Jeff Fletcher has covered the Angels since 2013. Before that, he spent 11 years covering the Giants and A’s and working as a national baseball writer. Jeff is a Hall of Fame voter. In 2015, he was elected chairman of the Los Angeles chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America. And as we learn today, has written a book about Shohei Ohtani called ‘Sho-Time’, which he’ll be soon adding a new chapter to.
Randy Nuñez: Thank you Jeff Fletcher for joining me on Between The Chalk Lines. Obviously we’ll be talking about yourself, your book ‘Sho-Time’, and the Angels. I just wanted to start off with asking: Before you started covering the Angels in 2013, you spent a little over a decade in the Bay Area, covering the Athletics and Giants, how was that, and what got you interested in sports journalism?
Jeff Fletcher: Well it started when I was 14 years old, I didn’t realize there was such a thing as a baseball writer. Around that age I figured out that there were people that got paid to write about baseball, and I really loved baseball so I set my sights on that job.
RN: And how did you get the Bay Area gig?
JF: Well my first job after going to Ohio State was in L.A. covering high school sports, and I finally got the call from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat which is about an hour North of San Francisco, and they were looking for someone to cover the Giants and the A’s. So that was sort of a natural fit since I had been covering some High School and College baseball as well, so they hired me in 1997 for that job, and I had that for about twelve years or so.
RN: How did you transfer from Bay Area to Orange County?
JF: Well, I got laid off from my job around 2008, and I got a new job as the baseball writer for a thing called The Bayhouse which is sort of like The Athletic is today, a subscription site that covered all national sports, did that for about two or three years and they went under. So I was just sort of looking for a job, and the OC Register had an opening in 2013, so it worked out.
RN: Fantastic. So that was just a year after Mike Trout had his ROY and top 3 MVP season. How has it been covering almost the entirety of Mike Trouts’ career?
JF: Yeah, it’s been really great to see most of his career. And as you mentioned, working the Bay Area I got to see Barry Bonds as well. And now I’ve seen all six of Shohei’s seasons, I feel like I’m pretty lucky. I also saw a lot of Albert Pujols, although it wasn’t prime Albert Pujols, those four names are pretty prominent names in the history of baseball, so I feel very lucky to have covered them.
RN: Yeah, definitely. Do you see any similarity between those names? Bonds, Pujols, Trout and Ohtani?
JF: Ahh, not really. They’re all great in different ways. I mean you can if you put Pujols aside because I saw the end of his career, I saw the career milestones; 500th homerun, 600th homerun, that kind of thing, 3000th hit, but I didn’t see all of the great years. But I have seen a lot of MVPs; 4 with Bonds, 3 with Trout and 2 with Ohtani.
RN: That’s a lot of MVPs.
JF: Yeah, they’re all different from Bonds, he was just this amazing offensive force. Obviously he was using steroids at that time so there’s an asterisk by it, but if you look at the numbers around 2001, ’02, ’03, and ’04; if you look it up, his OPS was around 1.500, 1.400. I think one year he had around a .370 batting average and something like an .800 Slugging Percentage, his On-Base Percentage the whole year was over .500. So there’s no comparison from an offensive standpoint. But then Trout is the all-around player with the defense, speed, can hit for average and power; basically the perfect 5-tool player in his MVP seasons, before he started getting hurt. They’re all different from each other.
RN: Speaking of injuries, I know that Bo Porter, the new Angels first base coach has claimed to know Anthony Rendon since he was a teenager, do you think once Anthony comes back healthy in 2024, Porter can get into his head and straighten him out a little bit? I know there’s been some animosity between him and writers, media in general.
JF: Uh, well for starters, Anthony Rendon, it’s just his personality. He’s never liked talking to media.
RN: Okay.
JF: That’s just always the way he’s been, since the day he showed up with the Angels, and with the Nationals, too. As for Bo Porter, I think with Perry Minasian that was part of the equation. They may be hoping he can light a fire under Anthony, help get more out of him, but I don’t think Bo Porter can help him from fouling a ball off of his shin.
RN: No, yeah, that’s 100% fair, I agree with that. And with Bo Porter, there comes Ron Washington who’s an oustanding Manager in his own right. How do you feel about that move, I know that some fans may be worried he’s just a mouthpiece for the Front Office and filling out the lineup they want, and not what Washington wants.
JF: I mean, all Managers are going to do what the Front Office wants, or you’re going to be out of a job. That’s just the reality of things, it’s the reality for all of us with a boss, if you want to keep your job. So the question is, “what happens when there’s a disagreement?” Are they going to talk it over, and come to an agreement? Or are they going to stew over it and one guy’s going to say “I’m not going to give what the other wants.” Because I think with Perry and Wash, they’ve known each other for a while. I think they’ll come to an agreement, “Your guys look good, my guys look good.” Everyone in baseball loves Washington, I started covering him back when he was with the A’s coaching staff in 1997, so I’ve known him for a very long time and nobody ever has a bad thing to say about him, so I certainly think he’s going to help to some degree. The players still have to play, there’s a lot of elements when it comes to that; the pitching still needs some help, it isn’t as good as it was in 2022, so Barry Enright, the new Pitching Coach, and whatever analytics people they have will work on pitching strategies. It all counts for something.
RN: Alright, you mentioned Analytics, the Angels just signed Adam Kolarek, who seems to be an Analytics dream guy. That Lefty specialist who doesn’t throw 90MPH with the Fastball, has that weird arm slot. Is that what they’re looking for (in the FO), be more Analytics driven, and less numbers driven?
JF: I wouldn’t look into that signing too much. He’s just going to be a reliever who’s going to make 0.5% of the salary for the entire team, it doesn’t mean anything more than that we need a bunch of relievers because it’s just basically Carlos Estevez and a whole bunch of guys, some help in the Minors, just need some bodies, especially some Left-handed bodies. Kolarek pitches well, he pitched for the Dodgers and Rays, so if they liked him enough, we probably should. We’ll see how he does.
RN: The other signing the Angels had, infielder Charles Leblanc, he plays second base and third base, is he simply a depth piece, or is there a trade possibly happening on the horizon?
JF: No. We just need guys to play Triple-A. We still have David Fletcher, Luis Rengifo. I didn’t even write about it. I didn’t even tweet about him.
RN: Okay, got it. Not even tweet-worthy. Speaking of the FO, Perry Minasian is going into the final year of the four-year contract that he got when he first joined the Angels. Have you heard about any extension talks for him?
JF: That depends entirely on how well the team does next season. This is a results oriented business. If the team does good, then I think he stays, if not, then he probably won’t. That’s pretty much all there is to it.
RN: So, how good of a team could he possibly put together with a missing Shohei Ohtani; a missing DH and Ace?
JF: I mean, I think that’s up to the players and how well they want to do. Basically they need Trout to be healthy, they need Rendon to contribute, they need Taylor Ward to come back and be what he was before he got hurt, they need to have Sandoval, Detmers, Canning to be healthy and pitch the way they showed they can in 2022. You have Logan O’Hoppe, Zach Neto, Nolan Shanuel, see what they can do when fully healthy over a full season. There’s hope that they can be good players in the spurts that we’ve seen from them. It’s going to be an upward battle for them, but I’d say that they can do well.
RN: I know that the Angels have not been shy to bring Draft Picks up early, I predicted Schanuel would be up next year in 2024, but they called him up in August. Neto, O’Hoppe, Moniak, these are all guys that can help the team with Trout and Rendon move forward. What’re your thoughts in those guys help leading the charge?
JF: I mean, they all look they could be everyday players, we only saw Schanuel for about six weeks, so who knows. Neto certainly looks like a Major League Shorstop defensively, offensively who knows, he’s shown some flashes. I think you just gotta remember you know he was only in College less than a year before his Major League debut, so there’s more time to see what he can do offensively. And O’Hoppe, he only played a quarter of a season and still had over a .700 OPS, if you do the math on that and he plays a full season, he could hit 25 or 30 homeruns? So, I can’t tell you for sure, but they’ve shown the possibility to be pretty good.
RN: So, I know that you’ve talked a little bit about having public HOF ballots on Twitter, and you’re the Chairmain…
JF: Not anymore! I was, but my term is over now.
RN: Okay, so you WERE the Los Angeles BBWAA chapter chairman, will you be sharing your ballot publicly?
JF: I always do, but I wait until the announcements are made. I feel like it’d be better if it were like the Cy Young and MVP awards, where we don’t show our votes until everything is announced, I like that system more than where maybe 50% of the voters for the HOF show who they voted for instead of waiting until afterwards so at the end of January you already sort of know what it’s going to be. But sometimes I do show my ballot beforehand, sometimes not, but I certainly always reveal after the announcement.
RN: Okay, so I have a few “Reddit Mailbag” questions for you, from the Angels community. First off NotGonnaGetCaught asks “Do your spirits get down when you cover a consistently underwhelming team, and how does this impact when writing?”
JF: I wouldn’t say that my spirits get down, because at the end of the day, it’s just my job. I’m not part of the team, they’re not going to give me a World Series ring. But it does get to be tiresome, especially with social media. I don’t know, with the fans, a lot of their frustration at the team, it gets thrown at me, through the team. I guess that’s my fault, I shouldn’t look at Twitter all the time, but the fans, it can get rough when they’re angry all the time.
RN: Edgelord_3000 asking “What do you think about last year’s fiasco with the teams FO “quiet censorship” of beat reporters (i.e. only talking to the manager, removing reporters from daily Angels round tables, etc.) and do you think we’ll see more of the same going forward?”
JF: Ahh, well as for the round table, it only began when they removed one writer, then the other writers left voluntarily, the one writer being Sam Blum.
RN: Yeah, I know who he is, he was very vocal about it (on Twitter)
JF: Yeah, it was a pretty bad move by the Angels, trying to censor him. There was nothing that Sam could’ve said or written to hurt the Angels, more than when the Angels tried to censor Sam. So, that was silly. I think the limitation on talking to players was also silly because even when you’re talking to a coach, the coach isn’t going to rip the guy; he’s going to say “He’s working really hard”, “We think we found the problem” or “X, Y, Z, blah blah blah”, that’s what he’s gonna say. So, um, I think we’re just going to wait and see, maybe they’ll change their minds about it and allow us to talk with the staff again. But it didn’t really hurt the coverage in any significant way; sure, I could’ve gotten maybe more detail on what was wrong with Patrick Sandoval if I could’ve talked to Matt Wise. But instead, I just talked to Patrick Sandoval, I still got plenty to write about. The readers missed out on maybe 2% to 5% on what was going on, it’s not a big deal.
RN: Duckman93 asks “What is the sense or vibe of the team morale around mid-way/late in the season when it’s clear that they’re out of contention?”
JF: I never really sensed any kind of… giving up. Even when it’s clear that they’re out of it, because I think it’s not the way professional athletes work. In a lot of cases, when they’re really out of, when they just have young guys who want to prove themselves, they’re never really just going to give up, because they’re trying to make themselves comfortable at the big leagues and be successful, so they can have jobs next year in the big leagues etc. etc. they just always are trying their best, because that’s the way it works. So I don’t think they ever really give up.
RN: Finally, there’s Complexity_Inc5593 who asks “Will there be a sequel to ‘Sho-time’? I still get the chills whenever I re-read it and now Ohtani had a better season. I want to know all the inside stories, pleaseeee” that’s with four ‘e’s at the end, so they really want to know everything.
JF: So there was a paperback version that just came out with an extra chapter covering the 2022 season and the WBC for Shohei, so that’s as much as the English version of the book has been updated. Right now we’re working on the Japanese version, which will cover his 2023 season and Free Agency, so I’m still waiting to write that last chapter, we’ll see where he lands. But that will only be in Japanese.
RN: Speaking of Ohtani’s Free Agency, does it feel like there’s even a chance he’ll come back to Anaheim?
JF: Yeah, you know, I get asked this question all the time, but I think there’s about a 30% chance that he re-signs with the Angels, because there are three main factors with players. One is winning, two is comfort, and three is money. Obviously, money is going to be one of them for Shohei, so it comes down to the other two factors. If it comes down to comfort, then the Angels have done exactly everything that Shohei wants over the last six years, his entire career. He plays when he wants, or doesn’t play when he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t talk to the media if he doesn’t have to (the last time he spoke with reporters was August 9th). Another team can say that he’ll get the same treatment, but he doesn’t really know if he will. He doesn’t know the media market, what happens if he goes through a slump or anything, but he knows what to expect if he stays with the Angels. So I think that the Angels have to show him that they’re going to win, they can win with guys like Neto, Schanuel, Moniak, then I think he’ll come back.
RN: If he doesn’t come back to Anaheim, would you be surprised if he went to the Giants? I have them as his landing spot over the Dodgers.
JF: Um, yeah. I think they have a shot over the Dodgers. I was thinking Dodgers and Mariners, but with Seattle saying they can’t financially afford him, I’m not sure anymore. The Cubs seem like a contender, now. Outside of the two LA teams, I guess the Giants have a chance, but they’ve had like one good season in the last seven years. But if comes down to winning, then the Dodgers are his best bet, they’re going to be good and go to the playoffs almost every year. Dodgers, Cubs, Astros; if he just wants to win, then those are the three teams right now, and I just can’t see him joining the Astros.
RN: Well, I think the readers will like the 30% that you’re giving them, better than no chance at all.
JF: For those who think there’s no chance of Ohtani returning to the Angels, they haven’t been paying attention to the last six years. He has this bubble around him here in Anaheim that most other teams can’t provide.
RN: Well, thank you for talking with me, Jeff, it’s been great having you answer some questions!
(This article was edited 12/3/23)