HumpLinks: Nolasco grand. Marte slams A's

The Halos continue to pound the opposition hard on the way to the end of this season of misery. 8 wins out of their last 11 games, against Toronto, Texas, Houston and now Oakland. Or, heck, you could go back to September 9th and see that LAA is 7-7 against playoff contenders. If only we had had...

Oh, well.

Ricky Nolasco went through 18 2/3 innings on shutout baseball. It actually was better than that, being about 22-23 innings on the mound without runs scoring, but he got tagged for the two runs allowed that Deolis Guerra inherited back on September 12th. Much better than we had bargained for, yeah?

And, Jefry Marte?? Why not? Why the hell not.

It's Wednesday. Have some Lucky Links:

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Everywhere In Baseball

Player Notes: Tyler Skaggs looks to possibly make one last start this year...........Albert Pujols sat out with a sore foot, might miss a few games, if not all the rest...........Garrett Richards is making another step back to health, with the next step being a facing of live batting..........

The LAA starting pitcher career of Jered Weaver is about over, if not actually over. So this article from Jeff Fletcher about how weird things are for the Weave is getting a lot of attention around the Internet. "The Angels certainly won’t be able to decide if they want Weaver back until more of their offseason plans crystallize. And Weaver won’t know for sure if he wants to pitch until he knows what the choices are. A Southern California native and a father of two small children, Weaver would be unlikely to go pitch someplace like Tampa just for the sake of keeping a uniform."...........

Gee. What will voters do if neither Trout NOR Altuve NOR Donaldson make the playoffs? Does that make things a lock for Betts?...........Hey, let's look at this Betts guy. Good player, great season. In fact, the 13th greatest season ever by any Red Sox player, and we are talking about a rather storied franchise. Oh, wait. We are measuring Betts by bWAR, where he sits at 9.2. And Mike Trout sits at 10.5, which would be tied with Carl Yastrzemski at 5th all-time, and with games left to be played. Trout's season should end up ranking 3rd on this all-time list. A brilliant finish would put him 2nd............

Voters love round numbers. We have been talking about the nice, digestible round numbers of 30 home runs and 100 RBIs and 30 Stolen Bases. But with his driving in of Kole Calhoun in the first inning last night, Mike Trout is one RBI away from being only the 12th layer in history with a 100 hit, 100 RBI, 100 Runs Scored season before the age of 25...........

The Miami Marlins suffered a tragedy with the loss of Jose Fernandez. It turns out that it could have been much, much worse............

One of our SBN Mothership stations, Beyond The Boxscore which is dedicated to modern baseball analytics, is losing their two Co-Managing Editors, effective immediately after the World Series. Just going back to their normal lives. But BTB is hiring, if anyone out there is interested...........

Don't forget that we will need a new CBA bargained and agreed upon between MLB and the Player's Association. We aren't hearing much about it, and that is somewhat worrisome itself. It means that there might be a break between Union leadership and the rank and file (who are driven by the agents who are paid to know about these things and represent their interests). The agents know that there are serious player compensation issues to be discussed, and rubber stamps are not acceptable...........

We are back to a lack of parity in baseball, and it made predictions a lot easier for forecasters. Except for fly balls. Exit velocities are screwing up predictions concerning fly balls and home runs. And buried there is this nugget that should speak to Jered Weaver's future: "Jered Weaver is allowing the sixth-highest fly-ball rate among pitchers with more than 100 innings, and he’s been so bad that the most advanced pitching metric, Baseball Prospectus’ deserved run average, thinks he was worth almost six wins less than a replacement-level pitcher."..........

Since we are taking about things that happen to baseballs, here is a new primer on spin rate..............

Hang in there, Pakistan, you have more of a baseball team than I do. Loving the game that much is 99% of the battle, especially in the land of Cricket...........

A.J. Cole was fined and suspended for being an asshat. It would be cool if Cole appeals (he is), and that appeal process delays his suspension (it will), and that suspension would then be applied during the playoffs (it won't)..........

The Nats are among the teams rolling into the playoffs bemoaning their injury bug. Catcher Wilson Ramos tore his ACL and is out for the rest of the season. Nats fans (like Cleveland fans) can STFU. Their players stayed healthy for long enough to get them INTO the playoffs. Try losing all that production in MAY!!.............

Literally just days after this writer pleaded for people to stop injecting themselves into sporting events by arranging for public displays of their proposal moment, This guy goes and does his public performance at Yankee Stadium, and the Jumbotron was right there to show the world that he had lost his ring. (He found it.)..........

O.co Coliseum: where the ghost of Al Davis rises to swat home run balls back into outfielder gloves............

Tim Tebow is playing pretend baseball. He is set to try his hand at real baseball next..........

DraftKings is augering in...........

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Draft Tracker

Updated tracker. We are now doing this daily for the final week. The Angels are still in 8th, but the percentage point differential between 8th, 9th and 10th is nearly gone.

The 2016 slot and pool monies were found here.

The Michael Jimenez Study is found here.

The HBT 2014 Study is found here.

The HBT 2012 Study is found here.

The Sky Andrecheck 2009 Study is found here.

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