Call-Ups: Los Angeles Angels and Mark Trumbo
By Wally Fish
Once again it is collaborative post time here on Call to the Pen. This month’s topic is September call-ups. To get the ball rolling, I posed the following question to each of our Lead Writers, “Which player do you want your team to call-up in September and why?” It is a simple question but I think you will find the responses to be very diverse.
Taking the path less traveled this month, I decided to post each team’s write-up individually instead of grouping them by league or division as we have done in the past.
Representing the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Halo Hangout is the site’s Lead Writer, Nate Proctor. Check out what he has to say after the jump.
Nate’s Take:
The question of who the Angels should call up come September has almost already been answered by the Angels themselves. With the call-up of Peter Bourjos, the Angels addressed one of the biggest glaring weakness – that is, their OF defense – and started giving Major League ABs to another highly touted prospect in their organization. Another top prospect, this time pitcher Michael Kohn, was called up back in July to help shore up a bullpen that is currently ranked 7th in the AL in FIP.
With the movement of someone like Kendrick, or the acceptance that the Angels are out of the race for the AL West, someone like Freddy Sandoval would be a nice call-up. As someone that has played all infield positions with the exception of SS, Sandoval could potentially be penciled into any of the three spots to give vets a rest, and to see if he can also outperform them in what would admittedly be a small number of ABs. Sandoval has had what can only be described as a sip of coffee at the Major League level, amassing 17 ABs in 2008 and 2009. Looking at his minor league stats, though, he’s posted a 0.294/.370/.437 line in almost 2,600 PA at five different levels, and his 0.305/.392/.468 line at AA and 0.313/.374/.472 in AAA are both nice to see. I don’t know if the Angels would ever be in the positions they have been with Dallas McPherson and Brandon Wood, letting proven, productive vets go in favor of a touted prospect in their system because they had such high potential, but it would still be nice to see Sandoval face some pitching at this level and find out if he could have some success up here. It’s hard to imagine, after six years on the farm, that he has anything left to prove there. Sandoval, however, continues to recover from an elbow strain that has kept him out of action since May 4th. He is currently on a rehab assignment and the likelihood of a call-up seems to be minuscule at best.
Salt Lake Bees’ 1B Mark Trumbo is the only other name on the Angels farm system that jumps out at me as someone I’d like to see come up this season. With just over 3,000 PA in the minors, Trumbo’s 0.275/.329/.473 line is not as nice as Sandoval’s, but Trumbo has shown more power through his minor league career, culminating with 34 HR in 572 PA at Triple-A Salt Lake this season. Trumbo is mostly a 1B, though he’s also played a little RF, and could spend some time both giving Hunter a break in RF or showing us what his bat can do in the Majors at DH. Trumbo doesn’t walk a ton and K’s about a fifth of the time, but at least we can say that his success this season isn’t tied to an absurdly high BABIP, since it sits at only 0.331 so far. With that said, it’s likely some amount of his success is due to a better offensive environment in AAA, given that he’s posting career highs in AVG, OBP, SLG, ISO, and even BB%.
Still, a call-up in September gives the Angels a chance to see what he can do with some Major League pitching, and it’s not going to hurt a team that has been out of the race for months. I don’t know if you can really call it a win-win situation. He’s not going to do enough to get the team into contention and with the small amount of ABs it’d be hard to say for certain that anything he does with the Angels would be what we could expect from him in 2011. But given that he has yet to see a pitch in the Majors and does still have some potential, it’s at least not a lose-lose situation. With little left to play for at this point, it’s time to see what Trumbo can do.