2010 Team Analysis: Los Angeles Angels

Los Angeles Angels:

2009 Record: 97-65

General Manager: Tony Reagins

Manager: Mike Scioscia


Organizational Philosophy: The Angels recently signed GM Tony Reagins to a long term extension. Reagins has shown, unlike former Angel GM Bill Stoneman, a willingness to pull off a trade involving their younger players.  With Reagins at the helm not much has changed in terms of acquiring talent geared towards speed and defense.  This offseason should be interesting with a few key figures set to test free agency

2010 Team Analysis: Arizona Diamondbacks

Arizona Diamondbacks:

2009 Record: 70-92

General Manager: Josh Byrnes

Manager: A.J. Hinch


Organizational Philosophy: Before the 2008 season, Derrick Hall succeeded Jeff Moorad as President and CEO. Both he and GM Josh Byrnes signed a long term deal that is set to expire after the 2015 season. The first two years of this “plan” has been rocky and a lot of regression has occurred in terms of overall team advancement.  During this time of succession, Byrnes began to make a few key gambles that never paid off.  The extension given to Eric Byrnes was one widely debated at the time and I'm sure split the front office between taking a chance on rookie Carlos Quentin (who struggled in his first full season with the D-Backs due to a lingering shoulder injury) or appease the fanbase and retain Eric Byrnes.  The other gambles that seemed logical at the time, such as signing OF Chris Young and C Chris Snyder to long-term deals, have slowly gone sour thereby making these players difficult to trade.

It can be argued that lately this team has settled on finding many under-the-radar reclamation projects.  Josh Byrnes has also developed the reputation as a GM not afraid to trade away many of his prospects once acquired by their former Scouting Director (and current Washington Nationals GM) Mike Rizzo.  Last June, the D-Backs did run into a wealth of early picks in the 2009 amatuer draft so they do have a lot of upside prospects swimming in the lower levels but I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them are dealt within the next few years in order to address other needs.

2010 Team Analysis: San Diego Padres

San Diego Padres

2009 Record: 75-87

General Manager: Jed Hoyer

Manager: Bud Black


Organizational Philosophy: Former GM Kevin Towers is considered one of the better GM’s in effectively finding bargain talent. It was a surprise to find him let go by the Padres earlier this week. Rumors have speculated that new CEO Jeff Moorad wanted to fill the GM spot with someone who shares his ideas on how to properly construct a baseball team; it's been speculated that those "ideas" center on acquiring high-ceiling talent and dropping the conservative approach once practiced in player development. Moorad has stated to the media that he would be comfortable assembling a team with a payroll between $70-80M within the next few years. Right now the Padres have $21M committed before arbitration and free agent acquisitions but don't expect this team to make any moves towards acquiring a major free agent... yet.

2010 Team Analysis: San Francisco Giants

San Francisco Giants:

2009 Record: 88-74

General Manager: Brian Sabean

Manager: Bruce Bochy


Organizational Philosophy: After hearing for the past twelve seasons that he may be one of the worst GM's in baseball, Brian Sabean has finally learned to embrace the youth movement (to some extent in terms of pitching although his offloading of Tim Alderson and 21 year old LHP Scott Barmes did have that same futile stench to it) but his need to overpay key positional veterans does leer its ugly head every so often.

2010 Team Analysis: Colorado Rockies

Colorado Rockies:

2009 Record: 92-70

General Manager: Dan O'Dowd

Manager: Jim Tracy


Organizational Philosophy: After years of focusing on acquiring power hitters to take advantage of their home run friendly enviroment, the Rockies have spent the past four seasons stockpiling an assortment of talented young pitchers and defense. The team is also fond of picking up cheap reclamation projects and cast-offs in the hopes that they can contribute in a smaller role. The results have been quite successful as Colorado now has a farm system loaded with promising young pitchers and high ceiling positional prospects along with a cost-effective bullpen and a few productive bench players.

2010 Team Analysis: Los Angeles Dodgers

Los Angeles Dodgers:

2009 record: 95-67

General Manager: Ned Colletti

Manager: Joe Torre

Organizational Philosophy: The Ned Colletti era still moves forward with he and the Dodgers coming to terms to a long-term deal last month. Among baseball circles a lot of debate has sprung up on who exactly in the front office (or used to be in the front office) is responsible for the Dodgers recent success. Recent reports have stated that the Dodgers will avoid pursuing any long term free agents due to the lagging economy (although I’m more inclined to believe this is the reason). Spending restrictions or not, Colletti has never been shy of trading away promising prospects for established veterans and with glaring holes in next season’s starting rotation I would expect Colletti to be busy this off season.

MLB 2010 Team by Team Analysis Preview

Beginning today and concluding until the 2009 Winter Meetings in early December, I will be conducting a team by team analysis first beginning with the NL West.  Each team will be presented by order of their 2009 standings.

Before I begin I want to send out a very special thanks to a couple of amazing baseball resources/websites.  The first is Cot's Baseball Contracts, an incredibly detailed and comprehensive center of information dealing with the financial side of baseball and critical to any laymen (such as myself) who feels the need to play hypothetical GM.

Second, I want to thank Tim Dierkes for creating and maintaining my favorite source of MLB information: MLBTradeRumors.com.  Since I discovered this goldmine I've found myself, almost exclusively, going there for any and all baseball news.  Their Offseason Outlooks are incredibly concise and have pretty much laid out the groundwork (for me) on how I would like to format my own offseason analysis (in terms of info and financial obligations each team faces in the coming season).

With all that said, I want to welcome everyone to what I see in store for each MLB team in 2010.  The commentary on each team will be pretty much objective based on recent news sources but I will insert a few personal predictions based both on team needs and each teams unique organizational philosophy.

Thanks.