 and hitting a grand slam.
2. Nolan Arenado’s throw to get the out at third on a bunt.
1. John Cena surprising a teenage fan who fled Ukraine
SIQ
On this day in 1920, Hall of Fame Reds center fielder Edd Roush was ejected for doing what on the field?
- Taking off his clothes
- Sleeping
- Making a sandwich
- Dancing
Yesterday’s SIQ: The Padres took Brown shortstop Bill Almon with the first pick in the 1974 MLB draft, held this week 48 years ago. Can you name the only three other Ivy League players who were first-round picks in the primary June draft?
Answer: Ron Darling (Yale, 1981), Mike Remlinger (Dartmouth, ’87) and Doug Glanville (Penn, 1991).
Almon is the only Ivy Leaguer to be taken first and is the only player from Brown to appear in a big league game after World War II.
San Diego also took Almon in the 11th round of the 1971 draft out of high school, but he did not sign and chose to go to Brown instead. It jumped at the chance to draft him again three years later when it held the first pick.
Almon made his big league debut three months after he was drafted as a September call-up but didn’t become a full-time major leaguer until 1977. He didn’t hit much in his first three full seasons with the Padres (a 77 OPS+) and didn’t field well either (41 errors at short in ’77 and 21 in ’78 after a move to third base), so they traded him to the Expos before the ’80 season. Montreal cut him after 18 unremarkable games, and he was picked up by the Mets. Almon was released by New York that winter.
After being cast aside by his third team in 13 months, Almon considered giving up baseball and falling back on his Ivy League degree, as Steve Wulf wrote in a 1981 SI article (with the groan-worthy headline “Almon Is Now a Joy”):
“Merry Christmas, said the Mets last December, we’re releasing you. So Bill Almon, home for the holidays in Warwick, R.I., had a decision to make. He could go into his family’s medical-supply business, make use of his B.A. from Brown by opening a sociology store, or give baseball one more try. In matters such as these, the whole Almon clan has its say, and on the Sunday after Christmas, Ted and Gloria, their sons Ted, Bob, Bill and John, their daughters Mary and Anne-Marie and all of the children’s spouses gathered in mom’s and pop’s living room and talked things over. They sent Bill back to baseball with their blessings. ‘It’s terrible to grow old saying, “What if?”’ says the elder Ted in explaining the decision.”
Almon ended up signing with the White Sox before the 1981 season and had the best year of his career, batting .301 and earning six MVP votes. He wasn’t able to replicate that success in future seasons, but he did end up playing in the majors until ’88, a total of 15 seasons.
From the Vault: June 8, 2009
Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated
Tom Verducci’s classic 2009 cover story on Bryce Harper, then just a high school phenom, is full of anecdotes that sound more like they pulled from George Plimpton’s spoof article about Sidd Finch, like this paragraph:
“So good and so young is Bryce Harper, however, that he explodes baseball convention. He has hit the longest home run in the history of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays, and he did so in January, at age 16, with a blast that would have flown farther than the measured 502 feet had it not smashed off the back wall of the dome. Still only 16, Harper stands 6'3", weighs 205 pounds, has faster bat speed than Mark McGwire in his prime and runs so fast that he scored on wild pitches six times this season from second base. As a catcher he picks off runners from his knees, and when he pitches, he throws a fastball that has been clocked at 96 mph. He also does volunteer work, holds down a 3.5 grade point average and attends religious education classes nearly every morning before school.”
Verducci also relates the story of the time Harper hit a home run 570 feet as a 15-year-old freshman and the time he “hit one line drive so hard that the second baseman jumped out of its way, as if dodging gunfire.” They’d sound too outlandish to be true if you had never seen Harper play before.
The article was boldly headlined “Baseball’s LeBron” and, like James, Harper is the rare athlete who has been saddled with lofty expectations and managed to meet them. He got his GED so he could enroll in community college two years early and was taken No. 1 in the 2010 draft. He needed just one full season in the minors before being called up by the Nationals and immediately making the All-Star team. He’s won two MVP awards and signed what was, at the time, the biggest contract in baseball history. He’s earned the LeBron comparison.
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