Jered Weaver Weekend HaloLinks

If we get lucky enough, Jered Weaver will return from back stiffness and give us one last turn as a starting pitcher under the Halo this weekend. A dugout wave will be insufficient for this man's career. A relief appearance, emptying somebody else's water bucket, is unworthy. Even if he has only a dozen pitches in him, do as Oakland did with Sonny Gray and run Weave out for the 1st inning. Let us give him the 5 minute standing O he deserves. Let him cry and hug his mom and dad and wife and child. Let him tip his cap and spin to all corners of the stadium. And do it on Sunday, when the joint will be full. At last. Full at last.

Father Time has caught up with Weaver The Younger. Only his own mental toughness and competitive drive has kept him on the mound the last two seasons. With an ERA+ of only ~80, he is now literally half the pitcher he was when he came into the league. And it's a major accomplishment that he succeeds even that well.  With his contract up, the business decision for Billy Eppler - for any G.M. - is how smart would it be to continue the risk of mixing Weaver's inner fire with his velocity gas? I'd like to think it's time to set aside the romance of Jered Weaver and turn that most important page. I'd like to think that we will have enough health in our starting rotation next season and could use that freed up salary elsewhere. I'd like to think that Weaver will be happy. Because, after all, "how much money do you really need in life?" I'd like to think all that, because I can't wrap my ahead around some of the alternatives, some of which are not so sweet.

Regardless of what anybody decides about Jered Weaver...and his future...and the future of the Angels, it's still the end of Weave's home discount contract. So I am dedicating this entire weekend to Weaver the Great.

Godspeed Jered Weaver. Thanks. And have all my WeekEnd Links:

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Everywhere In Baseball

Vin Scully's Final Game: Some among the younger set might not get it. Might not ever get it. But America is, indeed, losing a National Treasure. His own peers, who know better than we, know well enough for all of us that his retirement is a very big deal. Even a guy like me, who grew up a baseball fan in Southern California but NOT a fan of the Dodgers, knows that it has been Scully who has filled my summers on the beach, my summers in the yard, my summers at the BBQ. I hear Vin Scully and I hear American Baseball. I am not alone..........And when the Baseball world wakes up on Monday and The Legend will have gone quiet, the quiet will be his legend...........

There are dozens and dozens and dozens of kids in a minor league farm system. You don't get that system out of the sub-basement in just 10 months and 1 draft. That size of suck doesn't turn over that fast. So it's no surprise that improvement is not very noticeable yet. But Eppler needs to have the equivalent of a three home run game if this system is to start climbing before he gets fired out of sheer frustration............

Good news for Baseball, for the Angels, and for Mike Trout and his fiancee. X-rays on his plunked shoulder came back negative. Nothing broken. I'll bet it hurts like hell, though............

Here is a curiosity. A writer (although not one allowed to actually vote) spends a lot of time meandering his way into suggesting that Mike Trout is the AL MVP this year. It's his final reasoning that I find intriguing. "But I can't escape the specter of Trout. He has lost MVP awards for the wrong reasons before (2012, when Miguel Cabrera won the old-school Triple Crown of batting average, homers and RBI). Let's not let him lose for reasons he can't control, like who else is on his team and where that team finished." This is the first time I have witnessed the MSM realizing that they might be feeling guilty over their ongoing lapse...........

Mike Trout has already won one AL MVP Award. The Statliners. I'm not very sure that is any more significant that hte Halos Heaven Awards, but what the hell...........

The LAA youts are in Arizona for the organizational Instructional League work. The focus is on recent draft picks. I can't help but notice the big Dipoto Dinono: Roberto Baldoquin. Only that gargantuan signing bonus overpay, the thing keeping us out of the International market, is keeping a slash line of .198/.274/.233 in an active bus seat...........

Congratulations, Cleveland! You won your Division and earned yourself a day off before the playoffs begin. Bad news, Cleveland. You had to end up in Detroit as the season comes to a close. You got rained out. Because Detroit. And now you probably just lost your day off. And you would get to go back to Detroit. But here a hint: use only your September call-ups for pitching regardless of score, even if those are only position players. You are already in the playoffs. Chances are slim that home field advantage will still be out there to be had............But it could be worse, You could be the Tigers.............

Yep. This is getting all too common. Baseball in November?  What is this? Pro Hockey? It's a risk again this year. And it is so avoidable. Here is the list of obvious changes. As the author points out, it's all about the money. Every "fix" suggested takes money out of the pockets of MLB. But only because of the lack of imagination. For example, why NOT a couple of double-headers during the season? It only takes a couple of Double-Header Days each year to bring the schedule back out of November and conclude in October. Have everybody playing a double-header on the same day. Nobody has a rotation advantage. And make the day a festival event in each stadium, charging a 50% premium for each ticket. Do it during a weekday when few teams sell out anyway, and you make up the gate with the premium surcharge...........

Ok, Mr. Cincinnati Reds Manager, here is a new rule: know the rules. You just lost a real Major League Baseball game because you walked off at the end of the game when the umps were waiting for you to challenge a ground rule double play that they had just blown. Coming back out later when it's obvious that you should have been paying attention is not going to do it...............

Still checking in, because I promised to hold myself accountable come rain or shine. It's just that it is kind of embarrassing when it is all shine. But getting Carlos Gomez for roughly $110K (MLB minimum, pro-rated across games since August 24th) and then getting all this? That would not have hurt, at all. remember that Houston turned him loose completely. He was a total FA, able to be signed with Houston picking up the tab. And all it would have taken was a phone call............

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The Duffle Bag

If ever there were a bridge that would be targeted for burning jokes, it would be this one...........Poor KC Royals. Such underdogs. Such a stiff deck stacked against them. Life is not fair if the Royals don't get to play in the World Series every year.............h/t reddit: Barry Bonds's home run ball #756 at the HoF in all it's asterisk-y glory..............In case you cross paths with Harold Reynolds, or any of your beer buddies who still argue in favor of pitcher Wins, here is your best comeback. Facts are cold, cruel, bitches...........Blog content is not so formal that inside satire is easily understood. And in today's world, the audience has more power than the content creators. So it's easy to do it very wrong. Easier even, than avoiding it in the first place by not doing it at all.................Another pitfall: deleting your stupid posts just because you have the power to do so. It's not fair, because the anonymity of one's readership allows them to be gloriously wrong and simply evaporate (TheBigTizzle, anyone?), melting into anybody else with an infinite number of fresh starts. But life ain't fair............Wait. Why is this meaningful? It's not like any of these teams are the Texas Rangers or anything, right?. (By the way, it might be possible for the Angels to add to their total this weekend.)...........Wither Ryan Howard now? Whither anyone who cares?.............Maybe Howard can join up with ARod and create his own sports channel?..........True Confession: when I saw the article title to this piece on BP, I eagerly clicked over to read all about Brooksbaseball having collated defensive StatCast data...........

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Draft Tracker

Updated tracker.

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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