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Former Angels GM finds a new way to embarrass himself with the Mets

Angels fans could've predicted this.

Zachary Rotman|
New York Mets Introduce Justin Verlander
New York Mets Introduce Justin Verlander | Rich Schultz/GettyImages

Before Perry Minasian, Los Angeles Angels fans had to suffer through five seasons of Billy Eppler. Despite having Mike Trout in his prime years, Eppler didn't guide the Angels to a postseason appearance one time. In fact, the team never even finished with a winning record.

Eppler is the guy who somehow got Trout to remain an Angel for life and convinced Shohei Ohtani to come to Anaheim, but with the good came a whole lot more bad. Anthony Rendon, Justin Upton, Zack Cozart, poor draft classes, the one-year deals for starting pitching, most of what Eppler tried to do to get Trout to the playoffs did not work.

Despite his failed tenure in Anaheim, Eppler found his way to another GM job, this time with the Mets. He had a seemingly unllimited budget to work with thanks to owner Steve Cohen and had a pretty good core in place when he first got there. Eppler did a lot of good in the 2022 season as New York won 101 games, but the Mets had one of, if not the most embarrassing season in MLB history, missing the playoffs despite setting a record in payroll.

As if the 2023 season wasn't embarrassing enough for Eppler, he just stepped down from his post as Mets GM unexpectedly, and now we know why.

Former LA Angels and NY Mets GM caught misusing the Injured List

Eppler, like all 30 MLB teams, misused the Injured List. Essentially what he did was place players on the IL who might not have been hurt to keep them in the organization. Instead of waiving or DFA'ing a player, he'd make up an injury and put them on the IL.

It's unclear to me exactly what Eppler did that's different from the other MLB teams that do this, because I know for a fact he's not the only one to misuse the injured list. It's an easy way for teams to keep players around they don't want to completely let go of, and is absolutely something the league should be stopping.

Eppler being the one to get caught misusing the injured list is something Angels fans can laugh at after all of the bad he did in Anaheim. At times it felt like he didn't always know what he was doing, and that was clearly the case in New York as well.

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