What are the Angels selling at Angel Stadium this season?
The waffles are pretty good — and, dare we say it, a bargain for baseball food. For $12 you get a hot waffle topped with strawberries and cream or S’Mores.
On the field, the angels are ultimately selling hope and faith, the currency of another bad summer. Let the kids play and hope players like Jo Adell, Logan O’Hoppe, Zach Neto, Nolan Schanuel and José Soriano grow into the core of the Angels’ next great team.
With the Cleveland Guardians in Anaheim this weekend, the Angels need only look into the visiting dugout for a reminder of the dangers of counting on a core of prospects.
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Joe Torres, the Guardians’ assistant pitching coach, was the Angels’ top draft pick in 2000. Twenty years ago, he was part of a highly touted core of Angels prospects, along with infielders Casey Kotchman, Dallas McPherson and Brandon Wood and catchers Jeff Mathis and Mike Naples.
“As an organization you want to stack as many prospects as possible,” says Torres. ‘That’s all we are. It’s just a label until you go to the big leagues and play.
‘It’s a different animal here. The game adapts to you. You have to find a way to adjust again, and quickly. It’s a difficult game. It is not easy. I don’t care who you are.”
In terms of prospect rankings, the Torres group ranks higher than the current group. Kotchman, Mathis, McPherson and Wood were each among the game’s top 25 players during his minor league career.
“It was a pretty talented group,” Torres said.
McPherson’s Major League career was derailed by injury. Wood’s career was derailed by fear.
Kotchman played for seven teams in a ten-year career. Mathis played for six teams over 17 years, a career .194 hitter who was cherished for his defensive wizardry.
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Napoli enjoyed the best career of all, especially after the Angels traded him for outfielder Vernon Wells in an ill-advised and ownership-driven move. Napoli was the only one to make an All-Star team.
The 2001 draft class that Torres belonged to wasn’t great. Of the 40 players selected in the first round, 17 never made it to the majors, and another 17 had a career win above replacement under 2.0.
Torres was one of those who never made it to the majors. He was also one of those who was never well after his Tommy John surgery, a reminder that no procedure has a 100% success rate.
When the angels summoned him, Torres said, he threw as much as 90 miles per hour.
After the operation?
“I don’t even know if I’ve seen 93 again,” he said.
The Angels released him in 2006. He spent the next seven years playing for minor league teams in eight states, and winter ball in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
He loves coaching, a second career that might never have happened had he developed into a star.
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“I think what I went through as a player,” he said, “the failures, the injuries, being a top player and all that, and being on the other side, the minor leaguer trying to find his way through .” Through all of this, I felt like I had a lot of experiences and things that I could share and work with players on.
He has stories to share. Napoli linked him to his wife. He and McPherson coached a high school team together one spring in Georgia.
If he ever gets tired of coaching, he has a knack for scouting. In 2009, he played in the California League, for a team that wanted to turn one of their catchers into a pitcher.
“I was his first catching partner,” Torres said. ‘I’ll be older by then and already kind of there. I look at him and say, ‘Hey man, I don’t think you realize how good you are. Next year you might be playing in the big leagues. You’re so good.’ ”
Sure enough, Kenley Jansen was playing in the big leagues the next year.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
