Halfway thru Wednesday's game, we reached the quarter-point in the season, meaning that John Lackey's strikeout of Jose Guillen was the first highlight of the second half of the first half. Thursday's homer by Vlad Guerrero is a close 2nd.
With a quarter of the season finished, a few things that were apparent have come to be affirmed, some assumptions have not been met and some negative feelings have been assuaged:
THE OBVIOUS ARRIVES - Ten Things We ExpectedVlad is being Vlad
Lackey is Nails
Weaver's ERA is near 2 and a half if you take away one bad outing
Ervin Santana sucks on the road and in the daylight
Frankie is being Frankie
Garret was underachieving when playing and now he is hurt but that is not costing us
Orlando Cabrera has been a pleasant non-impact everyday player
With run support, Kelvim Escobar looks like an all-star most of the time
The pitching has carried us with streaky bats quite unreliable
Shea Hillenbrand an inadequate replacement for Juan Rivera.
WELL SUH-PRIZE, SUH-PRIZE! - Ten Good Things We Did Not Expect
Willits
Moseley
Saunders better than Ervin
Matthews batting .300
Matthews' D lives up to the hype
Bartolo's quick recovery back into dominance
Erick Aybar's adequate imitation of a major leaguer
Chris Bootcheck's imitation of the good Kevin Gregg
Little or no crying abut the absence of Bud Black
Defense markedly batter than 2006
WELL, DARN DARN DARN - Ten Bad Things We Did Not Expect
The Katrina Hillenbrand disaster (.217 batting average, only 3 of 26 hits were more than singles)
Howie Kendrick breaking a bone
Mike Napoli on pace for 8 HR for the season
Justin Speier disappearing
Darren Oliver
Figgins batting .121 in 16 games
Scot Shields doing a Donnie Moore imitation 4 times in 19 games
Being hounded by weird weather
Carrasco now just a tan, jeri-curled Gregg Jones
#5 starter pitching like a #8 starter
Before we start the hype machine on the big weekend interleague series, is there anything you would like to add concerning the Quarter-Season performance of YOUR Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim?