ANAHEIM -- The Angels have endured a tough stretch after a promising start to the season, as they’ve dropped 15 of their last 19 games after a 9-5 start, including a 13-1 loss to the Tigers on Sunday at Angel Stadium.
Superstar Mike Trout landed on the 10-day injured list on Friday with a bone bruise in his surgically repaired left knee from awkwardly landing on first base on Wednesday in Seattle. So, it’s been rough for the Angels recently, and general manager Perry Minasian met with the media on Friday to discuss several topics.
Here’s what he had to say about several aspects of the club:
When do you expect Trout back?
“It's a bone bruise. No idea. Hopefully, it’s better sooner than later. Timeframe-wise, I have no clue. Until he can start running, that's probably a first threshold. We'll know more once he starts running.”
Who do you see replacing Trout?
“Obviously, baseball is not a one-player game, so we need some other guys to step up. We haven't played well. It's obvious. You go through it, right? It's part of the season. Every team goes through it. I was just looking at it. The Padres lost five in a row. The Braves lost seven in a row. So it happens. Even good teams go through stretches like this, or teams that have been playoff teams in the past. So, for us, it's just getting back to playing good baseball, fundamentally sound baseball. Obviously, having Mike out, it's never fun. We’re a better team with him on the field, but we do feel like we have some guys that can step up and are more than qualified to be productive and help us win games.”
Do you think you need to add another outfielder?
“I'm not going off a month. We’ve seen Taylor [Ward] show streakiness in his past. Hopefully, the bad streak is out, and the good streak is coming. We're gonna roll with what we have. And [Gustavo] Campero has come up. He played well in the games in Seattle. He's played well in the Minor Leagues. As of now, we're going to go with the crew we have.”
How concerning is this recent stretch?
“I think teams go through stretches. Teams go through stretches where they don't swing the bat well. You're gonna have some numbers that aren't flashy, right? You can pick a six-game stretch, 10-game stretch from anybody and point to certain times where they're really struggling, and offensively they haven't scored. When you don't score, that usually means you're not getting on base, and we haven't gotten on base, and we've struck out. But with that being said, we had some productive games early in the season where we swung the bat pretty good. So I'm hoping we can revert back. I'm expecting to revert back to some of the things we did earlier in the year, where we made more productive outs, better at-bats. These guys know that. I mean, the work has been good, the coaching has been good. It's just execution, right?"
What have you thought about the coaching staff’s performance?
“I think there's multiple ways to look at things. When it's your veteran players that have been in the league for a long time, they basically have established themselves in a certain way, and a lot of veteran players have their own hitting coaches. Now, if we had a group of young guys that were all struggling, it would be totally different. But our young guys have actually played better than our veteran players to a certain extent, statistically.”
What’s the level of concern with Ben Joyce’s shoulder?
“Yeah, it’s concerning. We're gonna give him a little more time. He's gonna play catch again, and we'll see where it goes. It's concerning in the sense that he didn't feel great. If he could pitch tomorrow, that would have been awesome. But again, sometimes it takes longer for certain guys. We’ll just go day by day and see where we're at.”
What have you made of the bullpen?
“I think [Ryan] Johnson has thrown the ball well. [Reid] Detmers has thrown the ball well except for the last two nights [Wednesday and Thursday]. So when we've been in close games, and we've had chance to win games the back end of our bullpen has pitched well. The front end hasn't. So the front end needs to definitely be better.”
Do you believe this team can compete this season?
“We take it day by day. We’ll try to win today’s game. We’ll play 162 and see where we’re at in the end.”