OXON HILL, Md. _ From Game 162 until the morning pitchers and catchers must report to Tempe Diablo Stadium for spring training in early February, the Angels' off-season will span more than four months. Most of those days will be filled with inaction.
But the ethos of the annual winter meetings runs counter to that. The four days of forced interactions, holed up in a cavernous 2,000-room hotel and convention center, are supposed to induce action. And for a few teams this year, they did exactly that.
For the Angels, they did not, though General Manager Billy Eppler insisted that he was pleased with what he and his employees accomplished.
"Things are becoming more evident for what we might be able to do," Eppler said as he exited the hotel and headed home. "We're making progress."
The Angels continue to pursue a starting second baseman, a reserve outfielder and pitching depth. Sooner than later, they are expected to do something in at least one of those areas. On Thursday morning, they did make one move, sort of. They selected pitcher Justin Haley in the Rule 5 draft and immediately traded him to San Diego for cash.
Haley, 25, had a nice 2016 season that extended into the Dominican Winter League, but the Angels drafted him to trade him. San Diego did not keep him either; he went to Minnesota in a subsequent trade.
In the triple-A portion of the Rule 5 draft, the Angels selected three players and lost four. The organization's new minor leaguers are infielder Matt Williams, formerly with St. Louis; left-hander Adrian Almeida, formerly of the New York Mets; and catcher Mario Sanjur, who came from Detroit.
They ceded catcher Anthony Bemboom to the Mets, right-hander Harrison Cooney to Boston, and infielder Alex Yarbrough and outfielder Cal Towey to Miami. Yarbrough was once one of the team's prospects, but none of the minor leaguers the Angels lost produced much in 2016.
That was the Angels' day. That was the Angels' winter meetings. It will not be their entire off-season, though talent evaluators around the league continue to opine that they must make drastic improvements to make 2017 different from 2016.
Two months remain until pitchers and catchers report. This week was the halfway point.
