MondoLinks: Gearing up for a Fall Classic

Well, here we go boys and girls, the last matchup of the season, and the final days. Soon one community of asshat fans will be thrilled and the rest of us can close the book on the year (and those asshat fans) and move on to Winter speculation and Winter moves and winter hope. Except we who live in Southern California. We are still waiting for Summer to come to an end. Have some links:

______________________________

Angels Baseball

Office - ers: As promised, Matt Klentak has moved on to Philadelphia before the weekend was over, as their General Manager. This was something I had been predicting since late June, early July when Andy MacPhail was hired on by the Phillies to take over as their next President. MacPhail and Klentak have solid history together and Jerry Dipoto has just resigned from Anaheim, causing some degree of chaos and making Dipoto's people lame ducks. So you shouldn't get all up in a wad over this one. 'Twas gonna happen. I remain stuck on the realization that Arte Moreno has been blessed with quite a few solid baseball minds during his tenure, and he keeps losing them...........But, hey, if things don't work out well for Klentak there with the Phillies, his predecessor has blazed a trail for career futures of former Philly GM's. Maybe Klentak can move on to be a Yankee hot dog vendor or something..........By the way, never forget that Klentak went to work in Philadelphia. tough, tough crowd. They already have his daily to-do lists all filled out for him............

Halo Humor: CollegeHumor put together a mockumentary, using the ESPN 30 for 30 format and calling the Angels in the Outfield history as though it was real. It was real. Real awesome............

______________________________

Elsewhere in Baseball

Christmas Shopping: There are very popular names high on your off-season free agent wish list. So let's see how some of them are doing, rising or falling as they may............

Robots!: Ben Revere is now a fan of robot umpiring on ball/strike calls, whether he admits it or not. The difference between Revere and players of yesteryear is that these days we have proof..........

Cha-ching: if you happen to find yourself in New York right about now, and are interested in taking in a World Series game, maybe you should reconsider. There are smarter ways to invest. Like, maybe, Manhattan real estate or something, because that would be cheaper...........

Abby Normal: We need to do a new thing. We need to run a lottery to guess which player will "Murphy" that year's playoffs. It can become a regular thing, because it turns out that such a thing should happen at least every other year to somebody..........

Pete Rose: Knuckleheads like Rose are why the gods invented the Internet, because meme-making never gets old (even though memes themselves eventually do)..........

Selling High: Billy Eppler take note. Trading away your stud in return for a boatload of cost-controlled talent is an excellent way to vault your franchise into the driver's seat. Just ask the Mets, who traded away R.A. Dickey...........Or ask the Royals, who traded away Zack Greinke...........

Info-Based Winning: Make no mistake, Lorenzo Cain scoring from 1st base on a single to right field was 100% an information-based result.  Third-base coach Mike Jirschele was fully aware that Jose Bautista likes to throw to second base and prevent the double. Bautista overthrew the cut-off man and hit second base. Which is his habit And as the ball came in from Bautista to second base, I could only think to myself "Mistake there, man. You just conceded the go-ahead run. On a single. You gotta make them earn it.". Jirschele was sending Cain all the way, exploiting Bautista the right fielder. And Cain, who could see Jischele but not Bautista, never even slowed down..........

Sweep Score: Yeah, somebody else noticed what I linked about on Friday, that teams which sweep an LCS tend to not do so well in the WS...........

______________________________