Angels Not Interested in Matt Holliday

After numerous writers and bloggers speculated that Matt Holliday could be a good fit with the Los Angeles Angels, Bill Shaikin of the LA Times reported that Angels owner Arte Moreno said that the organization isn't interested in pursuing the veteran outfielder.

As far as I can tell, Moreno's comment makes a lot more sense than those of the writers and bloggers of the baseball world. Certainly, the Angels could use a cornerstone position player to replace Vladimir Guerrero, but it's pretty questionable if Holliday is capable of being that kind of player in the AL.

After struggling in his tenure with the Oakland Athletics in the first half of 2009, many speculated that the issues were because of the change in ballpark, as Coors Field is a hitter's park and the Coliseum in Oakland is a well-known pitcher's park. But this was hardly reflected in what Holliday did in Oakland:

Home: .286/.383/.494
Road: .287/.373/.416

Rather than struggling in Oakland, he was actually much more productive at home, and his biggest issue was a lack of power production away from home. As far as I can tell, the problem wasn't the change in ballpark, but rather the change in leagues. Obviously, it's established that the AL is more competitive than the NL, but the impact that the change in leagues had in Holliday was fairly substantial.

Routinely one of the best fastball hitters in the NL, when he moved to the AL, his numbers against fastballs plummeted. After posting wFB/C (the number of runs above or below average that a player offers against a given pitch, per 100 pitches) marks of 1.17, 1.37 and 2.00 in 2006-2008, the mark dropped down to 0.18 with Oakland, before skyrocketing back up to 2.45 in his time in St. Louis.

I know that the sample size is small, only 400 plate appearances, but given how radically different Holliday's production was in Oakland compared to what he did in Colorado and St. Louis, it seems that spending huge money on this guy to expect him to thrive in the AL West would be misguided. I'm just not really sure if Holliday is capable of being an impact hitter worth giving $15M+ per season in the American League, and if he's looking for at least five years on a deal, then to me that just seems like a risk not worth making.