Thor'sLinks: Angels go HoFer again.

I am not a stupid person. I am well aware that only Jim Edmonds was even good enough to be a longshot to make it as far as a second ballot. So it's not that it's any sort of surprise. But I just don't like the annual reminder. We have had some pretty good ballplayers wear the Halo. We have had some pretty good teams. We had one team get hot at just the right moment and bring ultimate glory to all. But this organization has a really piss poor track record when it comes to individual greatness. (This list is so sad. It's also outdated by a year now, since Randy Johnson went in already as a DBack. Griffey is Seattle's first, taking them off the goose egg list.) Most of the great players had their greatest years elsewhere (Rickey Henderson, anybody?). A couple carried away an insufficient love of the franchise to consider honoring the Halo in Cooperstown (although Vlad Guerrero appears to be waffling a bit, and even at that the 2017 and 2018 ballots are going to be loaded, meaning that Vlad may require years of attrition to get in). I am left hoping that the One Great Thing this organization has done, which miraculously happens to be well on his way to The Greatest Thing In The Modern Era, continues on his glorious career arc and that the people sitting in the important offices in Anaheim are not so stupid as to F%&K that up. And, after the last few years, I am somewhat less optimistic about that last part.

But, here, have some Stirrups Is Freezing His Ass Off Links:

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Everywhere In Baseball

HoF: My work here is done, isn't it? I did all the run-up, and by now all the Hall of Fame news is stale. Short and quick, Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza are in. Griffey was dropped off of 3 ballots, and ended up with the highest vote percentage in history with 99.3%. (And he joins his dad in the Hall, something I don't see anybody talking about: a father/son Hall of Fame team.) Piazza has learned to hate the Dodgers and will be delirious to go in as a Met. Jeff Bagman and Trevor Hoffman are set up well to make the cut in future votes. Tim Raines is closing in but running out of time. And all the ex-Halos failed to meet the minimum and will drop off all future ballots. There. Done. I'd like to go into the story behind the three voters who didn't vote for Griffey, but so far they remain in hiding and, well, all they are going to say is that they used that vote for somebody else who needed it more...........

Oops: The Hall of Fame webmaster got caught getting a little ahead of himself..........

Old, Bitter & Sad: Nothing is worse than Type A overachievers well past their prime and now out of the limelight, grousing and bickering from high up on their own moral saddles. Roy Halladay is taking potshots at Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. And Roger Clemens is shooting back..........

Duty-Free: The one team that could afford to sign Alex Gordon without the added expense of a draft pick, the Royals, have formalized the signing. Gordon remains in Kansas City, and for an AAV of $18mm, and for less than 5 years (4, actually). Those should be do-able numbers in Anaheim. Should be..........

Where there's a Will: The Texas Rangers, not too far behind the Angels in payroll, even with the Hambone subsidy, are not fearful of addressing their outfield by going after the likes of Justin Upton.............

Truism: This is a fact. All this Free Agent talent has to sign somewhere, and soon..............

Biz: A couple of things from Awful Announcing. First, MLB is opening up the streaming doors to China. Nothing like adding a few billion potential eyeballs to get the attention of web advertisers. MLBAM is going to make owners, very, very rich..........Second, the 800-pound gorilla of online gaming, Activision/Blizzard, is expanding into sports, adding fresh competition for those same MLBAM eyeballs..........

The Latest From Anaheim: The daily breaking news remains that the Angels are in the market for an upgrade to the outfield, but Arte Moreno is not authorizing the necessary costs associated with cleaning off the residue of his own fingerprints. Yeah, I know, it sounds a lot like yesterday's story, and that of the day before, and the day before that, etc., etc., etc. I bring it up not because the information itself is newsworthy, but that I find it newsworthy that they feel they need to keep repeating it..........

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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 Thursday...for beer...

Friday/Saturday/Sunday: Nada...Really. We are not going to see much crank up again in California until mid-January. But I keep checking!

Stay safe, everyone!

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