As another disappointing season for both Jered Weaver and the Los Angeles Angels approaches its conclusion, there’s still no answer on whether the three-time All-Star is going to be back in 2017 following the two worst seasons of his career.
Weaver is finishing an 11-season stint with the Angels, the only team he has ever played for, making $20 million in 2016. This will be the second consecutive year of a losing record, something that never happened to him before 2015. His velocity has dropped to the low 80’s and went back up again this season, but is still in the mid 80’s, and maybe the biggest plus from this year has been his durability, so far throwing in 138.1 innings, but overall he seems to be two years removed from his last high quality season.
A three-time All-Star and three-times in the top 5 of the Cy Young voting, Weaver has a 5.02 ERA since the beginning of 2015, after six consecutive years of going below 4.00. His WHIP is just 1.369, he’s striking out only 4.8 batters per nine innings in this time frame, and while strikeouts to walks has never been his strong suit, his 2.27 over the last two years is bad.
For the Angels, unless Weaver takes a massive pay cut, it’s an opportunity to move forward. This is a team that has an enormous payroll and with very few young assets. They didn’t really move towards rebuilding or retooling this season because they’re not that capable of packaging a deal someone wants. Their only real young talent with value is Mike Trout, but the Angels aren’t letting him go.
Ownership has mentioned once or twice that they’re willing to spend money to get back in the race, heading towards what might be their worst season since 1994, going 52-72 through the first 124 games, winning just 41.9% of them. They’ve made the playoffs just once since 2009, and are 14 years removed from their last World Series appearance, winning it all in 2002. Unless they’re willing to spend big and score big in free agency, while upgrading their minor league situation, this could be a long drought of wins, division titles and pennants for the ballclub, unless they decide to move Tourt and be more aggressive in their rebuild.