Tuesday Halolinks: Angel Bats Go Cold In Minnesota, Blanton Eats Some Bad Innings

Just when we fans start to think the Angels have figured out what was going wrong and would put together a win-streak, the club reverts back to their pre-Astro days: Twins 8, Angels 2 - Yahoo! Sports. "The meat of Los Angeles' order, Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton, went a combined 1-for-8, with Hamilton striking out twice. Angels starter Joe Blanton, like Correia, gave up two home runs, but he allowed nine hits that the Twins turned into four runs. Blanton fell to 0-3 with an 8.59 ERA through three starts." Without the Houston pitching staff to beat up on, the Halo hitter went back to being silent, while the pitching staff no longer had the Quad-A Astro batting order with their strikeout tendencies to play with. Joe Blanton may be an innings eater, but it's the hitters he's facing who are cleaning their plates: Mauer, Twins power way past Blanton, Angels 8-2 - Yahoo! Sports. "Blanton bore the brunt of the breeze, but he's been throwing a bunch of hittable pitches all month. As one of three newcomers in the rotation with Tommy Hanson and Jason Vargas, Blanton has an 8.59 ERA over three starts. He has allowed 26 hits and six home runs in 14 2-3 innings. ''It's early, but at the same time it's not,'' Blanton said. ''It won't be early long. It's time to start getting deep into games.''

And there's also this: Los Angeles Angels at Minnesota Twins - April 15, 2013 - MLB.com. "The Angels' 4-9 record to start the season -- the same record they had through the first 13 games of last year's brutal April -- carries with it plenty of blame, to a lineup that isn't hitting with runners in scoring position and to a bullpen that hasn't been able to bridge the gap." Bleh.

Angels-Twins Preview - Yahoo! Sports. "Vargas (0-1, 4.76 ERA) has limited Mauer to four hits in 15 at-bats and Morneau to three in 12. The Angels starter, however, is 1-1 with an 8.22 ERA in three starts at Target Field. Los Angeles (4-9) has dropped both of Vargas' starts this year. He has lasted 5 2-3 innings both times, allowing five runs in Thursday's 8-1 defeat to Oakland."

Los Angeles Angels at Minnesota Twins - April 16, 2013 - MLB.com. "Tuesday's game is the second in a three-game set between the two longest tenured managers in baseball. Mike Scioscia took over the Angels in 2000 and Ron Gardenhire, who has a lot of respect for Scioscia, took over the Twins in '02. "You talk to players who played over there and they just love the way he goes about the game," Gardenhire said. "He's a good one and has always been one of the best in the league and won a World Series and had his team in the playoffs plenty of times. So if you give him the talent, he can do some really good things with it."

It's been cold, wet, and snowy here, but not this cold: Snow blankets Coors Field, postpones Rockies-Mets game until Tuesday - Yahoo! Sports

Whatever works: Wilson developing rapport with backup Conger - angels.com. "It's nothing against Iannetta, who has established a good rapport with everyone on the staff and Wilson has no problems throwing with, but the left-hander feels like he's established a bond with his backup, even though the two haven't spent much time together. "With Chris as the starter, I think he has a harder job," Wilson said. "Me, I have a very odd process. I think it's different from most starting pitchers. Hank catches me in bullpens, in between starts. And our personalities are very similar, at least in the locker room -- we're from the same city, we like the same stuff, we listen to the same music, we eat the same food."

When he's not writing about Angels and former Angels on Halos Heaven, Matt Welch spends some time smithing words for another organization: The Inglory of Jackie Robinson's Times - Reason.com. "The misleadingly titled Baseball Has Done It was not some kind of gee-whiz celebration of the sport's integration, but rather a forceful attempt to document the human struggles involved in baseball's trailblazing desegregation—through first-person accounts from black and white players and coaches ranging from Henry Aaron to Alvin Dark—and apply the lessons learned to the raging civil rights debate of the day."

Scioscia figured this one out, at least on Sunday, there might still be hope for Baker: Reds rescue Dusty Baker from blunder - ESPN. "There was Chapman sitting in the bullpen and there were Reds fans going crazy and there was Baker, managing by that tired old book. Or the tired new book. Whatever you want to call it, this absurdity of not using your best reliever for more than three outs is growing to epic levels of idiocy."

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