Angels Countdown to Spring - 19 Days

By Jay Sheehy

Heading into the off-season the Los Angeles Angels had one thing on their mind: Acquire front line starting pitcher. Spoiler alert: It didn’t happen. No Gerrit Cole. No Stephen Strasburg. No Zack Wheeler. Hell, no Hyun-Jin Ryu, Dallas Keuchel, or Madison Bumgarner. Instead, the Angels blew their load on all-world third baseman, Anthony Rendon. As for starting pitching, where they didn’t have a single pitcher start twenty games, the Angels traded for Dylan Bundy and signed Julio Teheran to a one-year deal. As it stands right now, the Julio Teheran signing seems to be underappreciated.

Reason #19: Julio Teheran was 19% better than league average in 2019 (119 ERA+)

Okay, I’ll admit I’m sort of cherry-picking a stat here, but it’s a solid stat. No, it doesn’t take into account some of the finer points of Sabermetrics, nor does it expose that Teheran got incredibly lucky in 2019, but it does show that he is a solid, above-average major league pitcher. He has a career ERA+ of 110…so it’s not as if he went above and beyond a normal season. While he may never have turned out as the ace that many baseball pundits predicted, Teheran is a gamer through and through, and despite not necessarily being “the guy,” a team could do far worse than handing him the ball every fifth day. AND he will take the ball EVERY FIFTH DAY.

Which alone might be the reason he is the X-factor for the Angels 2020 season. Trevor Cahill was the only pitcher on the 2019 to squad to eclipse a hundred innings pitched. Trevor Cahill of the 5.98 ERA. Is Teheran a solid runner-up prize to missing out on Gerrit Cole? Maybe not. Maybe no one is. Yet, the Angels rotation was not one guy away from being legitimate. The case could be made that it was four or five guys away. Now, Shohei Ohtani will be one of those guys in 2020; So will a healthy Andrew Heaney. The optimist in me believes that Griffin Canning can be penciled in as well. But that would still leave the Angels two (or three, depending on how much Ohtani pitches…so three) pitchers away. Enter Dylan Bundy and the likelihood he’ll be near league average in 2020 (Baltimore makes everyone worse).

More importantly, enter Julio Teheran. Enter 30+ starts. Enter 180+ innings. Enter a guy who has been on a contending team and pitched in the playoffs (though not very well…but that’s something to worry about when we get there). Even if Julio Teheran isn’t 19% better than league average in 2020, according to ERA+, it doesn’t mean that he won’t be a valuable member of the Angels staff. Just being Julio Teheran will be enough: the starts, the innings, the predictability. Remember, Tyler Skaggs (R.I.P.) was the only Angels starter with an ERA+ over 100 last season. Julio Teheran will be one of a handful in 2020.