Mondolinks: Angels return home triumphant and Mike Scioscia has thoughts on the MVP award

The Angels are back home this week after a triumphant 4-2 road trip, and the season continues to march towards it’s fitting end. That was only the second winning road trip of the season, but hey...who’s counting? Anyway, at least the Halos have some momentum; momentum towards WHAT, exactly, I don’t know, but whatever.

Alright, so let’s kick off this week with some positivity, and nothing more positive than some good ol’ HaloLinks. Stirrups is away today, so I’m doing a quick fill-in. Let’s see what we got!

Johnny Giavotella cleared through waivers and is with the SLC Bees. If you check his social media profiles, you’ll see what it looks like when a fan favorite gets DFA’d...meaning, there’s a whole lot cryin’ and hopin’. Can’t blame ‘em.

Brett Oberholtzer made his Halos debut over the weekend. Is that a preview of 2017?

Mike Scioscia says he plans to continue using Fernando Salas as closer. With Huston Street done and Cam Bedrosian still aching, his choices are limited to begin with, but I Salas actually got the job done on the road recently, so could be worse? Wait, I shouldn’t have said that. Tempting fate.

Finally, we have Mike Scioscia talking with the media about the MVP of 2016, or more specifically, how he is one of the many baseball people who thinks the MVP should be on a contender. That would effectively hurt our very own Mike Trout’s chances at the award, of course, so cut it out Mike! No, really, this is silly and while I understand the thinking, if that’s what we’re going to do then let’s change it to Most Valuable Member of a Playoff Team award instead of MVP.

MLB Linkage

A Boston Red Sox fan did something really stupid. Are you surprised? Oh, and Harambe was involved.

The New York Times had an interesting story on the Hartford Yardgoats, a AA team that, due to stadium troubles in their hometown, had to play an entire season on the road.

With Colin Kaepernick on everybody’s minds this weekend, here’s a look back at Carlos Delgado’s somewhat similar protest.

Big Roidy takes a look at the five toughest pitchers he’s ever faced, as his career comes to a close. I wonder how many of them took PEDs. Just wondering, just sayin’.

Fivethirtyeight takes a dive into whether or not last year’s World Series run hurt the Mets’ starting rotation. Interesting stuff there.

What’d I miss? What’s the big story of the day, as we round out August and slowly trudge towards September?