LA Angels spring training officially begins while MLB players are locked out

The LA Angels' 2022 spring training has officially started. That sounds like good news, but of course, MLB is locked out right now and therefore Major League ballplayers won't be allowed to participate. Only Minor Leaguers can go to spring training.

It still is good news, however, that the Halos can work to improve their minor league system during this work stoppage. That stoppage doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon, and there is now doubt that there will even be baseball in 2022. It goes to show how important it is that the coaching staff can work closely with our Minor Leaguers if the MLB players are going to be locked out of our Big League club.

There could be many situations this year where prospects are going to have to come up (if we have a season), and therefore this development period is about as vital as it gets. After all, that wasn't the plan last year and it still happened to a huge extent.

The LA Angels Minor League system will benefit more from a spring training than most teams.

That's because the LA Angels Minor League system's raw. Even in a year where the team had just drafted all pitchers in the draft before, many of those pitchers haven't had the chance to get the reps needed to develop further just yet. Mark Gubicza told me that he's heard great things about these new arms from sources both in AND out of the organization, and therefore it appears that the only reason they're not ranked very high on prospect lists is due to them just not having the amount of developmental reps just yet.

With many farm systems across the league, they already have their set of guys that they are looking to bring up, and are just waiting on the right timing. They won't benefit as much from this as a team like the Angels, however, who now will have the chance to catch up in the developmental stage.

The Halos were just ranked 29th out of 30 teams in the Baseball America 2022 MLB Organization Talent Rankings. That's pretty terrible, but they have a chance to put their heads down and move up those rankings with well-deserved chances to develop and get more reps than they would at a normal spring training.