The Angels announced that catcher Matt Thaiss has been placed on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to August 24, due to right shoulder inflammation. Fellow catcher Chad Wallach has been selected to the roster as his replacement. To open a 40-man spot for Wallach, right-hander Chris Devenski was reinstated from the injured list and designated for assignment.
Wallach, 31, served as part of the club’s catching duo alongside Thaiss for much of the year. The Angels had originally planned on having Max Stassi and Logan O’Hoppe behind the plate but both ended up spending significant time on the injured list, bumping Thaiss and Wallach to the top of the depth chart. But when O’Hoppe returned from the IL last week, Wallach got designated for assignment, eventually clearing waivers and accepting an outright assignment. With Thaiss now set to miss an undetermined amount of time, Wallach has his roster spot back.
In 58 games for the Halos this season, Wallach struck out in 34.2% of his plate appearances but launched seven home runs. His .209/.279/.403 batting line amounts to a wRC+ of 84, indicating he’s been below average overall, but fairly solid by backup catcher standards. He also produced two Defensive Runs Saved and was just under average in terms of framing. He can be retained for next year via arbitration but is out of options.
Devenski has made 29 relief appearances for the Halos on the season. The veteran has a 5.06 ERA across 33 2/3 innings despite generally solid underlying marks. Devenski has a decent 23.6% strikeout percentage and has walked only 6.4% of opposing hitters. He has kept the ball on the ground and missed bats on a respectable 11.9% of his offerings. Opponents have hit only .244/.295/.394 against him, but he’s had a hard time stranding the runners he does allow to reach base.
The 32-year-old Devenski has bounced around the league following a strong 2016-17 run with the Astros. He owns a 5.38 ERA in 175 2/3 frames between four clubs since the start of the 2018 season. The Halos will put him on waivers in the coming days. If he goes unclaimed, he’d have the right to elect free agency.
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are a cautionary tale of running baseball operations with blinded emotion, instead of good baseball, scouting, drafting and business sense.
It’s really weird how you’re the first person to comment on every angels article just to say something trite that doesn’t even relate the the article. Are you ok?
Old news, dumdum!
Baseball is played with a round ball and a stick also known as a “bat.”
They’ve just been the LA Angels for some time now
Told u guys last week Chad is an Angels company man. He’ll hang around.
Wallach is one of the biggest JOBBERS in the game. Just atrocious. Hard to find a decent backup C these days.
Actually plenty of decent backup catchers , almost every mlb team starts one on an everyday basis. Lol
blind emotion or was the emotion blinded?
also, i think your opinion on this matter is lame.
Yes. Your opinion that doesn’t actually say anything is SO much better. I’m guessing that you didn’t major in communications, right?
Devenski was absolutely lights out early on. This has been one of the weirdest seasons I can ever remember.
Letting him go and keeping squid is insane
Keeping Loup and Velazquez on the roster is asinine.
How loup has stuck so long is baffling. Not to mention the ludicrous deal he got as a FA. Timing is everything
I agree, Velázquez can’t hit, and loup can’t pitch without giving up three runs
You gotta assume Arte is digging up and selling ancient Indian burial grounds in the off-season at this point
It’s because his mom was very sick a good when his numbers went down, she passed away very recently.
Chad and I have known each other for years. I’m not saying I pulled any strings to get him selected, but I’m not saying I didn’t.
Well I guess we all owe you a big thank you then!
Thank you Slider
Can you ask him whatever happened to Max Stassi?
The Angels rely on the hope and pray bullpen approach and it fails every year.
no they dont they alove have a great pen when helathey but 8 delivers 6 MLB relvers 4 good MLB delivers are on il still
They have a great pen when healthy?
Ok… whatever. Their closer has a 1.5 whip. They went into the year not knowing who their late inning options were.
> no they dont they alove have a great pen
> when helathey but 8 delivers 6 MLB
> relvers 4 good MLB delivers are on il still
Stop crack at once.
I think the plan was to give the AA bullpen from last year a couple of months then bring them up.
Unfortunately they all took a step backwards this year.
I’m not saying it was a good plan, but a better one than the “let’s sign a bunch of dudes and see who is decent” plan of usual.
That may have been the plan, but it was a bad plan. If for no other reason than it meant there was a real possibility the pen would blow an abnormally large number of games the early part of the season. And that’s exactly what happened.
Devinski looked really good for about a month there. Then the wheels fell off.
Story of the Angels.
I feel he got overworked by Nevin, who’s always eager to turn every game into a bullpen game. Devenski’s overall numbers are decent; if I remember correctly, he had one or two late blow-up appearances courtesy of the long ball that ballooned his ERA.
You can always find pitchers that pitch well in a small window of time. You throw mud on a wall, some sticks, some doesn’t, and the mud that sticks has a great chance of not sticking for long.
I’ve always talked about building a strong pen and not trying to figure it out on the fly. Sure, you will always have to adapt, but to go into opening day and not having not figured it out, is a recipe for disaster.
I’ve seen it written that this team is flawed and I agree and I believe every team is flawed to some degree in my opinion. I tend to believe that this team is broken more than it is flawed and there are too many repairs than there are resources available to repair it.
Jose Quiada – TJ Surgey. Looked good out of the gates.
Austin Warren – Elbow surgey. Looked good initially.
Max Stassi – Solid catcher. Literally vanished and should have been the starter or back up.
Sam Bachman – Showed promise. Shoulder injury.
Taylor Ward – started getting hot then hit in the face. Gone.
Ben Joyce – Showed promise – Injured shoulder I believe.
Gio Urshella – stabelized the infield and was consistant. Fractured pelvis… really? You have to be an Angel for that type of luck.
Zach Neto – showed promise and brought stability back to the infield after Gio’s absence. Reoccuring injuries.
Chris Rodriguez – Good stuff – out with injuries for the last 2 years?
Anthony Rendon – Great track record until he signed with Angels. Too many injuries to list.
Mike Trout – solid offensive prescence in the line up. Breaks a bone in his hand swinging the bat just when he starts to get hot. Out for 2 months and more?
Jarred Walsh – solid MLB player who literally lost his skills to a bizzar illness, and hasn’t been able to recover. Was supposed to be our starting 1b. Gone.
Shotime Ohtani – Hurts his arm and is likely headed for TJ surgery again.
Drury was out for a while (weeks) but just came back.
Logan O’hoppe just came back after being out for months.
I know that I’ve missed a few here…
I could be wrong but only Renfro, our RF is going to have a full seaon in the field and at the plate (knock on wood).
If the Angels didn’t have bad luck they wouldn’t have any luck at all.
The potential for success was there but this team can’t catch a break or stay on the field. I find it truly unbelievable actually.
Thankgoodness Wallach is still with us otherwise we might have to pick up a player from the local Anaheim Sunday hardball league at the rate we are going.
Oh, and our starting pitchers since the All Star break? What happened there? They’ve regressed also. I guess that could be due to the unreliable defense behind them which is the result of numerous injured starters? I am not speaking about all of the fill in players as some have done well and have held their own.
I read Rhett bollinger’s article today. Now that it’s been a couple days, regarding the whole “But Ohtani never indicated anything was wrong with his elbow until after he exited his start in Game 1 of Wednesday’s doubleheader, Minasian said.”
I still think it’s an assinine excuse. That’s like saying my girlfriend or wife is pouting, bitter, sad, not talking to me, and then I say, well she isn’t indicating anything is wrong to me.
And I don’t know much about racing and racehorses, but I know they’re cautious with injuries. But the horse won’t tell them they’re injured. They have to take the initiative.
If the Angels wanted any chance to sign Ohtani, they had to let a Ohtani be Ohtani.
This injury actually gives the Angels a better chance to sign Ohtani.
That is true and the flip side of the coin. What if Ohtani didn’t care about hurting himself and just wanted the glory of being a starter and hitter.
A July 8 NPR article quoted Ohtani’s old coach “It’s up to the kids, but really, it’s impossible,” Asari says of the two swords style. “Even in America, only Babe Ruth could do it. You’d better not do it. You can get injured.” So he knew the risks.
But I disagree that this gives them a better chance. It changes nothing regarding Trout and Rendon’s contracts. Or if having to play with a bunch of rookies. Sorry but O’Hopppe Neto Schanuel don’t seem superstar. Just the next Ward Walsh and Marsh. If I’m recruiting him I tell him there’s no guarantee trout and Rendon arent injured again next year or the next. And Moreno won’t spend his way to get out of bad contracts like Cohen. And when you do get healthy enough to pitch you won’t have some greenhorn out of Alabama to finish things off. Did you really come to America to hand off your brilliant game to a Sam Bachman or whomever isn’t a proven professional?
Skip, the three you mentioned are not impact players and the only one likely to have an all star type season os O’Hoppe. That said, they should have solid careers.
Money is no issue with Ohtani. It gives them a better chance because there is trust.
The injury. Lets talk the Angel injury policy. From what I gather, if a player says he’s hurt they believe him. They’ve never changed a player to play through something this year. There no Pat Riley on staff. Sam Blum today actually questioned whether Rendon is faking an injury. Can you believe that? And Trout was still obviously hurting. No one told him no. Why have a trainer at this point? The trainer or medical staff is a figurehead.It’s essentially up to the player. If he says he’s hurt he’s hurt. If he says he can play he can play. Adell was smart. He got on the roster and immediately went down w an oblique strain. And the Angels like it cause they can say ‘the reason we lost was cause we had so many injuries” They keep dragging out that stat that it’s been the most 1st basemen in Angel history.
I don’t like Blum. I don’t even follow him on twitter. His takes are really weak, in my opinion.
Rendon is too toxic now. No way will play with him for 3 more years.
Rendon bone was bleeding.
It’s his attitude now not his injuries.
And the severity of his injury still really doesn’t have an impact on his projections over the next few years. Or it makes it worse if he had bleeding.More reason for Ohtani to leave. Before his injury, his power was gone, his range ws limited, and he blamed missing grounders on “bad luck”. And he’s injury prone. So he’s only going to decline the next 3 years. Regardless of attitude or whether he’s a great teammate.
How do you know his attitude?
This is a great listen if you have an hour to kill. Victor Rojas airs his opinion on the Angels without holding back…fantastic. It’s the best commentary I’ve heard on the Angels from a guy who has inside personal knowledge.
sites.libsyn.com/469461/episode-eighteen
Thanks Prov. I almost never go to links, but I trust you.
Thanks. I rarely open links too unless it’s a known source.
You have to tap the breaks on Neto, O’Hoppe, and Schanuel.
Wow, Rojas better not come on this board and say tha5, he’ll be called a fake fa.m.
Good listen. We agree on 80%. The stuff we disagree on, he’s mor3 pessimistic than I am.
He talked about not asking players to do things they can’t do. How many times have I written that, and how many times have I be3n ripped for saying it?
Yeah Rojas did a good job expressing what a lot of us have been saying. I love the text he sent to Arte too.
He was more negative than I was. I disagree with him in places. I want analytics to improve pitchers stuff. It’s up to the pitching coach to utilize the updated tools. The Angels have a disconnect, that’s why Wise needs to go.
But with Schanuel, his bat finds the sweet spot, most of his contact is solid, not good, but sold, and he doesn’t elevate the ball. Don’t screw that up, if you let this guy be who he is, you’ll have a very useful player.
Rojas said it, to sum up, there is a disconnect, and Arte should clean house. I think Perry should go, Rojas does not. But we both agree Arte need to clean house.
.
Thank you for sharing. At roughly 30 minutes in… that is exactly how I feel and I couldnt have said it better.
You’re welcome. I’ve said a lot of the same things, just less succinctly.