NOV
12
The Angels Past, Present, and Future -- Part 2: First Base
Posted November 12th ago via Yardbarker
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By Jonathan "Angelsjunky" Northrop - Angelswin Columnist Part 2 in my series, surveying the Angels position-by-position, past, present and future. First a note: I am going to expand this into more parts, as each position is ending up being longer than planned. With the blessing of Chuck, this will now be a 12-part series as follows: 1. Introduction and Catcher 2. First Base 3. Second Base 4. Shortstop 5. Third Base 6. Left Field 7. Center Field 8. Right Field 9. DH and the Bench 10. Starting Rotation 11. Bullpen 12. Conclusion I hope to post about two new parts a week. While researching this series, I ran across a wonderful tool on Baseball-Reference.com--a page where the starting players for each position of a team are listed year by year, so you can see who started where and for how long. For your enjoyment and reference, here is the Angels franchise, position-by-position. Over to first base... FIRST BASE HISTORY First base, like catcher, has been a position of relative weakness for the Angels over the course of their history. For the first couple decades the position was filled by mediocrities, until the Angels signed aging superstar Rod Carew in 1979 in what would be the first of three AL West pennants in eight years. Yet the signing of Carew also heralded the beginning of a disturbing, and ultimately unfruitful, trend: signing free agents at the tail end of their peak and hoping that they have enough left to win one for the Cowboy. Rod Carew can be paired with Mo Vaughn as the biggest names to play the position for the Angels. Both are similar in that they came to the Angels in their decline phases and in their 30s: Carew started his career as an Angel at age 33, Vaughn at age 31 (and a warning to those who pray for A-Rod'but more on that in a future installment). Carew: * As an Angel (1979-85): .314/.393/.392 (119 OPS+) in 834 games * As a Twin (1967-78): .334/.393/.448 (137 OPS+) in 1635 games Vaughn: * As an An...

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