WeekEnd HaloLinks: Ranging into Texas. To mess.

It's a slow day in Anaheim, so let's just jump to Make Some Mess in Texas Links:

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Everywhere In Baseball

Street Repair: The reason we saw Joe Smith close Wednesday night was because Huston Street has strained an oblique, done during warm-ups before the game. This puts Street onto the DL, and we should expect a Cam Bedrosian or an Al Aburquerque recalled to fill his spot...........

Down Shifting: The best part of this review of Garrett Richards and the change-up he uses more frequently this season, is to compare the speed of his slow stuff, 88-89mph, to that of Jered Weaver's fast stuff: 81-82mph. Cute, huh? Well, consider this: Garrett's change-up is 21mph faster than Weaver's curve. That's because Weaver's curve is nearing Little League speeds, already down around 67mph. And this makes Weave's success against Major League hitting this season all the more remarkable.............

Whither Wilson?: IModern sports science reveals that vertical jumping can help reveal a predilection among pitchers for arm troubles, following how the human body transfers force, Along the way, we have seen hundreds (hyperole!) of videos of C.J. Wilson doing vertical leaps. But Wilson is in his 9th month of recovery from his own arm trouble and still a ways off from getting back to the mound. So maybe CJ needed to have somebody actually study his box jumping antics instead of just posting them on social media..........

Big Game Hunting: Dee Gordon has been busted for PEDs violations. Yeah. That's plural. Not just one, but two banned substances. Gordon, who exploded in 2014 and 2015 - even capturing the NL batting crown last year - now has an explanation for his meteoric rise...........This is the kind of thing that keeps guys like Jake Arrieta under an ongoing cloud of suspicion, despite how much other may argue against that reaction..............

Not so Astro-nomical: Here is an interesting perspective I found on reddit yesterday. Prevailing wisdom is that the Astros leapt from the cellar and into the penthouse way ahead of schedule, and are now, perhaps, THE powerhouse in the AL West. But then there is this: "The Astros went 15-7 (.681) last April. Since then, over exactly 162 games, the Astros are 78-84 (.481)." Maybe not so ahead of anything, after all...........

Far Less Brave: Fans in Atlanta are learning that the tanking process to rapid success only works if the decision-makers taking advantage of the roster roll-over are good at their job of evaluating the talent that the franchise needs to roll into. The 2016 season seems to be revealing that the brain trust in charge might not be up to the task, with a risk of long-term failure in their future............

WTF?: This has me totally confused. Regardless of how early it is in the season, it is still true that the team getting the benefit of the most extra strikes called on behalf of their pitchers is the team with one of the worst records of the season. And the team getting the least such benefit has one of the best records in baseball. How could it be that an important function of obtaining run-preventing outcomes is defying expected results at both ends of the spectrum?.............

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The Duffle Bag

The Halos swept the Royals back to Kansas City with a three-game broomage beat-down. Well, that must have pissed off one mystery group back home............ This is what I have been bringing up for a few weeks now. Bryce Harper and the Nationals have been tearing up the 2016 season, but a lot of that has to do with the lack of quality in their early schedule..............Speaking of Harper, he is thinking of playing for USA in the WBC, but only if other top-quality players enlist and the USA has a chance to win.............Trevor Story has made some news for his home run rate as a rookie. He is also making some serious challenge to the rookie records for striking out...........The MLB Draft is about 6 weeks away. Time to start boning up on what Eppler might get to do with that 16th pick...........ne great reason for the inconvenience of extended netting would certainly be protection from the increasing rate of shatter bats............How to get a rise out of the overly-excitable: tweet out a celebration of the hot dog sandwich. Instead, we should all just ask this guy.............I have already posted that Cracker Jack is dropping the prize in their packages. Apparently, on the way off into extinction they are going to troll baseball.............Some presents we all wanted under our tree last Christmas need to be sent back for repairs. The DBacks are waiting for Zack Greinke to take off.  The Tigers are waiting for Justin Upton to show up.  And the Red Sox are waiting for David Price to stop doing his Joe Blanton 2013 impersonation..........Bryce Harper remains rather challenged at catching baseballs. And Jonathon Papelbon is not a fan............Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez is going to want to spend this offseason with Dodgers pitcher Kenta Maeda, learning how to throw that pitch that so warped Fernandez' mind................The sports world loves a dominant team. Until that dominant team remains dominant, however. Then sports fans hate them.

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