Developed Team 2011: Anaheim Angels of Anaheim

Interestingly enough, the next team on the Yankees' AL West road trip is the We Hate Playing In the O.C. Angels of Anaheim. Interestingly enough, the next time the Yankees come to Anaheim: September 11th. Hey, the Yankees have to play somewhere on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, why not sunny southern California?

What do we always start with? That's right, a whopping 12 members of this 25-man squad I've selected are still currently with the team (or would be, discounting DL stints). The Angels do seem like a team that has a near constant stream of talent coming through the pipeline, which is why they usually don't make too much of a splash on the Free Agent market. Not a lot of big power hitters (incidentally, their biggest (and most injured) slugger is one of those pesky, hard-to-classify, foreign-type players), which is why they're also near the bottom of the league in slugging percentage as well.

They also have a shortage of developed outfielders, which is why two of the four they're carrying (Jim Edmonds and Garret Anderson) have announced their retirements prior to 2011. As you've (hopefully) seen in my most recent entry on the New York Yankees, I've decided to discount certain retirements/unsigned statuses (Troy Glaus), and injuries (Kendry(s) Morales) in the interest of fielding the coolest and best team possible.

The two active outfielders on the team have that power-outage problem I mentioned before, but they bring plenty of speed to the table. They'll join Erick Aybar as the main table setters, hoping for plenty of line drive base hits from contact hitters Howie Kendrick and Alberto Callaspo, cuz the only legitimate home run threat NOT on the 1000 day DL is Mike Napoli.

The top of their rotation is made up of two solid pitchers still with the team: Jered Weaver (currently anchoring my Fantasy team) and Ervin Santana. The next two in the rotation have since been traded to be starters on other team. And the last has recently become a starter after spending some time as a reliever. Five solid starters, but not much depth after that.

The bullpen has plenty of depth, with three pitchers of closer-quality. The rest of the bullpen has some questionable characters in it - some because of ability in addition to injuries and circumstance - but it's quantity over quality for this team. Interestingly enough, one of the only key players to not have spent a significant time on the Angels during their actual careers is one of those closer-types: former closer Bobby Jenks.

Jenks also serves as a cautionary tale about using the player evaluation system of a videogame. When I re-created this developed team on MLB 11 The Show, the game had Bobby Jenks ranked above all the starters on the team, including Jered Weaver and John Lackey. How can a guy who'll give you 70 innings with a 3.51 ERA is better to have than a guy who'll give you 218 innings with a 3.98 ERA? Sometimes games are weird.

Overall, this team has some pretty solid arms and a bullpen that will protect a lot of leads, but the offense (much like their offense from much of the mid-2000s) will have to rely on scrappy base hits and smart baserunning more than big time power to score runs. I could run a 162 game simulation with them, but it would be on a system with some questionable evaluatory and presentational quirks. I'll just stick to imagination and move on to my next team on the list. [But likely only after I return from my week-long venture to E3...]