Angels Offseason TBNL, Earl Bloom is Old. Halolinks.

Angels' offseason grade is an incomplete - Yahoo! Sports
Moreno’s offseason has been widely painted as a failure, in part because he seemed to promise Angels fans something more than a couple left-handers for the bullpen and a salary dump for left field, and in part because other areas of concern – third base, leadoff man and closer – also went unaddressed.

I'm not an Angels apologist, but it's nice to see one of the major national outlets not jumping on the "Angels Offseason Sucks" bandwagon. The let's wait and see route seems to me to be the smartest way to look at this offseason from a fan's perspective. I know, I've read all of the statistical and financial analysis of the Wells deal and I understand the impact involved with it. However, if anyone is going to doom the Halo's season this early the biggest downfall they should point to is the situation at third base (as this article points out). Or the possibly flawed thinking from the front office. Or the Mathis tender. Or giving up on Napoli. Or...

Regression favors the Angels - The Orange County Register
I’ll be honest: I simply can’t explain the calculations in this Beyond The Box Score post without tying myself in knots and probably putting everybody to sleep.

This is another interesting post from Sam Miller, but the reason I've added it to this post is while reading the comment section to Sam's article, I read this:

Earl Bloom, staff writer says:
BABIP never met Wee Willie Keeler.

Actually it has. But that's not really my point. When I read this comment I thought to myself, "Really? That's the best comment you can come up with?" Is Bloom trying to insinuate that BABIP isn't important because they didn't use it in 1893? Bloom has posted these types of comments a few times before, typically when one of the OCR writers (usually Sam) posts a stat-centric article. It's almost as if he's saying, "I don't care what your facts say. You kids with your newfangled thingamajigs don't know baseball like I know baseball". In other words, he's an old dog who refuses to learn how to piss outside. And quite possibly HAS met Wee Willie Keeler.

MORE LINKS AFTER THE BREAK...

Angels may call on creative approach to closing - angels.com
A student of the game, Scioscia can recall a time when teams deployed dual closers. Randy Myers was a left-handed hammer who shared the ninth with righties on two dominant teams: Roger McDowell with the 1988 Mets and Rob Dibble with the Reds' 1990 "Nasty Boys." It was another lefty, Jesse Orosco, manning the ninth with McDowell fr the '86 champion Mets. The popular trend calls for one ninth-inning artist, clearly defining bullpen roles. But getting creative and going with multiple looks can be an effective, if unconventional route.

If you visit the Baseball Think Factory's Newsstand at least semi-regularly, you'll have noticed they frequently link to Murray Chass' blog in a "car wreck can't look away" sort of way. Lyle Spencer has become my Murray Chass. Anyway, based on this article I doubt Spencer has even been watching the Angels during the Scioscia-era. When was the last time Scioscia used a reliever in a ninth inning, save situation based on the matchup and not the role? I realize Murray Spencer has to fill blog space, but pah-leeze, write something based on real-life.

Kansas City Royals hire Willie Aikens as minor league coach - ESPN
The Kansas City Royals hired the 56-year-old Aikens on Tuesday as a minor league coach, based at the team's complex in Surprise, Ariz....After serving 14 years on crack cocaine charges, Aikens was released in 2008 as mandatory minimum sentencing laws were overturned, because of the disparities in crack and powder cocaine cases...."I don't want to just teach young players about the fundamentals of hitting but to help and mentor some of the guys if they are having problems off the field," Aikens said.

Yay Willie! In an alternate world, Willie Aikens would be the all-time Angels home run leader.

As you probably already heard, Rob Neyer has joins SB Nation.

Strat stretches board game history to 50 years - USATODAY.com
The roots of Strat-O-Matic actually started when Richman was 11. He was sitting around the table at his family's homestead. He recalls that he rolled the dice over 5,000 times, looking to come up with a table of probabilities. Using those probabilities, and poring over baseball statistics in the newspaper, he devised a formula for how dice rolls could be used to approximate the performance of any major leaguer.

Strat-O-Matic rules!

This is one of the greatest things I've ever read

February 2 - BR Bullpen
Events, births and deaths that occurred on February 2.
1936 - The Baseball Writers Association of America announces the results of the first Hall of Fame vote. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner comprise the inaugural class of Hall of Fame members. Several other stars like Cy Young fail to make the grade, but will enter the Hall in later elections. There must have been a limit on the number of inductees that first year. How else would you explain leaving players such as Cy Young out?
Happy b-day:
1881 - Orval Overall, pitcher (d. 1947)