MondoLinks: Who's done? Street.

Once every 20 years, like clockwork, the Comet Roidsux roams over the Sunday afternoon skies above Anaheim and dumps a shit-load of runs into a 9th-inning frame. Afterward off to their bus ride they go, heading to the airport thinking themselves world-beaters after having stolen one cheap-assed victory.

And in their wake they leave the crumpled, ashen corpse of once-notable closer surrounded by hordes of bitter, angry, frustrated Angels fans.

Sometimes Comet Roidsux does this when the stakes are astronomical, and sometimes they do it when it doesn't mean shit.

Yesterday didn't mean shit. Not really. Not to a team that trots out The Tim Lincecum Charity Ball. (Something that is going backwards in quite a hurry, by the way.) Not unless there was some major deal on the table to pick up a gaggle of top-notch prospects in exchange for some farm-wealthy team desperate for the masterful closer skills of Huston Street. One that just got cancelled..?

Nah.

On the upside, Tyler Skaggs is rockin' it. But it occurs to me that by the time we get all these killer young arms healthy and in the rotation at the same time, they will be free agents.

Have some Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Links:

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Everywhere In Baseball

Blue Street on the Hill: So here we are. Huston Street barfed up a loss right on the verge of the non-waiver trade deadline. He wasn't very useful yesterday, which makes him not very useful today.  Days like yesterday make those moments when Street climbs up on his high hordes about being THE CLOSER all the more galling. Dude, if you want to be THE guy who has The Only One Job, when you get the job, do it...........

Out of Left Field: Over the weekend, the Angels DFA'd Daniel Nava and and Craig Gentry. So they are short-circuiting the circus platoon plan, one which has been marching towards historic offensive lows. Too bad that we don't have a productive left fielder to focus on. Not like the Pirates do. They have Matt Joyce, and Joyce is doing pretty damned good again...........

Fun Facts: By the way, some fun factoids over the past week......Yunel Escobar is only the second leadoff hitter to get on base 6 times in a 9-inning game.....Rick Porcello is the first BoSox pitcher to throw a complete-game win in Anaheim since 1996.....The Angels' Thursday walk-off was the first time the Angels had a come-from-behind win via an error since 1984......

Trade Winds: Recall my link last week about how players try and deal with mid-season trades? Yeah, case in point: Jonathan Lucroy. Lucroy refused to waive his no-trade and be sent to Cleveland. "When you’re dealing with life-altering decisions like this, there are lots of different factors that come into play. Mostly it’s family, and the other half of that is your future in this game, your career. There are a lot of things to take in, and whenever those things don’t line up, decisions have to be made that might be tough, but that’s the way it’s got to be."..........Then again, it was destination Cleveland. But beware, Lucroy. Your no-trade clause is a limited one. Your bosses might now be pissed off themselves and send you elsewhere in a hurry.........

Catch This: The CURRENT Cleveland catcher,  Chris Gimenez, must have been extra ticked off all day yesterday at the thought that the Indians were working their asses off to replace him with Jonathan Lucroy. He got himself into a major hissy fit with Bllly Butler. Butler wasn't having it. Actually, it looks to me more like Butler didn't like Gimenez' attempts to snake strikes with pitch framing. Anyway, the next thing you know, Butler jacks a home run with a vengeance. And then he leaves a firm message behind for Gimenez with a decent bat flip............

Eras and Eons: So the Yankees are rebuilding. That marks the end of an era? One where a big market team dumps a ton of cash in the free agent market and buys a lot of World Series hoopla? I guess it does if you are a writer whose world view fails to extend as far away as the north side of Chicago...........

Maddon-ing: Joe Maddon can be the luckiest dude in the world sometimes. Check this out, when Maddon pulls a highly unusual move of taking one of his pitchers off the mound but not out of the game, hides the pitcher out in left field, and then watches that pitcher make a great play.............

Delay: Do you remember that Matt Shoemaker/Raul Mondesi, Jr. interference-non-interference craptastrophe last week? Yeah, it was actually much worse than all that. Seems like absolutely nobody was prepared to figure out what to do when that happened. Not the players, not the umpires, not the replay crew, certainly the fans in attendance, and most definitely not the broadcast production team.............

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The Duffle Bag

If this young lady can hit a curve ball, sign her. She already has shown a better glove than we have been platooning out in left field............Stealing home. Always cool. Even when it's a cakewalk like this one..........By the way, that wasn't the only odd run scored yesterday............Oh, and by the way, that wasn't even the only TWO weird runs scored............Sounds like MLB players are getting a little tired of the Cardinal Way, too............Dan Haren's still got it............Wouldn't it have just been the cherry on the 2016 shit cake to see Mike trout injured by a pitch? Not just any pitch. A ceremonial first pitch...........Oooh. Paps get smeared. This is a 180 from the time just one year ago that Papelbon came in and overturned Drew Storen's ownership of the closer role...........Attention people living in Michael Young's neighborhood. Write this down for Halloween.............All I know is that Wilmer Flores is not Derek Jeter. If Wilmer Flores WAS Derek Jeter, the umpires come to a much more New York favorable conclusion..........ESPN still working to turn baseball into an arcade game. Something that would make for better action shots between all the yelling they do.............Buyers AND sellers beware: with so little time left, last minute panicking can make for hugely embarrassing trades.............Science Project for you who have more time than I do tonight. I'll get back to this later because I suspect it will educate me on PITCHf/x in ways that bother me more than a little. But for the rest of you, read it and report back............That clubhouse cancer Yeonis Cespedes guy who wasn't worth a shot? Yeah, well, not so much...........This Lego stuff is starting to get out of hand. These builders need something productive to do with the air they are consuming............

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(Nah. You are not going to get off that easily. You people were smoked by the Friday graph, so here it is again, but with clues. The first clue you got Friday, that the colors are meaningful. Lower to the right is fantastic. Higher to the left is horrible. And the blue dot is Troy Glaus.)

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