ANAHEIM – Partly because Major League Baseball mandates having every team represented, partly because a number of players bow out because of injuries and partly because the rosters are just expansive, there were 78 players selected as All-Stars in 2013.
Six professional baseball teams had at least three of those 78 on their rosters for significant portions of the 2010 season.
They were the Tigers, Red Sox, Giants, Blue Jays and Twins — and the Cedar Rapids Kernels, the Angels’ Low-A affiliate in the Midwest League.
That’s how good the Angels’ minor league system used to be, not all that long ago.
Three seasons later, they’re typically considered one of the five weakest systems in the game. The only Angels minor leaguer to make multiple top-100 prospect lists this year was third baseman Kaleb Cowart, 21, and he hit .221 with six homers in a full season of Double-A ball.
How did things get so bad so fast?
THE KERNELS
Bill Mosiello was the Cedar Rapids manager in 2010.
Now an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at TCU, Mosiello earned his coaching chops at Cal State Fullerton and Tennessee in the 1990s, where he mentored eventual first-round picks Phil Nevin and Todd Helton.
He knew right away the kind of talent he was in charge of in Iowa.
“When we broke spring training, I knew how blessed I was,” Mosiello said by phone recently. “Actually, I was a little upset because I thought they should be better regarded around the game.”
Mosiello’s opening-day leadoff hitter was an 18-year-old kid named Mike Trout. His No. 3 hitter was Jean Segura, a toolsy Dominican shortstop who had just turned 20.
Garrett Richards, Patrick Corbin and Tyler Skaggs made up three-fifths of his rotation. A 6-foot-9 fireballer named Johnny Hellweg was the closer, and two more players who already have made the majors were his set-up men.
“That was a really special team,” said Buddy Boshers, one of the set-up men and now a left-handed specialist for the Angels. “If we would’ve kept our opening-day roster together, I honestly think we would’ve run away with the Midwest title.”
They didn’t. Mosiello’s squad won the first-half title with a 43-25 record but slipped some nearing the season’s end, after Trout and Richards were promoted to High-A.
“I don’t think any of us knew how good we really were,” Richards said. “That was our first level of real baseball, for the most part. But we had a bunch of guys that wanted to get to the big leagues quick, and they did.”
Most of them didn’t get there with the Angels. Corbin and Skaggs were traded to Arizona on July 25 in a surprise deal for veteran right-hander Dan Haren.
“I just looked and said, ‘This is going to come back and bite us,’” Mosiello said. “The bottom line with the big league struggles is that their pitching is inconsistent.”
Almost exactly two years later, Segura, Hellweg and promising pitcher Ariel Pena were sent to Milwaukee for two months of Zack Greinke.
Corbin and Segura were among baseball’s best first-half performers in 2013, earning All-Star selections. Skaggs and Hellweg have struggled some in 19 major league starts between them but remain top prospects pegged for their new teams’ rotations in 2014 and beyond.
AGE ISSUES
The Angels’ top three minor league affiliates all made their leagues’ championship series this season, prompting some speculation that maybe the situation wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
But the affiliates’ success is deceiving, because they generally are older than their competition. And age is everything in the minors.
The Low-A Burlington Bees’ roster was an average of 0.7 of a year older, per player, this season than in 2010. The High-A Inland Empire 66ers and Double-A Arkansas Travelers were both 0.8 of a year older in 2013, and the Triple-A Salt Lake Bees were a full 1.1 years older — and older than four major league team’s opening-day rosters this season.
There are some young talents in the Angels’ system, including Cowart, Double-A slugger Randal Grichuk and Double-A pitcher Mark Sappington, all 22 or younger, but many of the players who led the affiliates to the playoffs were over-aged non-prospects.
THE FUTURE
The St. Louis Cardinals got the Angels’ 19th pick in the 2012 draft when Albert Pujols agreed to come to Anaheim in December 2011.
With that selection, the Cardinals took Texas A&M right-hander Michael Wacha, who came one out from a no-hitter Tuesday night. He has a 2.78 ERA in 642/3major league innings this season.
The Angels have lost out on a number of Wacha-like prospects because of their free-agent spending in recent seasons, and the years they ignored the international pool hurt, too.
General Manager Jerry Dipoto and assistant general manager Scott Servais appear to have turned things around, but the system needs two or three more years of consistent replenishing before it can even sniff baseball’s top tier of affiliate talent.
Getting back to a middle tier might be within reach in the next year.
“It’s been blown a little out of proportion that we don’t have anybody in the system,” said Sappington, a talented right-hander who spent time at High-A and Double-A this season. “Maybe we don’t have the most prospects, by that name, but what does prospects even mean? It means you haven’t done anything yet. We have a lot of guys with a lot of talent that are going to surprise some people.”
Surprise might be the right word.
ANGELS TOP PROSPECTS
1. Second baseman Taylor Lindsey — Smoked 17 homers as a 21-year-old in Double-A this season and can hit to all fields.
2. Third baseman Kaleb Cowart — Lots of tools and still young but hasn’t put them together at an advanced level.
3. Right-hander Mark Sappington — 6-5 and projectable, Sappington has a nice sinking fastball/slider mix.
4. Outfielder Randal Grichuk — A week younger than Mike Trout, Grichuk isn’t as talented but might have as much power.
5. First baseman C.J. Cron — A bloodlines type who scouts love, Cron hasn’t done anything particularly well in professional ball, but power potential is there.
6. Right-hander Michael Morin — Solid college closer with best chance on this list of playing for the Angels in 2014.
7. Left-hander Nick Maronde — Already pitched parts of two seasons for Angels but still very wild at times. Can he be a starter or just a reliever?
8. Second baseman Alex Yarbrough — He’s blocked by Lindsey and has very little plate discipline but hit .317 in High-A this season.
9. Outfielder Zach Borenstein — A quick-swinging left-handed hitter, he’s one of the few 25-homer prospects in the system.
10. Right-hander R.J. Alvarez — He’s a hard-throwing strikeout machine who should start 2014 in Double-A and advance quickly.
Names to watch: LHP Hunter Green, SS Jose Rondon, SS Eric Stamets
Contact the writer: pmoura@ocregister.com
