“People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they’re African American,” Los Angeles Angels  center fielder Torii Hunter says. “They’re not us. They’re impostors.

“Even people I know come up and say, ‘Hey, what color is Vladimir Guerrero? Is he a black player?’ I say, ‘Come on, he’s Dominican. He’s not black.’ ”

So said Hunter during a discussion with USA Today, which you can find here, about the declining number of black players in Major League Baseball. It’s a topic that’s been covered many times, no doubt, but one where people rarely make a complete ass out of themselves while doing it.

For what it’s worth, I don’t believe Hunter was trying to disparage Latin players in any way. Radio and TV personalities that get paid to talk for a living have misstatements all the time, so why should we expect any different from someone that is paid to play baseball and not to talk? Still, it is something some will use, with no consideration of any of this, as a means of trashing Hunter, the Angels, or both, and it’s clearly unfair of them to do so. Hunter has come out as well and said he basically misspoke, and I am not aware of any past actions of his that should give me reason to doubt this. Hopefully, it’s a story that dies quickly.

There was a fascinating write up over on FanGraphs yesterday that took the predictions fan voters made on how teams would do for the season and, using a pretty complex simulation, calculated the chances of each team winning their division, winning the Wild Card, and winning the playoffs. As mentioned, the simulation is fairly complex, and instead of trying to explain it and just making myself look silly I’ll let FanGraphs handle that for me.

Sadly, the news for the AL West as a whole was pretty mixed, and for the Angels it was mostly bad. While the Yankees have literally double the chances of winning the playoffs according to this sim than the top team in the AL West (80%-40%), the Rangers and not the Angels are the team in that top stop in the AL West. Admittedly, this surprised me as I would’ve assumed the Mariners would’ve held that top spot, but apparently the fans disagree with me. In fact, the Angels ended up last in the division in this, with only a 16% chance of winning the AL West. Yikes. It gets even worse when looking at the Wild Card, where they’re given only a 1% chance of winning it, verses 27%, 31%, and 28% for the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays respectively.

On the bright(-ish) side, no other division in the AL has four teams bunched so closely together in Division Win %, with only 22% separating the Rangers and Angels, where the Royals are 32% behind the Twins and the poor Blue Jays are a full 53% behind the Yankees (and given 0% chance of winning the division… ouch). Of course, that bright side can only be so bright when you consider that even the A’s, who finished in the cellar of the division with only 75 wins last season are giving better chances of winning the division than we are. I think it’s safe to say the fans are expecting the impact of losing players like Lackey, Figgins, and Oliver to free agency and the regression of players like Morales and Hunter to be pretty significant for us.

It should be noted, of course, that this is only a simulation and there is actually a reason we play the games. I’m not (and I don’t believe FanGraphs is, either) saying this is how things are certain to play out, but it does give us some idea of how likely things are to happen this way. Players and teams defy the odds to win, or lose, all the time, and there’s obviously no reason the Angels couldn’t do exactly that. Based on what we’ve seen from the off-season, that may be where we have to pin our hopes this coming season.

If you happened to be counting on Chris Pettit as a backup outfielder for the Halos this season, anxious to see what the one-time Player of the Month in the organization had to offer at the major league level, you’re going to be waiting a little longer. During winter ball (that same beast that robbed Juan Rivera of pretty much all of 2007 and likely hurt his production in 2008 as well) there was a “baserunning mishap” that caused Petit to injure his shoulder, resulting in surgery to repair a torn labrum that will end Pettit’s season before it even starts.

While no one was expecting Pettit to set the world on fire, depth is never a bad thing to have in the majors and Pettit had a good chance of providing us with that. This will probably leave us with the trio of Reggie Willits, Robb Quinlan, and Terry Evans as OF backups, although I tend to think of Quinlan as more of a corner infield back up that Scioscia has some kind of weird man-crush on. He’s not exactly good at any of the positions, and personally I think Reggie Willits deserves a chance to show us whether his .391 OBP in 2007 was a fluke or not. I’m sure to some extent it was, but even if he can give us a .350-.360 OBP, it’s going to be better than we’ll get from Quinlan. And yes, I realize Willits has no power (and while “no power” is usually a way to describe guys that only hit a few HRs a year, in this case he literally has no power, and practically makes Chone Figgins look like a slugger with his 5 HRs in 2009), but he does provide us with some speed, which Quinlan does not, and Scioscia is clearly a guy that likes his speed.

Either way, we’re talking about backups here, so unless something happens to the trio of Rivera, Hunter, and Abreu (with Matsui likely contributing his own bad defense occasionally as well), none of these people will be getting significant ABs.

There was one more thing about the article on this injury over on the Angels’ official page that struck me as kind of interesting. While listing Pettit’s other injuries over the years, he called them all “freak injuries” that he had no control over. These included breaking his foot while running for a fly ball in the OF in 2008, and breaking his wrist in June of 2009. Pettit talks about how they were “things he couldn’t control,” but this seems to imply to me that most baseball injuries can be controlled. While there are examples, like Carlos Quentin back in 2008, of a player injuring themselves while slamming a bat or punching a wall or otherwise taking out his frustration on some unsuspecting inanimate object, most baseball injuries are things players generally have no control over. At some point, you can’t write off injuries like this as “freak injuries” and think you otherwise would’ve been healthy had these crazy random happenstances not occurred. Freak injuries are when pitchers are hit by a hard comebacker, like when Kaz Ishii was hit in the face back in 2002. Clint Barmes breaking his collarbone falling and breaking his collarbone while carrying around deer meat in 2005 is another freak injury. It’s something that was truly beyond your control (although I suppose Barmes could’ve tried not carrying deer meat). But when you’re injured while running after a ball or diving back to tag home, then you’re someone with some injury problems.

Maybe the whole “freak injuries beyond my control” thing is something Pettit has to tell himself to keep himself in a good state of mind, and if that’s the case then more power to him. If he has some Google Alert set up that somehow links him to this, then Chris, buddy, just know that everything I said above this was completely sarcastic. Oh.. this is sarcastic, too, Chris: The rest of us can handle the truth of it. If you’re injured a lot while playing baseball, even if you think it’s a “freak injury,” then the truth of the matter is simply that you’re injury prone.

I’ve been remiss not to mention this before… Halo Hangout has a Facebook page! Currently it is being updated everytime I post something new here, but soon I’ll be posting links to articles from Spring Training and other information as the season progresses. Become a fan and start following Halo Hangout from your Facebook!

Among the reasons given in defense of the front office over what many, including myself, have deemed a rather disappointing off-season is that the budget didn’t allow us to add a player like Matt Holliday lest we be unable to sign players like Howie Kendrick or Eric Aybar in the future. While I understand the reasoning behind this, I believe there is a part of the equation people are leaving out, on both sides: Spending the money WISELY.

The debacle that was our CF for years is the perfect example of how not spending money wisely can come back to bite you in the ass a few years down the line. Instead of giving Carlos Beltran the money and years he wanted, we decided to go with the almost-as-old-as-our-GM Steve Finley, who bombed almost right away. Realizing our mistake, we threw even more money at Gary Matthews Jr., and I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone reading this how fantastic that turned out for us. Finally, we decided to hand Torii Hunter a boat load of money so we’d actually have a viable, productive CFer. Let’s examine the math behind all this.

Carlos Beltran signed for 7 years and $119 million. A huge contract, right? Keep those numbers in mind.
Steve Finley signed for 2 years and $14 million. So far, the Angels have saved $105 million.
Gary Matthews Jr was signed for 5 years and $50 million. Our savings is now down to $55 million.
Finally, Torii Hunter signed for 5 years and $90 million. Our savings have now turned into a loss of $35 million. Take a moment and think about that.

Because the Angels decided they didn’t want to pay one of the single best CFers in the game at the time, they’ve spent an extra $35 million dollars, money that could also be used to sign players like Aybar and Kendrick, and they’ve missed out on the amazing production Beltran has produced, instead replacing that with the negative value of both Finley and Matthews. Only Hunter, three years later, has given them positive production in CF, and that’s with his declining fielding.

Also to note, when Beltran’s contract expires he will be 34 years old. When Hunter’s contract expires, he will be 37 years old. Both are very likely to be in their decline phase, but the chances that Hunter is producing at a higher level than Beltran despite being three years older are pretty slim. So, when all is said and done, we’ve ended up spending an extra $35 million for a CFer that is three years older, and has never produced at the level Beltran has during his time with the Mets. Ever.
None of this is to say the Angels should buy every free agent that comes on the market and there should be no budget. But when a player that has positive value on both sides of the ball is available, and he’s still young, it’d be foolish not to sign him, and it just may cost us in the long run. We’ve clearly paid for it, in both money and production (imagine the 2005 ALCS against the White Sox with Carlos Beltran taking Steve Finley’s at-bats) by not signing Beltran. Now, we just have to hope we don’t see the same mistake by passing on a player like Matt Holliday.

Next time someone says that we should’ve signed a player, take a moment to think about the potential impact of not signing that player before you tell them to go root for the Yankees. Things aren’t always as simple as they first seem.

Lyle Spencer, the mlb.com reporter for the Angels, has a blog post up discussing the comparisons people are making when it comes to Brandon Wood. Apparently, many “fans and insiders” keep comparing him to Dallas McPherson, and Mr. Spencer believes Troy Glaus is the more appropriate comparison. Why we’re comparing either of them to a person with only 236 PA in his major league career is beyond me, but let’s go with it for the moment.

Comparing Glaus and Wood physically, as Spencer does in his post, seems a bit of a stretch to me. While Glaus is only two inches taller than Wood, he’s got a good 30 pounds on him. Put another way, if these men both decided to go into Mixed Martial Arts, Wood would be a Light Heavyweight, and Glaus would be firmly in the Heavyweight division. Glaus is simply a big guy. Spencer calls him a “tall, rangy shortstop” that was moved to third, but again, this is a bit of a stretch. Since 1998, when Glaus first entered the Angels’ minor league system, he’s played exactly 18 games at SS. Of those 18, only 8 did he actually start the game at SS, and all those were in Toronto in 2006. This was also done mostly when they were facing an NL team, and couldn’t put Glaus in the DH spot, and when a fly ball pitcher was on the mound, giving the SS version of Glaus as few fielding chances as they possibly could.

On the flip side of this, Wood has already started more games at SS in his almost nonexistent ML career than Glaus, and he has almost 600 games at the position in the minors. Wood, in fact, is almost the opposite of Glaus… a SS that is being moved to 3B, whereas 3B was clearly where Glaus belonged. All of this is basically to say, comparing Wood and Glaus because they both have played at SS and are being moved to 3B and both are tall guys isn’t really telling us much. Lots of players get moved around. No one compared Skip Schumaker to Alfonso Soriano when he went from a corner OF spot to 2B, and rightfully so. If Troy Glaus had played the early years of his career with the Marlins instead of the Angels, this is a comparison that is never even thought of.

And, really, the same applies to McPherson. The guy had some real potential, and maybe still does, but clearly injuries was his undoing. Wood doesn’t have much of an injury history, as Spencer points out, and I see nothing outside of the position and uniform that gives any reason to compare Wood and McPherson. All three guys played for the Angels, all three guys had their share of strikeouts, all three guys had power or power potential… but that could also describe a lot of other 3B around the league.

Brandon Wood is not Troy Glaus or Dallas McPherson. He is likely not going to have the career trajectory of either of them. Spencer is right when he says it’s a process, and that we shouldn’t expect results overnight. He goes a bit off the rails when he talks about how Brooks Robinson and Mike Schmidt had rookie numbers close to what Glaus did, the implication being that putting up rookie numbers like he expects Wood to means he could still turn out to be one of the best 3B ever. When you put the names Robinson and Schmidt next to Glaus and Wood, it seems to be that it’s a fairly transparent attempt to inspire some hope in Angels fans, and if too many people get that idea in their head it may backfire when Wood doesn’t turn out to be the second coming of Brooks Robinson. Let’s worry about replacing Chone Figgins production first.

One thing I should say in closing. There are projection systems out there (PECOTA is the one I’m referencing here, I believe) that uses a system of comparing a players performance to thousands of other players, and building a projection off of that. This is a legitimate system, instead of just saying “this Angels 3B is like this other 3B who just so happened to play for the Angels too, instead of this other 3B who, imagine that, also played for the Angels.” The projection systems are not about comparing players from the same team’s recent history, but instead from a myriad of teams and eras, and my distaste for one should not be confused with dislike of all systems like that.

Things are fairly quiet around Angelopolis right now, with everything sort of in a holding pattern until Spring Training (15 days until the first Spring Training game!). That said, there have at least been a couple of transactions recently worth at least noting, though neither are likely to have much of an impact on anything.

Robb Quinlan
The Angels agreed to terms with Robb Quinlan, for some amount of money over some time frame. I don’t really care about either, and unless it’s tens of millions over multiple years, you shouldn’t either. He actually had one fairly productive season with the Angels, posting an OPS of .836, but that was clearly a fluke and no one should be expecting anything like it again from him. What that leaves us with is a player that can play all the corner positions (1B, 3B, LF, RF) and give people a day off, but should never, ever see more than 150-200 PA in a season. He’s basically a 0 WAR player, meaning with his hitting and fielding he neither adds or subtracts wins, or even partial wins, from the team. He’s just a guy to hold a glove or a bat while someone rests for a day, and that’s about it. Thankfully, we’ve seen four straight seasons of declining Plate Appearances for him, so hopefully Scos & Co. realize this as well. We just have to pray that he isn’t the planned replacement if Brandon Wood can’t cut it at 3B.

Dustin Moseley
Dustin signed with the Yankees , ending his time with the Angels, and having almost no impact on either team. Perhaps he gives the Yankees a bit of depth in their rotation and/or pen, perhaps he takes a bit from the Angels, but with people like O’Sullivan, Loux, Palmer, Jepsen, and Thompson hanging around at various levels, depth won’t be a major issue for the Angels. They have people that can and will take the ball, either in the rotation or out of the pen. How well they’ll do with that ball is another question entirely. Moseley’s deal with the Yankees is a minor league one with an invitation to Spring Training, so he’ll have a chance to show them he’s healthy after last season’s surgery, and at least initially provide them with some Triple-A depth. I do, at least, wish him good luck with the rest of his career, but I’m not going to say I’m sad to see him go either.

Regression, or regression to the mean, is not something that is typically talked about in non-saber baseball forums and blogs, in my experience. The basic concept is that players will have times when they will play above their skill level, and because of things like a small sample size or a player have a stretch of good luck, their numbers will be better than their actual skill level. As that sample size increases, however, the luck will run out or the stretch of playing over their heads will end, and their numbers will start to trend back towards their actual skill level. The “mean” is their skill level, and the “regression” is their stats falling back in line with that skill level.

We can find plenty of examples of this with even a short glace around baseball. In 2007, Joe Saunders put up a 3.41 ERA, despite never before or since posting anything better than a 4.44 ERA. Looking even a little deeper into his numbers, we discover he had an obscenely low .267 BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play, which measures how many times a ball put in play will go for a hit), which is a full 25 points lower than his career BABIP, and certainly helped with his lower numbers. Simply put, pitches of his that were put into play weren’t finding holes then like they are now. Darin Erstad is another fine example. In 2000, he hit .355/.409/.541, which is a really good season for a lot of people, but was clearly an out-of-his-mind season for a career .282/.336/.407 hitter. The very next season, his OPS dropped an absurd 260 points, and in the nine seasons of baseball he’s played since 2000, he’s never come even remotely close to repeating those numbers.

So, we turn our attention to Kendry Morales, a player that showed us the text book definition of bursting onto the scene last year. Before last year, Kendry had given the Angels 407 Plate Appearances and a slash line of .249/.302/.408, which wasn’t awful, but for a major league 1Bman, it wasn’t exactly acceptable either. After trading away Casey Kotchman for Mark Teixeira, and then failing to resign Teixeira during the off-season, the starting gig at 1B was Kendry’s to lose. Blowing away anything he’d done previously, he put up a .306/.355/.569 slash line in 622 PA, and was a big reason why the Angels’ offense last season wasn’t completely terrible (a career year from Torii Hunter, another candidate for regression, certainly didn’t hurt either).

He is clearly, and without a doubt the starting 1B for the Angels going into 2010, and rightfully so. Not only is there anyone lurking around likely to replace his production, but there’s no reason to remove a guy that had a season like he did in 2009. The question, then, becomes what we can expect for him going forward. Personally, and this is an opinion that seems to be shared by almost all of the projection systems, I think regression is quite likely. Not many players put up numbers so significantly better than anything they’ve previously done at any level, and never look back. For its part, CHONE is expecting fairly significant regression from Kendry, giving him a .286/.331/.495 slash line with a drop down to 22 HRs. I’m slightly more optimistic, though I wouldn’t be shocked if he didn’t break 30 HR or much over a .330 OBP.

We, as fans, need to expect regression to happen, and not be too quick to call for player’s to be removed or assign blame for it to whatever random thing the Baseball Tonight people are telling us a player is doing (“It seems like he’s just pressing too much, maybe he needs to look at more tape, work on his swing with the hitting coach, because this kid is a great player and blah blah blah.”). Regression is a fact of life, and one we as Angel fans are going to need to prepare ourselves for moving into 2010.