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Keep it up, Eppler! You keep winning the offseason with all this major action! Try to keep up, Angels fans. We crush it with links:
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Angels Baseball
Coach Nagy: New LAA Pitching Coach Charles Nagy gives us some insight into his approach for managing the pitching staff in 2016..........
Rookie Greatness: Best Rookie of the Year Tandems in History. This voter pulls for Rod Carew/Tom Seaver as #1 over Mike Trout/Bryce Harper at #2. I'm an old guy who should want to agree. I don't. I have seen enough to know that I have yet to see a lot, and That Trout/Harper combo has such unimaginable upside..........
Big Splash: The Angels have taken the plunge and signed another Free Agent, inking Cliff Pennington to a 2-year deal worth $3.75 million (plus plate appearance bonuses that could raise the total to $5.25 million). I bet you didn't even realize that Cliff Pennington was a Free Agent, did you? I know. It's quite the surprise, While just with Toronto, the guy had a 1.000 OBP in the recent ALCS against the Royals. How can you miss that? More seriously, Penington spent a good chunk of his career with Oakland, being one of Billy Beane's first round master strokes (21st overall pick in 2005), and ended up batting .236/.275/.343 against us. So we got a utility infielder. A little bit of depth. Somebody to fill the hole created by Taylor Featherson and his Rule 5 melt-down. Next...........
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Elsewhere in Baseball
HoF Qualities: The Average Hall of Famer. Mike Trout is already over-qualified..........
Pitching Fails: The 10 Worst First Pitches of the Game thrown in all of MLB, for all of 2015. Garrett Richards, we are looking at you..........Not to be confused with the least competitive pitches of the year (Garrett!!)..............
Gattis Miracles: "Some guys get all the breaks". Or: "Why advanced metrics shall always contain the subjective pollution of the official scorekeepers". Evan Gattis and 11 triples???............
Big Poopy: David Ortiz wants his final season victory lap. Swell. And that would mean that he would be on the HoF ballot out there in 2121-2022. Not good enough for the BoSux AbomiNation. Let's start debating his HoF qualities now. Because, after all, PEDS use pretty much doesn't matter anymore.........
eBay Merch: A pretty cool vintage Milton-Bradley baseball card board game from 1970. Comes complete with cute little manual spinners and plastic tokens! (h/t UniWatch).........
The Party's Over: DraftKings and FanDuel are starting to run scared with their cash flow, what with the risks of legal efforts and shutdowns in their future. They might have been the shortest-lived billion dollar businesses (combined) in history..........
So So Sosa: Sammy Sosa has popped up again. Living large..........
A Baseball Miracle: Nephtali Flores is a 17-year old varsity first baseman for the Santa Ana High Saints. Santa Ana High has had many first basemen, but I would guess only one has been inspired to play because of Jim Abbott. Nephtali Flores is that one. Nephtali was born with only one arm..........
Media Biz: Hey, Main Stream Media! Adapt or die. With any luck, this guy just took his first baby step toward (finally) adapting..........
Blazing Trails: Rasmus, Wieters and Anderson: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria of the MLB CBA. But where are they headed? Be thar monsters?...........
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: Russell Branyan, ex-MLB player, who ended his career in Anaheim batting .185 in 2011, has been arrested. He broke into his ex-wife's home AND he stole some stuff. This was later determined to have happened when he called and confessed and wanted to return that stuff. It happened while his ex-wife was in the home, and asleep. So Branyan decided to get tough, and nasty...and he turned the thermostat way down. Evil. Pure evil. That should scare of his fellow inmate in County lockup............
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Award Season
Manager of the Year: Jeff Bannister took the Award in the American League, and Joe Maddon was honored in the National League. That makes three times for Joe Maddon in his career as top dog. Seems like he would be a keeper, yes? I was reading where at least one commenter was disturbed that a guy with a third place team won Manager of the Year. Ignorant. Joe Maddon took a team that had won only 73 games in 2014 (third-worst in the NL) and ended up winning the third-most games in all of baseball (97, just 3 off the top-most of 100), in the toughest division in baseball. And it's clear that he had fun all the way along. Acknowledging some decent roster improvements between 2014 and 2015.)..........Fun fact: Jill Painter Lopez (yeah, this is her) of Fox Sports West gave Mike Scioscia a 3rd place vote..........
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Hot Stove Season
Bargain...er....Basement?: A fresh look at Free Agent bargains. Somehow Jason Heyward makes this list..........
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