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While Jerry Dipoto is busy up in Seattle making a massive number of moves on the checker board, Billy Eppler is methodically slicing his way up the MLB food chain one chess move at a time. Late yesterday, it was discovered that Eppler had signed Luis Valbuena to a 2-year deal. Valbuena is a left-handed hitting infielder. Recent vintage he has been pulling a nice OBP, and he has some pop. And his defense is (compared to the balance of the 2016 Halos) pretty solid. (2015/2016 Valbuena was 0.2/0.3, which puts him right in the mix with the other LAA infielders not named Andrelton Simmons. But here is the important part: Eppler not only has left-handed power added to his lineup, he also now has lineup options, and some decent talent to offer other teams to do more upgrades, AND some flexibility in roster roadmaps.
Take some Victory Links:
A Little Bit (more) of Angels News
Rod Carew recovering nicely from heart and kidney transplants. Modern medicine is miraculous............
ST right around the corner. Let's take a look at where things stand with our bullpen...........
Trout Porn. Forecasting Mike's future, and all the possibilities s therein. Only if he immediately morphs into Yuniesky Betancourt does he avoid induction into the HoF. There is a paragraph in that article that will be the best thing you read all day. Too long to copy over here, it involves The Anointed rising out of the Peruvian Amazon. Click. read the whole thing. Come back here later. I won't be offended (and the SBN click gods will think we have twice as much traffic as we would otherwise!).........
Oh boy! And open invitation! The SBN Minor League blog is going to review our farm system. (I expect that they will be heavily swayed by Keith Law and give us a wee bit of praise.) But in there the author asks for discussion, and among his discussion points is the Trade Mike Trout boner. contagious_arc has already jumped in with both feet and dumped all over the page. Feel obligated to follow suit...........
Juan Graterol is back. Poor dude. I hope he travels well. We signed him lat year at this time and he gave us 9 games all year. We waived him in November and the Reds claimed him. The Reds waived him in December and the DBacks claimed him. The DBacks waived him in January we claimed him. This guy is doing more waiving than a parade princess..........
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Everywhere In Baseball
There are still some folks smarting from how low Larry Walker polled yesterday. I used my trusty slash line calculator spreadsheet and some BBR info and determined that Walker, outside of Coors Field, had a career split of .282/.372/.501 with an OPS of .873. So, in response, I would ask how many of those people questioning the result are voting for J.D. Martinez as a Hall of Famer?...........
We Internetians are wrestling our sport away from the cold, feeble, mustard-stained grip of the ancient order. And we are changing the world. Chalk up Tim Raines as one of our first victories..........Well, Internetians with a pocket calculator, at least...........
MLB release game start times for the 2017 season. I am sure that if I threw away an hour or so I could find the part that impacts the Angels. Something about getaway day start times...........
Next year is not a lock for Vlad, because the 2018 incoming class is easily going to replace those players who are off this year's ballot for whatever reason..........For example, look at this projection. Lots of folks were thinking it was going to be 5 this year, and it was only 3 - closer to the norm. If it's only 3 again next year, and Chipper Jones and Jim Thome are gimmes?...........
Sorry, Joe Posnanski. I love you, man, but this is really flawed logic. Vlad did not get elected to the Hall yesterday. You want to use that as a reason to get the Rule of 10 changed. You pull up a couple of stats about how the people who cast all 10 votes spent their options and how, if they had 11 or 12, enough of them might have pushed Vlad over the top. Read my Links from yesterday, Joe. I can count 38 voters who failed to vote for Vlad, each of whom had AT LEAST 1 more vote to cast. They lived within The Rule of 10 and could have easily elected him. Hell, less than half of them could have gotten him in. You don't need more votes. You need better voters...........
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Trade Winds
Victor Rojas loves his Kansas City Chiefs. Victor Rojas is not a fan of his coach, Andy Reid. I am not an asshat Pats fan. I shall not troll Victor, as tempting as it may be..........
The Orioles might be realizing that they aren't likely to get that compensation pick after all. Surprisingly, Mark Trumbo might be getting north of $10 million per year out of the O's, for a 3-year deal...........
The Marlins seem destined to trade away their farm in an effort to field 25 starting pitchers. They are already up to 8, now that they sent 3 prospects to the Reds for Dan Straily..........
The Duffle Bag
This is cute. reddit member wanders down the street, "discovers" Ebbets for the rest of us...........Hey cord cutters, rejoice! NBC regional live streaming of baseball coming with the 2017 season. Not for Americ'a second largest television market, mind you, but baby steps. Bay area fans are already giddy, though.........Tim Raines putting it on Jeff Bagwell. Pretty sweet take..........Rob Neyer using Simba to troll the ignorant............Yeonis Cespedes can be rated the best LF in baseball, only because it's too easy to consider Kris Bryant not a LF...........How sad that the writers have all the access to spew their "reasoning", but it's Jose Canseco who is the voice of reason............Curt Shilling is the gift that keeps on giving...........(h/t to UniWatch) Watch straps made from used baseball gloves. So that got me looking around. Nothing new there, after all. Like, not even close...........
Halo-Oppo-ly
Alright! The properties have all been put out there. This week, lets give you the tokens. I will give you 10 of them, total.
(Little did I know when I started out that Hasbro was holding a public contest to define the official game tokens. Results to announced in March.)
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