LUNCH: Ten Random Facts and/or Observations
by Rev Halofan on Jun 24, 2009 11:30 AM PDT
in Pregame
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Print- The Rockies are as good a team as we have faced. They have to be the NL Wild Card favorites with an outside chance to clip the Brooklyn Landgrabbers and that would be awesome, especially for Jim Tracy.
- The chances of Kelvim Escobar throwing another pitch this season is down to near zero. The Angels have had terrible luck with contract extensions.
- I gave up on Chone Figgins in 2007 and ate my words and am again preparing a verbiage souffle on which to dine.
- Vlad's haircut looked great but Sean O'Sullivan's deprived him of almost all possible lookalike banter on the game thread.
- If Erick Aybar is sent down to the minors or substantially benched, he has zero trade value this year and next. Zero. His presence in the lineup is a high-stakes poker game in order to assure a trade partner that he is actually a major leaguer, and Soth/Ninja is playing with the season as if it were a spare chip.
- I am going to be the in-studio guest of The Drive with Jeff Biggs tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon from 5-7 PM on KLAA, AM 830. The station internet streams everything but the games.
- The only Salt Lake Bee who has as many strikeouts as Innings Pitched is Jeremy Hill, a journeyman who played in Mexico last year and who will turn 32 in August... sounds like a 2009 Angel for sure!
- Torii Hunter, Jered Weaver and Brian Fuentes are slam-dunk All Star candidates, but watch Joe Maddon pick Figgy.
- Bobby Abreu carried the offense in April, Torii in May and now it has been Juan Rivera in June. Wood in September and Vlad in October would be nice!
- The Jeff Mathis jerseys from Tuesday's giveaway are already on e-Bay.
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We should wait him
Vlad chopped off the rattlesnakes, so the he’s down to 230 lbs.
RIP Nick Adenhart 4/9/09
by vlad IS my man on Jun 24, 2009 12:36 PM PDT reply actions
on Rivera
Could never figure out why he sat on the bench while Junior and Willits went nowhere.
Even the MLB Network team wondered how a guy with the dream swing could miss so many games.
Let’s hope Mike has caught on. JR is a star. Play him every day, and the Angels win it all.
Go Mizzou.
More like, the poor children
“Dad, why the hell did they give me a Mathis jersey?”
Get Aybar off this team. Now.
4) o'sullivan needed the buzz he had that awkward male pattern...
baldness going on. vlad shaved his head because he promised his mom he would cut his long hair before his upcoming 45th birthday.
5) play aybar, it increases his trade value. teams will know what they get with him. a .290 hitter w/speed, an acrobatic ss and a future mental patient.
6) the rev rocks on the biggs show, great listen
7) hill could be this years donnelly/weber
10) if you can’t find the mathis jersey under “jeff mathis” on ebay search under “angels dishrag”
The Jeff Mathis giveaway jersey is already on Roger!
It is two sizes too big. He could not wait to grow into it!
Why so rough on Aybar?
Seriously, what do we expect from a shortstop? The new edition of John Dewan’s Fielding Bible would have given Aybar the AL Gold Glove at short last year, his rookie season. The average AL shortstop has a .704 OPS and the average AL nine-hole hitter has a .634 OPS. Aybar is at .692 right now. He’s not a burden relative to his position or his spot in the lineup, he costs nothing, he plays a good shortstop, and he has some wheels for good measure.
Given the number of teams looking for help at shortstop, I would say that Aybar actually has a high trade value right now. But I still think he’s worth hanging on to. He’s younger and better than Izturis and under team control longer. And he’s not blocking Brandon Wood. Wood isn’t a major league shortstop, he’s a third baseman. I think people are just mad at Aybar over the botched suicide squeeze in last year’s ALDS, but I blame the guy who called for the play in the first place.
by Suboptimal on Jun 24, 2009 2:21 PM PDT reply actions 1 recs
Great post, but minor disagreement on one point Sub ...
I think Dick Wood could be a very good ML shortstop. If you play the position well all your life, then do it again at AAA and in a major-league cameo last year, surely you will be pretty solid SS.
What is not to like about Brandon Wood at SS? It’s not like your forget how to play the position. Ffs I am well into my forties but I remember how to play the position. Can I anymore? Can I f—-. But Brandon Wood is 24 and I am not.
Aybar is great trade bait … right now!
Don't call me Desmond
by highlandhalo on Jun 24, 2009 2:55 PM PDT up reply actions
I think I've made this argument ad-nauseam
But when players like Wood hits their late 20s, they are expected to fill out and lose some of their athleticism.
Therefore, to play him in the infield, you slide him over to third base.
Cal Ripken Jr. and A-Rod types are the exception to the rule.
Or is Kendry perhaps the one who needs to sit?
Or, you use the Yankee Rule Exception of All-Time: Jeter.
Ignore the ever-diminishing range and shaky glove. Lean heavily on his consistent offense, and hye the shit out of him.
We don't have a Bullpen. We have a Cowpen. Before we get to call it a Bullpen these guys gotta grow a pair.
Sure you do. Jump up and down full of excitement until you have to "P".
We don't have a Bullpen. We have a Cowpen. Before we get to call it a Bullpen these guys gotta grow a pair.
I don't have to jump up and down for very long for that to happen.
.... as sexy as socks on a rooster.
Still a darn good point Zu
Don't call me Desmond
by highlandhalo on Jun 24, 2009 3:22 PM PDT up reply actions
Not as much as they care about BEING A YANKEE OR A RED SOX
So you got Fuentes because he has 20 saves, a 4.07 ERA and a 1.36 WHIP, or Papelbon because he is a Red Sox, he is a Red Sox, and he is a Red Sox.
We don't have a Bullpen. We have a Cowpen. Before we get to call it a Bullpen these guys gotta grow a pair.
by Stirrups on Jun 24, 2009 5:33 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
I certainly was not in that bunch. Ever.
I love this team.
by Downing Rules on Jun 24, 2009 5:38 PM PDT up reply actions
I meant a teeny-tiny miniscule sorry, in that IHATETHEEFFINYANKEESSOMUCH way.
Now I just feel sorry for the Yankees, but not very much.
.... as sexy as socks on a rooster.
1986 scarred me for life regarding Boston...
I love this team.
by Downing Rules on Jun 24, 2009 5:41 PM PDT up reply actions
I have some mid-term memory loss
from meds* I was on and I don’t remember that season very well. Some chunks of memory from the mid 80s through 2005 are just gone.
I do remember the playoffs in 1979. I was at game 3, the one we won.
- Interferon and Ribavirin are not nice drugs.
.... as sexy as socks on a rooster.
??
When was that? Certainly nothing since the Pleistocene…
We don't have a Bullpen. We have a Cowpen. Before we get to call it a Bullpen these guys gotta grow a pair.
I'm not quite that old.
Sometime prior to 2004, but after 2002. That would make it about 20 minutes in 2003 for the Redsox.
The Yankees, in that sad ugly puppy at the pound kind of way, I think that was in 2004.
.... as sexy as socks on a rooster.
If the public voted for pitchers, that might make a difference.
The public doesn’t vote for pitchers. The players do. The players don’t generally vote in guys like that unless he’s leading the league by more than two. Joe Borrowski did not make the All-Star Team despite leading the league in saves.
Fuentes has been way better in June, and he’s doing what we need him to do. His ERA has dropped a lot, and that’s good. But I don’t think he’s a slam dunk at this point.
~Till the Halo burns out...
3) Eating crow on Figgy is so last week, even the MSM have gotten around to it.
8) The only way Figgins doesn’t deserve to be an All Star is if ARod somehow gets voted in and Longoria has to be the sub. Otherwise, what, Scott Rolen? Mark DeRosa? Michael Young? Naaaaah, it’s gotta be Figgins.
7) Jeremy Hill = Jason Bulger
6) Good luck on the show tomorrow.
Saving countless runs with my defense.
Where the hell were you all this time?
I saw your Open Letter to Chone Figgins, but honestly, man … (see sig)
Don't call me Desmond
by highlandhalo on Jun 24, 2009 3:23 PM PDT up reply actions
That’s from 9 days ago, so I didn’t wait that long. Figgy was still scuffling pretty bad into mid-May. I didn’t want to overreact to three weeks, so I waited four weeks before overreacting :)
Saving countless runs with my defense.
by Sam Miller OCR on Jun 24, 2009 3:34 PM PDT up reply actions
And per #9, I think there's as much of a case for Figgins...
…carrying the team in June as Rivera. Both deserve the laurels. In June:
Figgins: 18 runs, 9 RBIs, 1.019 OPS
Rivera: 10 runs, 19 RBIs, .985 OPS
The Rockies are hot, not "as good a team as we have faced."
They’ve been playing really well for the past 3 weeks, and props to them for that, but they don’t have the pitching depth of some other teams we have faced (e.g. The Sawx) or the top-to-bottom lineup of some other teams (e.g. The Yanks w/ARoid). They’re obviously not going to keep up an .850 pace for the rest of the season. While I’d love to see them chase down the Dodgers, I don’t see it happening — they got off to too slow a start.
Furthermore
The Rocks are no way the favorites for the NL Wild Card — how could they be when they’re not even currently in the lead for that playoff slot now? That particular honor, shockingly, goes to the San Francisco Giants — remember them, the team the Angels swept on the road not so long ago?
Witty .sig goes here.
Though there are such things as trends...
…and strength of schedule. Both point to Colorado overtaking the Giants soon.
I think this is a fair surrogate metric for the above.
Given all that you know about both teams, would you really say that the Giants are favored for the WC? Even given their pitching, I think they’ve overperformed.
I think the WC is more likely to be
the Mets (if they get healthy) or the Central runner-up (Brewers/Cards/Cubs). Which is why I’m already strategically cheering against the Mets. Except tonight when they’re playing the Cardinals.
I am pulling for the Mets, myself.
Something incredibly electric to me about the possibility of the Halos versus Frankie in the WS. Besides, that would mean that the asshats just to the northwest of us are NOT in the WS.
We don't have a Bullpen. We have a Cowpen. Before we get to call it a Bullpen these guys gotta grow a pair.
Seeing Mathis jerseys on eBay is not the funny part.
The funny part is seeing that people are in bidding wars over them.
We don't have a Bullpen. We have a Cowpen. Before we get to call it a Bullpen these guys gotta grow a pair.
you are kidding me.
must be Mathis hoochies. I see slim lady 20-somethings and some mom 30-somethings that are really petite wearing those “kid” jerseys.
I love this team.
by Downing Rules on Jun 24, 2009 5:41 PM PDT up reply actions
Yup.
5 bids right now, the high one at $12+. There’s something kind of sad about that.
.... as sexy as socks on a rooster.
Now if people were bidding on Steve Finley jerseys, I’d be concerned.
I love this team.
by Downing Rules on Jun 24, 2009 5:44 PM PDT up reply actions
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