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Attention Fellow Halo Heaven Travelers!
Mr. and Mrs. Stirrups are just returning from vacation. Today's MondoLinks will be an abbreviated edition. Normal MondoLinks will resume November 10th.
Lots of names are in the news right now, as activity around qualifying offers and options start heating up. The Angels, having done the obvious and picked up Huston Street's 2015 option, now need to sit back and see what meaty bones are tossed out into the public scrap heap.....For starters, the Blue Jays picked up Adam Lind's option and traded him to the Brewers?. Which is kind of weird since Toronto just took Justin Smoak off waivers from Seattle only to decline Smoak's option (Smoak being my Halo killer who lacks the stats against the Halos to back up my eyeball test)....the Royals declined Billy Butler's option and made him a Free Agent effective immediately...The Jays did extend a qualifying offer to Melky Cabrera...(but Cabrera and the Jays are far apart in contract extension talks)...Meanwhile, Brett Anderson is free, but Jacob Turner is not, Oakland will probably let Jed Lowrie walk,. and the Marlins are frightened enough about losing the Mighty Jeff Mathis that they are going exercise his tiny little option...........On the mutual front, Aramis Ramirez is leaning towards exercising his half of the option to stick with the Brewers, but both the Phillies AND A.J. Burnett declined on Burnett's option. Burnett still has the potential to exercise his player option...And the Braces look to be making a qualifying offer to Ervin Santana.
All that going on, but don't be looking for Jerry Dipoto to be jumping into the deep end of these waters.
Padres fans got into Halloween with throwback jack'o'lanterns this year...........Counterfeit Giants merch is flooding the streets already. Or, at least trying to. How a fake ball cap might ever be considered "dangerous goods" is a little beyond my pay grade, I am afraid.
Garrett Richards is spending his rehab time watching football, and the dude is passionate about his 49'ers............Tyler Skaggs is spending his rehab listening to talk radio, and the dude is passionate about his politics..........But back to football, where Adam Jones and Andrew McCutcheon put some money down this weekend.
For a guy who upped his strikeout rate significantly, and who gives away far more than his fair share of first strike pitches, Mike Trout still does the best job in all of baseball in seeing a lot of pitches (H/T to Buster Olney).