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Buster Olney interviews Billy Eppler, the podcast being here. And his first takeaway is how impressed he is with the progress of modern sports medicine, specifically the witchcraft that has been done to heal Garrett Richards. He is also impressed with J.C. Ramirez, with a look towards how possible it is to stretch him out far enough to make him a starter. There is also an observation on Martin Madonaldo and Albert Pujols. But, best of all, listen in to how awed he is of Mike Trout's pure athleticism as applied to mastering golf on the fly. Since he predicts Trout to become a scratch golfer after his baseball days are done, could the PGA see Trout on The Senior Tour?
[By the way, what beautiful timing. Just one day after sharing some comments in the MondoLinks about how it is that the daily Links show up at 4AM Pacific time, the very next day they fail to post until 7:30AM PDT. When I submitted the post to the scheduler my browser blew up. It took some time to get back in and I saw all my content and everything looked Ok, but the publish time was changed. I missed that. Oops! It screwed things up so badly DesignerGuy failed to guess the daily photo, and the Angels refused to play a game.]
Enjoy the results of a Day of Idleness Links:
A Little Bit of Angels News
Buster Olney interviews Billy Eppler, the podcast being here............
In the world of projected strength of schedules for the upcoming 2017 regular season, the Angels have one of the tougher roads in the American League...........
And when it comes to how we feel about our chances, well, not so good. Pretty much matching the challenge of strength of schedule. But seeing how little optimism we LAA fans have in our team, I wonder about the testing methodology? How did they find their "baseball fans"? And how did the interview go? Was this three guys doing a pub crawl in Vegas? Are they mining Facebook?............
Mike Scioscia's hitting coach ain't the only person happy with the LAA offense so far this spring. Mike Scioscia himself is happy with the offense, too...........
Yeah, if you are a Fantasy player, you might find some inexpensive gold in Albert Pujols, yet again............
Oh yes. Danny Espinosa is a lot like David Eckstein. At least in one aspect. Eckstein's career Fielding Percentage is .982. Espinosa is sitting at .983...........
Jesse Chavez has a lot going for him by signing with the Angels. Not the least of which is quality time with his family...........
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Everywhere In Baseball
Again, all you need to keep up with the WBC can be found here............And if you are an MSM writer assigned to cover the WBC, the WBC becomes the most important thing everybody should be interested in so they read your shit. And all the best players better agree with you, too, and participate. Otherwise those players must be hating on America...........
Cubs players ain't happy that there are new anti-hazing rules throughout the MLB. And I'm thinking that before the Cubs got to be any good, which was just a couple of years ago, nobody cared what the Cubs players thought............
We have had some of these ideas around here, but let's dive deeper into the new oddities that have been made possible with the new IBB rule...........
If you want to go and start changing the MLB rules, even to try and improve the fan experience, then let's get serious about changing the damned rules. These are easy ones............
In this long form, follow along as the author traces a parallel between the historical arc of chess and that of baseball, and the impact that computers are having on both. The TL;DR summary: stats are going to alter baseball into a more exciting sport than we have even today...........
Yasiel Puig had his house robbed. Most reports say that he lost $500,000 in jewelry, but they are all quoting TMZ. The LA Times is saying that it was closer to $170,000.....Whatever the amount, Puig doesn't want to talk about it...........
Sports Biz: The ESPN layoffs appear to be the on-air talent. Sure. Let's not take a whack at all the staffers who are coming up with the lame ideas for content in the first place............The better news is that Fox Sports One, the channel that has been trying to out-trash ESPN, is losing viewers at an even faster clip than ESPN............But even more alarming, viewership is dropping all over the TV spectrum, which will drain advertising revenue rates along with it.............
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The Duffle Bag
The Padres took batting practice yesterday, and got caught messin' with the bees. This does happen to baseball teams without a point............Why is split-screen TV such a big deal? We have had it for decades. Now, magic would be multiple full-screen images on the same TV, different goggle settings allow different viewers to see different HD video imagery............Justin Verlander here, to remind you all that "ST...doesn't mean s***". Which is a good outlook to keep when your team is spending ST blowing chunks..........How many years will it take before the Cubs finally finish remodeling Wrigley Field? And is this extended process something we have to expect in our future?.............Speaking of our stadium, how the hell they manage to put back together such a beautiful playing surface so soon after having it abused by monster trucks is beyond me. And don't tell my wife how productive those guys are with garden tools.............Andrelton Simmons has a woodpecker problem. Who knew?............Can't make it to Phoenix for Spring Training? Get a taste in this 360 degree video view of the Cubs camp...........
R.I.P. Robert Osborne, a person who has led me on many a journey into Hollywood film history...........
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Halo-Oppo-ly
Week 5 of our Chance/Community Chest cards!
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