Tuesday HaloLinks: Halos Wean'd

Well, awesome. Just in time for Halloween, the San Francisco Giants whip out their witches brooms and sweep the 2012 Detroit Tigers into the dust bin of history. And the Angels fall silent, too. No more bats. No more flies. No more ghoulish miscues by bullpen arms. No more flaming of hitting coaches. No more ghosts of failed pinch runner opportunities to haunt our dreams. No ghoulish throws from backup catchers. No inexplicable shackles and chains on our finest defenders. Make no bones about it, now there is nothing left but talk, caldrons and caldrons of talk all the way out until the April moon. Oh, the horror!

• We Halos fans must join the remainder of the American League in the humiliation of sending in one of the weakest of our 2012 leaders into the Fall Classic. Our team was good enough to do serious damage to the teams they would have faced in these playoffs. But our team was simply not good enough to get there in the first place. And now, the 2012 season is officially over. I guess it is a good thing that few people actually stuck around to witness the shameful exhibition.

• Speaking of talk (see what I did there?), Jon Heyman of CBS Sports is claiming that execs at other ballclubs are reporting that Dipoto has called and inquired about trading away Dan Haren and/or Ervin Santana. Note that they would have to act fast. The deadline for picking up the option of either player is Wednesday.

• It's full-on hardware season. We already know that Mike Trout has won The Sporting News AL Rookie Of The Year award. Trout, along with C.J. WIlson, were named finalists for the 2012 Rawlings Gold Glove awards. And you all have one week left to cast your vote for Trout as the MLB Heart and Hustle Award winner.

• CabreraMania: In a few weeks, MLB is going to announce that the BaseBall Writers of America has handed the AL MVP to Miguel Cabrera. But half of those writers will be stewing in their own juices after being snubbed by Cabrera post Game 3. Those are the kind of things that whiny sports writers care about, and they hold grudges. Right now, they are taking that snubbing, and adding to it the image of their "Most Feared Hitter In Baseball" standing there and cluelessly staring at a meatball down the heart of the plate to end the Tiger hopes and capping a catastrophic 3 hits in 16 appearances at the plate during the World Series. But do not think for one minute that this would have done our Mike Trout any good. That's not these creatures work. Instead, they are already arming themselves with columns defending themselves against the embarrassment Cabrera has brought upon them. The MVP drinking game shall involve counting every time some scribe refers to "regular season versus post season".

• Hat Tip to Hard Ball Talk: After Clayton Kershaw was awarded the Roberto Clemente Humanitarian Award, for the no small thing of establishing and building his own orphanage in Africa, for God's sake, T.R. Sullivan goes to bat on behalf of Michael Young. Now Young has done many excellent good deeds as well and I have no problem with Michael Young. But this line sends me over the top: "Or just his day-to-day accountability with the media, which did not waver even during his most trying season." Words cannot describe the hubris behind any belief system that defines acceding to the demands of the MSM as making one a worthy citizen.

• Players are dropping all over the place. The A's declined Stephen Drew. The Giants declined Aubrey Huff (which should make for an awkward parade, one would think). The Dodgers declined Matt Treanor, Juan Rivera and Todd Coffey. The Phillies declined third baseman Placido Polanco. The Twins declined Scott Baker (and Matt Capps last week). And, also last week, the Mariners declined on Miquel Olivo and released Munenori Kawasaki.

• Some gods cannot fade away. Vladimir Guerrero is still not ready to hang up his cleats.

Happy Halo'Wean'd tomorrow, all! See you Friday!