An Open Letter to Angels Fans

Recently, the grumblings, whinings, and flat out accusations and conspiracy theories over at at our favorite Angels blog have reached an all-time high. The inferiority-complex-driven angst radiating from Halos Heaven has increased several fold over the past week or so with media coverage being devoted to the deaths of Yankee legends Bob Sheppard and George Steinbrenner and Angels fans feeling a little too much self-importance over hosting an All-Star Game that nobody watched. But more on that later. In this letter, I will address several of the absurd claims made by Angels fans at Halos Heaven about media bias, payroll, conspiracies, Steinbrenner, and various other things.

DISCLAIMER: Not all Angels fans at Halos Heaven exhibit all of the following. I am not trying to make assumptions about an entire community based on the actions of a few. That being said, the bitching is pervasive enough that it deserves to be addressed.

1. ALL-STAR SELECTION BIAS

In the days leading up to the All-Star Game, there were a great number of complaints and concerns expressed that Jered Weaver, who LEADS THE LEAGUE IN STRIKEOUTS!!!!1!1!!one!!eleven1!, would not receive an All-Star bid. Weaver, though deserving, did not do well enough in the player voting to make the team, and since the Angels already had a representative in Torii Hunter, AL manager Joe Girardi was not obligated to pick him. Angels fans immediately jumped on this as a case of EAST COAST BIAS. Let's observe Joe's five pitching selections (ignoring the two positional players because there's only a certain number of spots for each position). Two of them (Carmona and Soria) were selected as their team's only representative. Trevor Cahill was certainly deserving as he's pitched excellently so far this season, as has Matt Thornton, who struck out around 12 batters per 9 innings during the first half and was great in relief for the White Sox. The lone spot that could have gone to Weaver was instead given to C.C. Sabathia. While, admittedly, Weaver probably deserved to go more than Sabathia, it would hardly have been "one of the ALL TIME WORST SNUBS" in the history of the All-Star Game.

Luckily for Weaver, Angels fans, and me (because I was tired of the bitching), Joe picked Weaver to replace Cahill, who pitched on Sunday. Weaver also pitched on Sunday, so he was also replaced by Andrew Bailey of the Athletics. The real loser in all of this, though, is Felix Hernandez, who put up a better first half than Weaver according to WAR, but still missed out on the All-Star Game. The reason? Felix threw over 120 pitches on Saturday, so Joe couldn't pick him and replace him immediately like he did with Weaver, nor could Felix actually pitch in the game if he was picked. Joe can't afford to waste a roster spot, though, and it's considered bad form to wear out other teams' pitchers.

Getting back to the Angels, though, this entire debacle was created by the complicated and awkward All-Star selection process. All-Stars are selected three different ways: by fans, through player voting, and by managers. All three of these groups are highly prone to bias - fans will vote for their team's players, players will vote for teammates and guys who are popular, and managers will select their own players, as Charlie Manuel readily admits to doing with Ryan Howard. It's the sort of system which led to the selection of Nick Swisher in the ridiculous "final vote." Swisher, who ranks 16th among all AL positional players in WAR, wasn't a terrible pick, but Kevin Youkilis is 9th and ended up staying home. Still, if you're going to bitch about All-Star selections, send MLB an angry email about the flawed selection system. Unless you've lobbied for a change, you can't complain when the results aren't to your liking.

2. PAYROLL! PAYROLL! PAYROLL!

First, to clear up any misconceptions, here is the 2010 MLB payroll data according to CBS Sports. You'll note that the Angels are one of 8 teams in the MLB with a payroll greater than $100 million. They have the highest payroll in their division, and are spending about $50 million more than the division-leading Texas Rangers. Indeed, according to Forbes, the Angels have spent more than $100 million on payroll for the past 6 years running (including 2010). They have also seen their total revenue and team value rise in each of those years. What does all of this tell us? Well, apart from the fact that the Angels are no $40 million heroes, it certainly seems as if billionaire owner Arte Moreno has subscribed to the spend-money-to-make-money school of sports ownership pioneered by George M. Steinbrenner III, with excellent results. The value of the team has increased almost threefold from the $180 million Moreno purchased the club for in 2003 to over $500 million as of 2009. Critical to the Angels' success? The signing of a lucrative 10 year contract in 2006 with Fox Sports. It appears that Moreno is taking all of the same steps as the Boss, and with similar results as he takes advantage of being a LARGE MARKET TEAM. That's right, Los Angeles is the second-largest city in America, several times larger than Boston, and Moreno knows it. He can thank George for paving the way.

To those who are actually fans of small market teams, I would like to offer an apology that your owner is too tightfisted to recognize what Steinbrenner did and Moreno does - that you have to spend money in order to make it. I'm sorry that your owner treats your team like another stock in his portfolio even though he could probably easily increase his revenue and returns if he was willing to invest in building the team. I'm especially sorry that he turns around and pockets the millions of revenue sharing dollars that he gets instead of putting a quality product on the field. It's unfortunate that he doesn't care about winning as much as you do. Yankees fans haven't had a problem like that for 37 years thanks to an owner who was probably the biggest Yankee fan of all.

3. STEINBRENNER

That last point helps me segue into this next one: disrespectful comments about the late George Steinbrenner. While not all of those over at Halos Heaven felt the need to participate in this particularly ugly behavior, a significant number did, and it caught our attention here at Pinstripe Alley. In life, the Boss never backed down or shied away from criticism, and I doubt that if he were around he would give a rat's ass about what jealous Angels fans said about him, but more importantly, much of your criticism is just factually inaccurate. Ignoring the ridiculous comments about how the Boss' death was all a conspiracy to upstage the Angels' All-Star Game, let's take a look at some of the criticism Steinbrenner faced, mostly in this comment thread:

Steinbrenner ruined baseball. This was a common one, although reasons were rarely given for it. The few reasons given seemed to center around how the Boss recognized the potential of free agency and used it to his advantage. Sorry, but this one doesn't hold up. Steinbrenner played by the same rules as everyone else. He wasn't necessarily the richest owner in baseball, but he wanted to win the most, and that's what free agency lends itself to. Simply having the money is not enough, you have to want to spend it (see the spend money to make money section above). Additionally, $150 million might as well be $50 million if you don't spend it properly (see: the New York Mets).

Since plenty of Pinstripe Alley users jumped in, we also got to see that many Angels fans have never taken a formal logic course. Apparently the best course of action to take when presented with a counterargument is to take your original argument to a greater extreme. In this case, it was argumentum ad Hitlerum, thus fulfilling Godwin's law.

Steinbrenner was a terrible person. This argument is, perhaps, slightly more viable given that Steinbrenner actually did mistreat many of his players and employees, Yogi Berra, Dave Winfield, and Billy Martin included, was banned from baseball, and made illegal contributions to Richard Nixon's re-election campaign. However, Steinbrenner was a changed man after returning from his early 1990s suspension from the game. As the Yankees built from within and created a dynasty, the Boss patched things up with Yogi and Winfield and expressed regret over never being able to do so with Billy Martin. Steinbrenner also gave millions and millions of dollars to charity and made loyalty a core value of the Yankees organization (not that it hasn't always been). Just one of what I'm sure are many stories of his acts of kindness is this one, which I found incredibly moving when I read it today in the paper.

The last thing I'd like to say regarding Steinbrenner's death is one which was also discussed somewhat on Halos Heaven and here during the arguments. This is what was said regarding Nick Adenhart, the young Angels pitcher who passed away in the beginning of the 2009 season. Yankees fans expressed nothing but sympathy and best wishes for Adenhart's family after his death, and while an Angels fan might claim that Adenhart never did any of the bad things which Streinbrenner did, I would say that Steinbrenner did a great deal for baseball and for the communities he supported in Tampa and New York. Both are individuals who deserve to be remembered, and before you disrespect Steinbrenner you should think about how you would feel if others disrespected Adenhart's memory.

4. EAST COAST MEDIA BIAS

It seems like I've spent a lot of time writing about bias, probably because it's what Angels fans at Halos Heaven complain about the most. It always seems like they're the underdogs who can't compete with the huge media markets of New York and Boston despite the fact that Los Angeles is the second-largest TV market in the United States, and is double the size of the Boston TV market (which should even things up, since it supports two teams to Boston's one). So what's the big deal?

The biggest problem here seems to be that the Angels have absolutely no idea how to take advantage of their huge media market. A great factor in this seems to be that Southern Californians just don't care that much about baseball. Sorry, but SoCal is not the "heart and soul of the baseball world," or whatever Angels fans would like you to believe. If it was, their All-Star Game wouldn't have gotten such terrible ratings, even with the time difference. I watched the entire game, including the 40 minutes of bullshit leading up to the first pitch, so don't blame me.

Perhaps Southern California sports fans are too busy for baseball. Between the Lakers and college superpowers such as USC and UCLA it's not hard to see where the Angels might run into stiff competition. I'm guessing that many Hispanics in the area are more interested in soccer than baseball. Maybe Southern Californians don't like sports at all, and all they care about is fashion and the movie industry (if you take the stereotypical view).

Whatever the reason, the Southern California media market, which should be powerful, is not strong enough to draw sufficient attention to please Angels fans. What they fail to realize, however, is that sports networks are businesses which are going to cater to their viewers and show whatever pulls in higher ratings. Obviously, people on the East Coast still spend enough time watching baseball to make it worthwhile for these networks to devote the more of their coverage to East Coast teams. It's not that Southern California doesn't have enough people to attract media coverage. It's that they don't care. It's going to take they type of huge success which the Yankees and Red Sox have had in the past 15 years to catch people's attention. In any case, whatever bias is actually present is probably amplified by your heightened sensitivity and predisposition to cry that you're being discriminated against.

Lastly, and especially regarding the All-Star Game ratings and other associated time zone caused issues (such as players apparently not voting for Angels to go to the All-Star Game because they never see West Coast games): the East Coast would like to collectively apologize for the direction in which the Earth rotates. It is, admittedly, very unfortunate that the Earth does not rotate in the opposite direction so that the East would be the odd ones out who never got any attention from the West Coast. We also apologize for being closer to Europe than you are, and for consequently being colonized earlier and being more populated.

If you want to be part of the largest media market in America, please do as others have suggested and move to New York.

MISCELLANEOUS

Mariano Rivera does not throw a spitball. Glad we could get that one cleared up.

Creating a bunch of posts about how the Rangers are all-but-guaranteed to fall apart and leave the AL West open for the taking doesn't make it true.

The Rally Monkey has been scientifically proven to be the dumbest and most transparent marketing gimmick in the history of the game.

There is absolutely no point in having a rule against using the word "fuck" more than once per month when posters can get away with using it twice in the same comment thread in less than two hours. I know that it can be difficult to count past one, but please do make more of an effort.

Did you know? This post took over two hours to write. It could have more effectively been summarized with this picture: