Halos Heaven

Someone had to take the fall for the first losing season since 2003 and that man would be Eddie Bane. The Angels fired their scouting director with a few days left in the season. Was it the underwhelming 2010 draft? Was it the failure of Brandon Wood? Was it the end of an appetite for high-risk, high-reward high-schoolers? Was it the other shoe dropping from the Clay Daniels escapade of 2009, an underpublicized scandal of allegations of skimming by team representatives in Latin America? Was it something else? Was it all of the above?

While the taint of insubordination befouled his predecessor Donny Rowland, a man who had mutinied against Bill Stoneman only to be shown the door, Eddie Bane's departure remains a fog of conjecture amidst swirling speculation... He drafted Jered Weaver and signed Kendry Morales. But after the failure of a superstar to develop out of Kotchman, McPherson and then Wood ... well, major league scout Dale Sutherland and trainer Ned Bergert were also shown the door, so the confluence of bad decisions coming home to roost in a lousy season that had no backup plan led to Eddie Bane's contract unrenewed. He latched on with Detroit in less than a month. The man who signed Mike Trout is a Tiger and we're all just left wondering whether this means that college graduates are now welcome in Anaheim's June draft.