Mark Trumbo Disappears in Angels Depth Chart Pravda

Back in the USSR, the official propaganda paper was Pravda. In it, you could glean who was in and out of favor in the ruling party. When Yuri Andropov started showing up getting flowers from the masses, you knew he was heir to the papal throne equivalent of whatever the top commie sat on when he ran the Politburo's meetings.

So in an organization as equally aloof from public scrutiny as the Angels front office, all we the proletariat have to go on is the Angels official website. Looking at the November 8 update to the team's official Depth Chart reminds one of the old Soviet hierarchical shuffle.

Maybe Mike Trout is this team's Mikhail Gorbachev and playoff glasnost is right around the corner as he is listed as the #2 depth in all three outfield positions! Vernon Brezhnev and Torii Gromyko wave to the parade of tanks from their perch in a palace looking down on Red Square, the slow march of time holding them in a place that history has long passed. Of course, let's avoid talk of sending General Bourjos to the eastern front in return for an aging bureaucrat and an apartchik to be named later.

But delusions of the revolution still insult the realists among us. The romance of a return of Cuban revolutionary Kendrys Morales at 1B blinds the reality of the hardworking peasant who rose from the field to hit 30 bombs with a broken foot, but here is Mark Trumbo listed as the second option at 1B for the Angels. But at least Trumbo takes a second bow as stand-in Designated Hitter backing up Konstantin Chernenko aka Bobby Abreu. Another egregious lack of monument: Alberto Callaspo's solid presence at 3B sees him merely as stand-in to the greatest utility man in team history, Maicer Izturis.

If Jerry Dipoto, the newly appointed head of the KGB were to see this depth chart, let's wonder aloud how long the presence of Jeff Mathis and his capitalist pig $1.7 milion salary would get shipped off to the gulag... but is the bigger crime actually listing Bobby Wilson ahead of Hank Conger? Talk about your Mutually Assured Destruction!