Thor'sLinks: Angels Seventh is Heaven

This is getting to be insane. The Angels have lost only 5 games in the past month, now going 19 and 5 dating back to June 22nd. The distracting part of that is that they are only 2 games up on Houston. That's the price to be paid for the lackluster opening to the season. Because every game really does count.

7 wins in a row. And now including the pretty damned good Twins. The only thing that comes close to this amount of fun is the fact that the BoSux have 7 losses in a row!

Link thee away!

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Angels Baseball

Arm in Arm: Not a link, but an observation while we celebrate the offense. Over the past 6 games, the Angels' pitchers have surrendered only 6 earned runs over 54 innings pitched. There have been 3 shutouts, one game giving up only 1 run, and one game giving up 3 runs. And in those 54 innings Halo pitchers have yielded only 33 hits 16 walks while striking out 50 batters. Nice...........

David Freese: Freese is off to the DL with a fractured right index finger. It's already in a splint and he will be out for at least 3 weeks. The question ow is whether or not the Angels bring up from Salt Lake hopeful future third-baseman Kyle Kubitza ad give him another shot at the starting lineup during Freese's absence Steve Adams over at MLB Trade Rumors suggests that the Dreese injury tips the LAA trade deadline moves in favor of a Juan Uribe...........

Rental Yard: With so little activity occurring in the trade world as the deadline approaches, the rumor mill suggests that the Angels are becoming less picky as shoppers. I am still in denial, but I have a major hot streak going on for being wrong. I cannot believe that Stoneman has changed so dramatically from his very credible GM history that he is now going to play some kind of action hero. It's hard for me to imagine him doing something so out of character while serving on as an interim exec. And to add to that the idea of being eager to merely getting back a rental?

Trout Hunter: Torii Hunter comes back to town and reflects upon his time mentoring the rookie Mike Trout. Lots of feel-good stuff there, as to be expected from any Lyle Spencer bit, but one thing caught my eye. It was this comment from Trout: "Before at-bats, we're talking in the outfield about things to look for, what a hitter might do with a certain pitch. That's one of the things I learned from Torii, who was always talking out there. He taught me to know which base I was going to throw to before the pitch." Now this is not on Trout. It's on all the coaches he had growing up as a kid. But holy balls!! It was not until Trout got to Anaheim that somebody finally taught him to know ahead of every pitch what he is going to do with the ball if the ball is hit to him??? What the hell do coaches spend their time doing with kids these days? Back in the day, we learned this at age of 8, and I taught my 8-year old Little Leaguers this fundamental the first week of practice..............

Waste Not, want Not

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Elsewhere in Baseball

HK47: Howie Kendrick thinks that you, me, and everybody else here on the Internet of Baseball Fandom are stupid idiots who need to just shut up, pay your money, and eat your hot dogs. To quote: "It's funny how people who never played baseball at a professional level or maybe even high school have an opinion about baseball." So think about that for a minute. And think about that in the context of the entirety of baseball history and the concept of baseball being "America's Pastime". Better yet, think about that from the perspective of Howie himself, and all the things he has never done professionally. Are we to believe that Howie only has opinions about his own personal experiences playing baseball? He's never gotten pissed off at his cable company? He's never walked out of a movie theater and chatted about what he just saw? Sometimes I wonder if the whole concept of advanced information truly is lost on a lot of these guys, simply because of the level of ignorance and lack of critical thinking skills they reveal when they wander off the standard cliches...........

Drake: because somebody keeps count of things like this, Drake is the most popular artist behind walk-up songs throughout MLB, just edging out AC/DC............

LOUC: The Law Of Unintended Consequences is at play here in trade season, and Commissioner Manfred is open to making the next mistake.Having a second Wild Card has had the effect of increasing the number of teams who are contenders, and also increase the number of teams who can remain contenders for longer in the season. This has had the effect of defining the current trade deadline - July 31st - as too soon for teams to know whether or not to make any move. This is the primary theory as to why things remain so quiet. So let's fix it, everybody says. Let's move back the trade deadline, giving everybody a better look at whether they should be buyers or sellers. And the Commish is open to the idea. (Of course, it turns out that Manfred is pretty much open to every idea he has been presented with so far so this should be taken with some reservation.) Well, it shouldn't take long for even us ignoramuses to come up with new unintended consequences. For example, by moving the deadline scramble closer to the end of the season, this lessens the number of games an acquired player can participate with his new club. Hence, the price per game (beyond pro-rated salary)  for rentals just went up, reducing their desirability............

PSA: Here is a friendly tip concerning code of conduct while sitting behind home plate in a Major League Baseball game. All games are televised. Every pitch is shown to millions from a position somewhere in center field, thus exposing a few dozen of the most privileged fans to three hours of public scrutiny. So if you find yourself blessed to sit there, remember that there should be no nose picking, no drug use, and certainly no bold groping of your lady friend's boob. Luckily all ex-pro ballplayers, such as Jeff Bagwell, are very aware of this. When they are sober..........

Ball Hog Tied: Zack Hample is practically a professional snagger of baseballs. Pre-game, in-game, whenever, Hample has them by the hundreds and hundreds. Most recently, it was Hample who grabbed ARod's solo home run for his 3,000 hit. But it's also worth mentioning that it was Hample who was holding that ball up for ransom for a while. That is important to remember because this same Hample is claiming that he was assaulted in Yankee Stadium chasing a ball during batting practice this past Tuesday. My take on this is that some guy who has made such a successful career of this behavior will get to a point where they develop a sense of entitlement and go well beyond us mere mortals in scrambling for any baseball. And Hample finally came up against some person who was not going to concede to his dominance. In such situations, things will escalate..............

High and Mighty: Here is a new perspective. Maybe the reason that Mike Trout is seeing lots of high fastballs has something to do with pitchers tending to throw more high fastballs to everybody, and not just Mike Trout? There is some data to suggest a general trend, and that it is not only a Mike Trout thing. It's mostly a Mike Trout thing. It's just not only a Mike Trout thing.........

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And now, being the full service weekend linkage institution that we are, here is the obligatory moment we take out of each Friday Thursday...for beer...(which works better on Thursdays anyway, because it gives you all some runway to take advantage of Friday goings on...)

Friday: Escape to Mitten! beer tasting hosted by Escape Craft Brewery at the Mitten Building in Redlands...........Three days left for Stockton Beer Week 2015...........Take in a ballgame AND a beerfest as the Padres do one of their Padres Beerfest packages this evening at Petco Park (see how easy it is to imagine new promo and social events for baseball franchises when you are not stuck on disposable sombrero ideas???)............

Saturday: Second Annual San Mateo Company Brewery Festival, held at Balcony On Broadway in redwood City..........Firestone does a Tap Takeover, featuring Stickee Monkey on draft, at Draughts Restaurant & Bar in Thousand Oaks...........Mike Hess Brewing is celebrating with HessFest, in North Park San Diego..........Del Mar Racetrack Beerfest at The Thoroughbred Club. Yeah, that's at the racetrack. In Del Mar............Two days left for Stockton Beer Week 2015............

Sunday: 3rd Annual North Pacific Beach Sip N Stroll beer crawl kicks off at Turquoise Cellars in San Deigo..........Final day for Stockton Beer Week 2015...........

BEER BONUS #1: We continue to track the Ales for ALS 2015. project brought to us by red floyd. The next event schedule is not until August 8th, so stay tuned!

BEER BONUS #2: This comes to us via eyespy. Well, it comes to some of us. Those who are Android users. For a buck thirty two, over at Google Play, you can fetch the Fresh Beer Only app that allows you to interpret label codes and determine how fresh your beer is. The rest of us are stuck using their web site, which pretty much tells you to look it up yourself. For instance, with Russian River you get: "For the Blind Pig & Pliny the Elder, there is a bottled on date. Format is MM/DD/YYYY.  For the Belgian style brews & barrel aged beers, there is a batch number that you can enter on their website to get more info on that beer." (It's not all that bad for iOS users. The iTunes store has lots of beer apps for finding craft brews. Just search.

BEER BONUS #3: Here is an infographic for the cheapest beers available in every ballpark. Anaheim is hte least expensive beer by the ounce.

Stay safe, everyone!

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(All grammatical errors still remaining should be intentional.)

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