Former Angels Great Troy Percival Indirectly Got 2 Organizational Instructors Ousted

The Los Angeles Angels have seen a major playoff drought since 2014, but it wasn’t always like this. The Halos are a proud organization with a rich history of talented players coming through the franchise.

One of the more loved players over the years was pitcher Troy Percival, as he spent the majority of his career with the Halos. Recently, he was invited to come work with some of the up-and-coming prospects that the Angels have, and it didn’t go well.

Percival didn’t mind the players or their mechanics. But he wasn’t a fan of the technology the Angels were using for their player development — and he let his opinions be known.

“I’m not one that’s big on using the iPads,” said Percival, who spent six seasons as the head coach at UC Riverside. “I understand it. I had to understand it through college coaching. I just feel like we need to have coaches with eyes that can see things and put their hands on people and fix them. It’s really difficult to look at an iPad and think that it can make the adjustments that it needs to make.”

Per Troy Percival via The Athletic

Due to his sharing, two of the Angels highest-ranking pitching instructors in their farm system were let go. He shared his thoughts with Angels farm director Joey Prebynski, and he said that he didn’t want anyone to get fired, but rather was just trying to look out for the team.

Pitching coordinator Buddy Carlyle and pitching performance coordinator Dylan Alexrod were the two guys to get the ax. Percival spent a long time in the major leagues, so he knows a thing or two.

The Angels likely took his opinion to heart and made the call to make some changes. While he didn’t want or intend on people getting fired, some believe that his frustration with how things were handled did lead to it happening.

If anything, hopefully a change will help the Angels develop their guys even better. It’s been a long time since the Halos have had a dominant pitcher in their ranks, so maybe this will be the start of something.