TuesdoLinks: Angels idle, but All-Star hands are busy

We do this every year at this time. All-Stars are announced and a few people in certain places - rotating from season to season - are a little butt hurt. Sometimes it is deserved, as it is this year with Clayton Kershaw over in the National League. Sometimes it is emotional, as with Alex Rodriguez here in the American League. Sometimes it is frustrating, as with Hector Santiago with us.

But sometimes it is satisfying, as we can feel about Albert Pujols returning to the Game, now under the Halo. And the good news is that the All-Star process keeps giving us more chances for selection redemption. And redemption it is, because having our guys placed on the national pedestal validates our passion for that player and the team he represents, even when the player himself might not care very much for being selected.

So there are still stories and rewards and disappointments ahead this week. It's all part of the story. First we have Snub Reviews. so brace yourselves for All-Star SnubLinks:

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Angels Baseball

Series starting tonight:

Los Angeles Angels @ Colorado Rockies - Coors Field, Denver CO.

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All-Star Pitchers: The pitching staffs and reserves were announced yesterday for the 2015 All-Star game. Hector Santiago did NOT get the call. Of the 6 Starting Pitchers named, Dallas Keuchel, Chris Archer and Sonny Gray do have superior ERA than Santiago, and Felix Hernandez is still Felix Hernandez. David Price and Santiago are a wash (except for Price getting run support and garnering more of them ever-important "WINS"). Only Chris Sale has been less effective enough to warrant any serious whining, but then every team needs a rep. On another front, one might want to make some sort of beef about Huston Street but, again, every team needs a dude. Halo fans can take solace in Darren O'Day and Frankie Rodriguez getting named, since they are yet more farm products of ours..........

All-Star Reserves: Albert Pujols DID make the squad and, with the recent injury to voted 1B starter Miguel Cabrera, will actually be the NEW AL starter. This should also mean that Pujols will enter the Home Run Derby, which should be fun for everyone except those who worry about swing damage............

The Dipoto Files: We continue to learn about all the things that Jerry Dipoto was working on before he cleaned out his office. Apparently, his shredder was not working. Why all this stuff is leaking out is beyond me. I cannot recall ever hearing so much about the phone calls and dialog within a Front Office as trade deadlines neared. The latest news is that Dipoto was on the phone with Billy Beane and discussed the possible acquisition of Josh Reddick as a net-new corner outfield left-handed bat, and needing Boston to play the middle-man. Boston didn't want to play...........

Mike Trout: With nothing new really to talk about on an off day, we can talk about something not new. Mike Trout stealing fewer bases. It has the usual old saw about focusing on Trout and slide stepping and throwing a lot to 1st base to wear him. All probably true...but also probably true about every top stolen base threat and the impact on Trout's number is much larger. When practicing Scioscialogy, one must never deviate from the pre-packaged story line, no matter how trite it might become. There are also a lot of quotes about everything being the same as always...even though the results speak volumes to the contrary. But then there is a reveal: the tie to Albert Pujols batting right behind him. Says Trout: "Albert has been hot — that's definitely one of the biggest reasons. When I get chances to run, I'll run. It just so happens that everything Albert is hitting, he's squaring up, so you don't want to take the bat out of his hands. I want to let him swing." And there it is, Trout has Pujols at the top of mind. We knew years ago that was coming...........

Trout Porn: A dive into the updated career stats of Trout, comparing him to greats, reveals the kind of thing that makes us all giddy. The dude is fantastic, and the luckiest thing we Angels fans will ever have in the history of our Halo fandom is having this great talent playing for our team. " Trout had only 135 plate appearances in 2011 and has played only half a season this year, meaning he's put up his stratospheric numbers in about 100-150 fewer games than the other players on this list. Normalizing his value to 750 games yields a 43.3 rWAR, good enough for second behind Ted Williams--pretty good company. His big money kicks in next year, and the Rockefeller money in 2018, and he's done nothing to show that he won't be worth every penny paid, and then some. When the term "generational talent" or "once in a lifetime" are used, he's the kind of player they're describing... "..........

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Elsewhere in Baseball

Marc Krauss: Krauss is sure getting around this season. We selected him off waivers back in December, then after only 11 games of use traded him to the Rays for Kyle Winkler as recently on June 25th. The Rays used him in only 4 games and put him up on waivers two weeks later  when, yesterday, the Tigers claimed him as a player to step in for the injured Miggy Cabrera. Good luck with that, Detroit!..........

Player Vote: The AL Players see little Royalty in Kansas City. When given their chance to vote, which is used to determine the reserves, the AL players selected 8 position players and a DH, and not one of them was a Royal. "The winners of the AL player ballot: the Angels' Trout, Adam Jones of the Baltimore Orioles and Jose Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays in the outfield; Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers at first base; Jason Kipnis of the Cleveland Indians at second base; Jose Iglesias of the Tigers at shortstop; Josh Donaldson of the Blue Jays at third base; Stephen Vogt of the Oakland Athletics at catcher; and Prince Fielder of the Texas Rangers at designated hitter."..........

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Replacements: Now we play two more games before the All-Star break. First we have The Final Vote, pushing in one last player on each side as the fans choose an AL and NL player from a list of "oversights". Lots of hoopla there. And then there is the real game, where random players will find some reason to not participate, from health to family to playing frisbee, and into the pool of worthy unselected will go a phone call. Is that how Hector gets in, with maybe one of the starters needing to not play in order to satisfy the needed rotation of his team?..........

Rehabilitation: Only 7 times in his career has ARod finished with a higher OPS+ than he has right now. In every one of those 7 seasons he was an All-Star and received a significant percentage of MVP votes. When he started the season the MSM was lined up and taking numbers to see who could get in the lowest and cheapest shots. There was a lot of pent-up anger there. But ARod didn't tank as hoped, so 3 months later here is is, now under discussion as one of the biggest oversights............

High and Dry: So here I am sitting here in Southern California, planning to gut my yard and turn to Xeriscape, working to cut my water usage 25%. Again. Buckets in the shower are coming soon. if only there was some way to get more water. Where, oh where could that water be? Oh wait.  HERE IT IS!..............

Gumming up the Works: Billy Hamilton lost some of his candy playing the field the other day. Carlos Gomez noticed and, baseball being the great game that it is, a small moment of history is made............

Baseball is great, but Baseball is really stupid: Matthias Ellis up at Lookout Landing blisters MLBAM in an essay that dives directly to the heart of their fumbling and bumbling to join the modern world and let social media carry their water for them. For free. "We could spend time firing off adjectives like "draconian" and "obsolete," or even note that the person setting the agenda of the league at the time had never sent an email in his life, but I think it would be more productive to focus instead on the essence of the matter. That is, that while Major League Baseball is absolutely within their right to police digital content on social media, it exacerbates the core problem the league faces as its primary audience ages into an undesirable demographic: that is, an utter and complete failure to market their product to a youthful audience seemingly more interested in the NBA and the NFL....So to get this straight, Major League Baseball, which has commissioned a task force to find out how to better involve minority youth with the game, has decided the best way to go about solving this problem is by broadcasting shiny new commercials on a television network which costs families on average over $64 dollars per month to access. And this is the best way to get children excited about home runs and stolen bases?"..........

Flash Cards: Always fun, having seen this kind of thing before, we close with another version of baseball card animation...........

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