Well, well, well. I get to write a morning Links issue after an actual game! I forget how the hell I usually do this...
Let's see...link to the official recap. "The Angels trailed 7-0 in the third, 8-1 in the fourth, 8-2 in the fifth and 9-8 in the eighth, but managed to pull out their sixth win in the past eight games and a four-game-series victory over the Mariners."
Link to another recap...that discovers the Mighty Power of Peter Bourjos. I mean really, Mike Trout goes 4 for 4 with a walk, a stolen base, and scored a run totaling up a Win Probability added of .316...and can't keep pace with Petey. Bourjos was 3 for 4 scoring 3 runs and driving in 1, and also stole a base. That's a WPA of .361. That's one Ginormous Bourjos. But let's let CBS promo PeBo: "Peter Bourjos homered and had three hits, and he scored the tying run in the eighth during Los Angeles' final rally for its sixth win in eight games."
Put up some facts...Baseball Lore says this shouldn't have happened. But Lore ignores a few things. Coming into the game, Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo were hitting .407 & .300 respectively against Hernandez, and Felix had only 7 wins over 31 outings against LAA in his career. Trout is now .467 against Felix, by the way.
Look for a chance to snark, and...find one of those quotes that shows Mike Scioscia still focusing on the lengthy processes of life. "Hopefully it will inspire you, the next time you're down by two or three runs, to keep playing baseball," Scioscia said. "That's something the young guys have to experience and understand."
And close it out by making it all about me...with my favorite moment. Bottom of the 5th, M's up 8-4, runners on 1st and 2nd with nobody out, 1 ball and 2 strikes on Trumbo. Hernandez stands on the mound in the stretch as he stares back at Mike Trout leading off second base. My uncle-in-law visiting from Montana, a big Mariners fan, is sitting in the chair next to me. Hernandez comes to a stop, stares at Trout, takes a deep breath, and throw up one loogy of a curveball to Trumbo. That loopy meatball hangs up like leftover laundry and Trumbo flicks it deep up into the rock pile. And then my moment. As Trumbo's bat wrecks the ball, King Felix snaps his head towards first base in immediate recognition of the hot mess he has made, all before that launched cowhide even passes the pitcher's mound.
I know, I know. The other guys own my ass when it comes to recaps. But, truthfully, my schedule this season has kept me on the sidelines when it comes to recaps. I blame my plantar fasciitus.
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UPDATE!
Raadad has Chapters 1 through 4 now up of his online Tribute Novel, The Great Gatsby 2: Revenge of Gatsby
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On To Angels Baseball!
- Bad Jerry Dipoto: Never forget that Dipoto tried very hard to land this guy. ""I don't know," he said. "It depends on him. He used to be good. I think he's good, but he's lost a little bit of his confidence, and this game is all about confidence. … I hope he gets it back and becomes the Marmol I know."
- Good Jerry Dipoto: On the other hand, we also need to remember to give Dipoto a check mark on the positive side in building the rotation sans Dan Haren go. "Instead of transforming back into the guy he was with the Athletics and Diamondbacks, the 32-year-old Haren is having a nightmare season and playing a big role in Washington's disappointing sub-.500 campaign."
- Arte Moreno: Say what you will about Arte and The Name Change, but you have to grant him credit for making headway on his original intent. Anecdotally, I was driving Wednesday mid-day and listening to one of the sports talk stations on Sirius/XM. They broke for a sports update and were walking through current scores of baseball games in progress when the announcer said "The Yankees lead the Angels two to nothing...", I took pause. "Wha?" I thought, "The Angels are playing until tonight, against Seattle! Am I listening to an old, recorded, broadcast?" It took me a moment to digest and process this curiosity until it dawned on me that this was the Yankees leading THE DODGERS, not the Angels. But here was a New York based person reading the score sheet, saw NY2 - LA 0 and made the assumption that "LA stands for Angels". When you get New York sports people making the default association of "LA and Angels', Arte wins.
- Signings: Mark Trumbo, Hank Conger and J.B. Shuck will be signing autographs this Saturday at OC Dugout in Anaheim. Fair warning, this is a Pay-to-Play event.
- Mike Trout: From Official Team Game Notes, through his first 250 MLB games Trout ranks in Angels history "1st in hits (297), 1st in extra-base hits (115), 1st in runs (200), 1st in slugging (.537), 1st in average (.307), 1st in on-base percentage (.380), tied for 2nd in sacrifice flies (13), 3rd in steals (68), 3rd in home runs (47), 4th in walks (113), tied for 4th in doubles (54), tied for 5th in triples (14), and tied for 5th in RBI (143)."
Buy Stuff - Crazy-ass Baseball Find On the Internet:
Marvel Superheroes Meet AAA Minor League Baseball, 2007.This whole article is awesome sauce! And for those of you interested in owning any of your own, click here.
Friday, June 21 @ 7:05 PM, (FS-W / MLB.TV) Pittsburgh Pirates vs. LA Angels - Angels Stadium, Anaheim
[PETER BOURJOS POSTER, BIG BANG FRIDAY, TROUT FARM IN SECTION 101]
Gerrit Cole (RHP) 2-0 3.75 ERA versus Jered Weaver (RHP) 1-3 4.41 ERA
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Saturday, June 22 @ 7:05 PM, (FOX / MLB.TV) Pittsburgh Pirates vs. LA Angels - Angels Stadium, Anaheim
[BIG & RICH POSTGAME CONCERT, TROUT FARM IN SECTION 101]
Francisco Liriano (LHP) 5-3 2.44 ERA versus Jason Vargas (LHP) 6-4 3.65 ERA
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Sunday, June 23 @ 12:35 AM, (FS-W / MLB.TV) Pittsburgh Pirates vs. LA Angels - Angels Stadium, Anaheim
[FAMILY SUNDAY, KIDS RUN THE BASES, TROUT FARM IN SECTION 101]
Charlie Morton (RHP) 1-1 1.74 ERA versus Joe Blanton (RHP) 1-10 5.62 ERA
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A little history here. The Angels and the Pirates have faced each other a total of 9 times to date, going back forever. Six of those have been here in Anaheim where the Angels are 5-1. They are 1-2 in Pittsburgh. The most recent match-up was a home series here in Anaheim way back in 2007, when the Halos swept the Pirates and the winning pitchers were Scott Shields (Joe Saunders started), Kelvim Escobar, and Chris Bootcheck (Bartolo Colon started). If my research is correct, a total of three home runs were hit all weekend - one each by Jason Bay, Orlando Cabrera and Vladimir Guerrero. And, just to pick on him because he sucked and it's still fun, Shea Hillenbrand went 2 for 9 in the first two games as DH, and was replaced as DH in game 3 by Cabrera, clearly in favor of resting the hot-hitting old vet.
This Date In Baseball History: 1952 - The Harrisburg Senators sign 24-year-old Eleanor Engle, but Eleanor is immediately blocked from playing as George Trautman of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues bans the signing of women. This will soon lead to MLB Commissioner Ford Frick exploiting this ban in order to block women from being signed to any big league club..........1957 - In his first start fresh out of High School, 18-year-old Von McDaniel no hits the Brooklyn Dodgers into the 6th inning, ends up yielding only 2 hits in his first outing, and garners a 2-0 win for the St. Louis Cardinals..........1978 - In his first MLB plate appearance, Dave Machemer of the California Angels launches the very first pitch he sees, off of Geoff Zahn of the Minnesota Twins, for the only home run he will ever hit in his brief two year pro career..........1998 - Michael Bouton publishes an open letter in the New York Times on Father's Day, on behalf of his father Jim Bouton, in an effort to restore Father Jim to the good graces of the new York Yankees. Jim is infamous, of course, for exposing the clubhouse culture of baseball in his diary "Ball Four" and was ridiculously blacklisted by MLB, and pissed on by many of baseball's MSM. The letter works, and Jim returns for an Old Timer's Day some 30 years after his banishment to the hinterlands.
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Rounding Up The Major League News...
- There is a God: Life somehow gets a little more just, when somebody decides to dedicate a part of their life towards calling out the garbage polluting the sports world known as "The Bleacher Report". Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Bleacher Report...Report!
- The Burden of Excess: So it IS possible to have too much of a good thing. Having a deep minor league system still requires an active front office in order to leverage talented individuals into an overall balance across a talented roster. Allowing all that talent to keep matriculating without winnowing creates logjams and fails to take advantage of trade opportunities when they exist, rather when you have the need. In this case, the Texas Rangers seem to be choking over Jurickson Profar.
- Misery Loves Company: Just to make you all feel a little less horrible and lonely, take comfort in the fact that ours is not the only franchise that can make atrocious errors in judgment when it comes to personnel. Take the examples of the Rangers mega-prospect-making machine outputs: Chris Davis and Tommy Hunter. Davis & Hunter were traded away in the middle of 2011 by Texas in exchange for Koji Uehara. Uehara gave the Rangers 54 innings pitched over a season and a half, and precisely 0 WAR – kind of hard for a pitcher - before being released to Free Agency after 2012. Uehara now pitches out of the pen for the Boston Red Sox. Tommy Hunter is doing the same for Baltimore, only slightly better than Uehara (Hunter ranks 33rd out of all 208 AL pitchers, which would be the absolute lowest ERA with that many innings pitched on the Texas staff). Chris frikkin’ Davis, however, is having himself one mighty fine season…It's safe to say that the Rangers, 9 - 15 since May 25th, sure would like to reverse that trade about now.
- Moment of Awesome: Another one of those multiple pitched baseballs GIF thingies. This one is also incredible, showing the randomness of an R.A. Dickey knuckleball. I have to track back and locate the originator of these, so that I always give him credit (Rangers fan though he is).
- Lit-O-Ga-Shun: By now you all know that San Jose is suing MLB to force their hand and allow the A’s to move out of their sewage disposal site. Hardball Talk took a read into the suit, as I am sure did many. Not taking any sides on their review, since the author is not any lawyer. But the very best point I have read to date came out of the comments. "So, a frivolous tortious interference claim with no real damages? The biggest challenge for MLB’s lawyers will be coming up with arguments that can’t be used against themselves in the Biogenesis case." Quite a pickle, there, you betcha!
Video Of The Week
(Bad British Baseball Commentary | Red Sox vs Yankees)
(Trouble viewing the video? Direct link here.)
VIDEO BONUS #1: MLB Catch Of The Year To Date (shades of Jim Edmonds)
VIDEO BONUS #2: Bob Costas, your next MLB Commissioner, has officially become an arrogant little prick.
Just sayin', but Tim Salmon's Player Page on BBR is available for sponsorship. I'm too GA to point out others.........Last weekend, in an effort to start writing their own jokes on themselves, Oakland Coliseum sewage backed up into the locker rooms of both teams. Best quote of the article? "This isn't the first time this has happened." All I can say is that had this happened in Angels Stadium, we would all be proclaiming "Holy shit!"..........MLB is all over Miami, while all the mystery is really based in other countries..........Forget about that early hot streak. Vernone Wells NOW SUCKS EVEN WORSE THAN LAST YEAR!
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And now, being the full service weekend linkage institution that we are, here is the obligatory moment we take out of each Friday...for beer...
Friday: Nothing.
Saturday: This day shall forever be know as the Grand Opening of Stone Farms, at Stone Farms Escondido. You may be missing the sarcasm there, since this is Stone Brewing Company - the Sam Adams of San Diego. I dunno. Maybe they are hoping to be the IPA version of Legoland or something............Upland might be a nice treat, being the location for the Dale Brothers Brewery's Summerfest. Music, food and beer. Life is good!..........Finally, a mouthful. I'll get the location out of the way early on so that it doesn't get lost in the news, but it's Churchill's Pub & Grille in San Marcos. The event is being called "Lips of FAITH Day @ CHURCH w/ Peach Love-Felix & Love Barrel-Oscar on tap + meet Eric Salazar". Should make for an interesting T-shirt.
Sunday: Nothing.