TuesdoLinks: Homer-ed Bound, we wish they was

Welcome home, road warriors! Welcome to the stadium of the SoCal marine layer, capable of suppressing power numbers with a pitcher-friendly cool-temp moisture phenomenon. And through which, apparently, it's now possible for Angels' bats to punch holes through this weather pattern when the opposition is merely an equally unsuccessful campaigner.

Home runs by Mike Trout, Albert Pujols (who now is tied at 9th all-time with Frank Robinson), C.J. Cron, Jefry Marte and Kole Calhoun rained down upon the the outfield faithful like batting practice, and flooded the scoreboard with runs. Matt Shoemaker, stung by a 2-run home run himself in the first inning (screwing with the ERA trend tracker I was running just to piss me off) and then settled in to hold Cincinnati down as the Angels cruised to an 9-2 home opening win.

Have some Happy-Jack Links:

Everywhere In Baseball

Nava More: Daniel Nava is no longer our issue, and he will become a concern for us only when we face the Royals. Nava has been traded to Kansas City. Coming back is PTBNL and cash..........

Bed-Ridden: Cam Bedrosian is still debating how to handle the blood clot in his arm, surgery of blood thinners. Man, I'm real glad I am not a doctor. Sounds like a Hobson's Choice to me...........

Trout Porn: We are in full MVP conjecture season now. Jeff Passan, a huge Mike Trout promoter for years now, is compiling his list. Of most interest to me at this point is how Passan points out Trout's past. he displays the bWAR leaders of the past 5 seasons in both leagues and shows us how Trout has been steady in his rule over the AL, and how historic that is. So I wondered, is Mike Trout our Larry Holmes, a solid athlete in a time of very weak competition? Less than a minor fraction of a second later, the answer came quickly. Oh hell, no. We actually have some pretty strong talent in the AL these days and that talent is rising. Just take a look at the other MVP candidates over the past few years and see just how crowded things are becoming. It's also rather important to know that WAR is built to equalize out all players over all generations so, no, Trout is not our Larry Holmes. He is the real deal, and would be in any era...........

Scioscialisms: Yesterday Josh linked to Mike Scioscia commenting that he believes an MVP should come from a contender. This is what Sosh was quoted as stating this past Sunday.  It's fair to point out that this is just Sosh being extremely consistent, since this is the same position he held as far back as September of 2013. So we should give Sosh credit for holding strong to his beliefs, even if we don't agree to them. Except, however, for one minor point. It was just a couple of months ago that Sosh was saying "I should say he’s the best ballplayer, the best ballplayer a lot of us have ever seen take the field. Yeah, period." Hmmm. "Period." As in "doesn't matter where in the standings the team he plays for finishes their season." Nope. Not consistent.. No credit given. Just Sosh pulling opinions out of his ass...........

MV Pee: FanGraphs looks at Kris Bryant, currently clobbering the NL in WAR (not to mention Trout, although last night's performance will sure help), and runs a counter-argument against his MVP status. Hilariously (IMHO), some pretty decent advanced metrics are used to demonstrate how Bryant is "un-clutch", which is just the kind of thing that voters care about a lot but, ironically, those are the same voters who will fail to see how un-clutch Bryant is precisely because of those advanced metrics............

Jurisprudence: An attending fan is suing the Brewers for her injury from a foul ball during batting practice. I'd like to go old-school and rant on about how billions of people have observed baseball games in person at their own risk over the decades, but these are new times and standard of safety are different (and in my linked article is another link to a suit trying to force MLB into netting from foul pole to foul pole). I think it's only a matter of time before judges no longer push society to something time-honored, and flip us all to that new era which has mandated ankle-breaking pads on sidewalks and parking lots everywhere. So I have another suggestion. Why not have MLB recognize that the only way to maintain fan safety is to provide their content uniformly and unilaterally in such a way that fans don't actually have to attend in person. My suggestion would be video streaming. MLB should consider such a thing, in an unlimited fashion............

Sports Biz: Hey cable-cutters, on your way out the door ESPN is rushing to gouge you every single step. ESPN per-subscribers charges have risen 120% just since 2007. And their current rate is light years beyond what other content providers charge. All that for screaming head TV.............

Go-Go No-Go: (Special service for Downing Rules.) Carlos Gomez, getting dumped by Houston and landing with Texas, started off with a bang, hitting a 3-run home run in his first at-bat as a Ranger. He later has made a couple of nice plays on defense. But that home run? Ummm...yeah...about that. It's the only hit he has as a Ranger so far, now with a slash line of .045 / .045 / .182............

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The Duffle Bag

Tim Tebow already has at least one contract offer, from a Venezuelan team. And you better hope that he takes it, because the Angels are going to be out there today sniffing around at the Tebow Flying Circus...Larry Bowa is unhappy with the Tebow circus all the way around. He is right that Tebow is mocking the game - ONLY IF TEBOW FAILS. If Tebow succeeds, Bowa is making a mockery of Tebow........Adrian Beltre knows how to make baseball fun again (Pat Venditte is ambidextrous).............As for making baseball fun again, count Yeonis Cespedes as being on board............Little League umpires seem to have thicker skin, and better skills at managing a game, than do MLB umpires............Yeah. This is rich. Baseball finances are total bullshit. Laughably so.............Leave it to the French to make apply themselves whole hog via some monumental misunderstanding of history..........In the entire history of Major League Baseball, only two players have started their careers with 5 seasons of 25 home runs and 100 runs scored. And you are watching both of them..........Dan Haren is still living life in the laughter lane............

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