figgy at 3rd, send b-wood down for regular ab’s, keep quinny on the bench.
keep izzy as the regular at short, platooning with aybar occasionally (unless izzy cools down and aybar heats up).
throw escobar in the pen, sending o’day (or whichever bee is currently up with the halos) back down to slc.

lackey
weaver
garland
saunders
santana

oliver
speier
sheilds
arredondo
escobar
krod

naps (mathis)
kotch
howie
izzy (sometimes aybar)
figgy
ga
hunter
mathews
vlad starts to dh regularly (he’s been on a tear from that spot) with occasional starts in rf

rivera
quinny
reggie
aybar
mathis

we know the soth will get our bench a reasonable amount of playing time. and, god forbid, we’re prepared in case of another injury.

As far as Soth….I’m pretty much going to second what NoDakHalo is saying above.

I think unfortunately, this is going to be one of the problems that solves themselves…meaning someones going to go back on the DL, which will make some moves a lot easier. I am not HOPING this happens, but you never know. Either way…THIS TEAM IS STACKED.

Escobar in a bullpen role is the most intriguing to me, and it makes sense…although I’d probably want to take my time if I were the Angels and Escobar. Especially since we don’t exactly need him that bad; he would no doubt help, but thats assuming he comes back strong as last year.

...and we can get a half-season of a veteran big stick, to help pull this lot out of their slumber, I think Reagins will be fielding calls rather than making them.

The pitching staff, with the welcome addition of Escobar, looks filthy. The infield picks itself (with the possible exception of SS – personally, I’d go with Aybar for the majority of tthe remaining playing time this year, but he’s got to take it off Mice Tits first). The outfield picks itself, and I’ll take whichever catcher is pretending he can hit best this week.

If the 25-man roster that we expected to start the season stays fit, from here on in, this team will win 95 games. Comfortably.

Seattle can (surely) only improve from here, Oakland will almost certainly go backwards (to a certain degree). Texas might be interesting to watch though. They’re a couple of pitchers away from being a fairly handy team.

Keep the players that have been playing hot, and ease in the players coming back off the DL so not to put too much pressure on them to perform at optimum level. We are not desperate in the case of the Braves, they are a train wreck due to injuries and replacement players playing poorly, so I think this is a sound strategy. Izzy should start every game.

The Braves just lost two in a row to the Cubs including an extra innings game today and then a long trip to LAX from Chicago. They had to use six pitchers in today’s game and they are missing their ace pitcher and closer. The Angels should have no problem at least winning the series against the Braves. Soth should have a good time roster shuffling the next three games while giving all our guys a chance to contribute.

Figgins has already been activated, and Brandon Wood returned to SLC. Correct move, IMHO, as Wood needs at-bats every day.

When Aybar returns, Sean Rodriguez should also go back to SLC. Again, in order to continue his development, he should be playing every day. Coming into 2008, I doubt anyone envisioned him getting recalled before September 1st in any event.

When Escobar returns, things get a bit more dicey. The multitude of injuries required the Halos to increase the 40-man roster to 41 (Escobar doesn’t count against the 40 because he is on the 60-day DL). But once activated, someone from the 40-man has to be jettisoned. Candidates for this ignominious fate include the disgraced Chris Bootcheck as well as various and sundry organizational soldiers, including minor league pitchers Alex Serrano and Jeff Kennard. If one believes that those guys actually serve more of a purpose than Bootcheck (the minor league teams need roster filler, too), then Chris gets the boot. I’m not sure he has any option years left, either, and so it might not be possible to send him down (while cutting Kennard or Serrano, for example). But he probably has more value to a major league team than the minor league guys. DFA Bootcheck, and hope that another team is willing to give up a low-level prospect not on the 40-man in exchange for an experienced MLB arm.

Bottom line is that when Escobar returns, someone must be cut from the 40-man. It makes sense to release a fungible arm, rather than a positional player. Hence, it will be Bootcheck, Kennard or Serrano.

Alright…
1) Sweeney Wood is back down in SLC, Figgy is back at third.
2) SRod goes back to SLC when Aybar comes back. Aybar/Izturis platoon, until Aybar can handle the everyday again.
3) Quinlan, Izturis and Mathis go back to the valuable bench.
4) When Escobar comes back, O’Day goes back to SLC, Bootcheck gets DFA’d.
5) Juan Rivera gets traded for 2 minor league pitchers. (This isn’t related… it just needs to happen)

Lineup becomes…

Figgins 3B
Kendrick 2B
Vladdy RF
Torii CF
Kotchman 1B
Anderson DH
Matthews LF
Napoli C
Aybar SS

Play the defensive wiz behind Judy-no-strikeout and Joe Saunders, insert the better hitter against strikeout artists Lackey and Santana, and flip a coin behind Weaver.

GMJ is waiver-bait. I don’t care if the Angels get a bucket of balls for him, you pull the plug on his contract. He’s not an especially good CF now, and his already bad offense AND defense will decline with age. Worse, he’s blocking Reggie Willits, though you could argue that problem will fix itself after next year, when the Angels kiss Garret Anderson goodbye.

Other than that, I don’t see a lot that the Angels can realistically do. They need some help in the bullpen, but who doesn’t? If the Angels were a piece away from knocking out the Red Sox, I’d say deal Adenhart and Kendry Morales for something or other, but Adenhart has really dropped his stock with his post-callup starts in the minors. The Angels are going to war with the guys they’ve got.

My wife tells the story of how one time she took our dog Hannah to a park nearby the vet’s office after a visit there; as it happens, the park adjoins the farm at Westminster High, and they keep livestock there, cattle in particular. This of course got her hunting instinct up, and she immediately dropped into a crouch and started moving low on the ground as if stalking them. Once she got to the fence separating the rest of the world from the cows, Hannah turned to look at my wife as if to say, “well, you’re big, you’re slow, and you don’t have any teeth to speak of… I guess you’ll do.” That’s kind of how I feel about the Angels relative to the Red Sox these days.