:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54164433/GettyImages-666618496.0.jpg)
My personal rule as a baseball fan - to stay and watch the game I came to enjoy all the way to the final out - exists for yesterday. The Halos scored 7 runs in the 9th inning to sweep the Mariners 10-9. But, realistically, the Angels could have been up 11-9 with a runner on second base and STILL threatening except that the umpires called the mercy rule on the Seattle embarrassment once the score flipped. For all we know, the LAA momentum had even more runs in it.
But let's be satisfied with the runs they bothered to allow. Because we have bigger things to consider. A win such as yesterday is the kind of things that creates magic. It inspires players to bond, and believe. It builds a personality. And it sounds a warning to the rest of baseball and the scribes who pontificate upon it that there is something brewing in Anaheim that was unexpected. And it could be troublesome.
There are no guarantees in life, and much less so in baseball. This great moment could flash out in an instant, leaving little more than a fading after-image of optimism on the retinas of our devotion. But, on the other hand, it might also be Day One of something quite fantastical.
So stop wasting your time paying attention to other things.
Have some Boom-Goes-The-Broom Links:
A Little Bit of Angels News
A couple of factoids about yesterday. The last time the Angels scored 7 runs in the bottom of a 9th inning was April 15, 1994..........And, since 2011, teams leading by 6 runs or more heading into the 9th inning had been, before yesterday, 2,529 and 1.............And have some StatCast breakdown of yesterday, just because baseball now can..........
A good weekend to be Mike Trout. On Saturday he gets his Silver Slugger Award. AND he gets his AL MVP award, AND he hits the game-winning 2-run home run. AND he scores the winning run in the epic come-back Sunday...........He took Felix Hernandez to the maximum at-bat in Hernandez's illustrious career before succumbing..............
Trout Porn: Outrageously Consistent at Being Outrageously Consistent...............And the media was a-twitter with Trout. The MLB PR machine was cranking stuff out all weekend.......How Trout's parents raised Mike...........How Mike is less interested in his own goals than he is interested in the goals of his team..........And how Torii Hunter is a dad like us, focusing attention on Trout for the sake of a child's long-term memories........How Billy Beane is pained as a GM to experience and admire the best player he's ever seen. (Grant Green, Billy!).......
Andrelton Simmons, Spiderman. I am most impressed that Simmons was certain he still had any play at all. Mere mortals would just catch the errant throw and be happy to hold runners from further advancement.........
Blake Parker is living large, hanging out in the Angel Stadium parking lot in his 5th wheel. This is what his model looks like. But if he will soon be moving it to a lot in Newport Beach, there's no reason to be feeling sorry for him...........
The Angels are off to a .980 fielding percentage. It's way too damned early to make any big deal out of that. Although, if this were season end, it would be the lowest since the .979 in 2006. And only 2000, the first of Mike Scioscia's tenure, would be even lower. But Sosh see good things. He sees this group as "the best defense in his 18 years with the Halos"............
Here comes Tyler Skaggs......And here comes Mike Napoli, with his .091 batting average and .273 SLG...............
______________________________
Everywhere In Baseball
Troy Tulowitzki is kind of an overly sensitive guy. Are the Blue Jays going to go running around the league making an enemy out of everybody?............Of course, Tulo did find a way to embarrass himself further. Kind of a brain fart right there.............
This is the second best thing that I found in the world of baseball yesterday. The Pirates have a new right field scoreboard, and with it they play games............
Fair warning to everyone. MLB is now using StatCast to measure pitches and not the PITCHF/x system. The StatCast system measures pitch velocity at release point instead of the PITCHF/x point of 55 feet from the mound. Everything is now going to be reporting faster than before. It's not the pitchers, it's the reporting. So we now have two eras: the PITCHF/x Decade, and now everything else.
Oh no no no no no............Rob Manfred is open to the idea of restricting the use of relief pitchers in a game. All in his hope to get games back to 2.5 hours. But if a team is forced to leave a pitcher on the mound who is clearly outclassed that game, would that not make for more runs in that game and, therefore, LONGER games? Yesterday, for example, the game went 3 hours and 27 minutes. And the Mariners needed every single one off them to lose............
Shohei Ohtani is coming. Wouldn't it be cool if he were to land here on the west coast, and force everybody to whip out their telescopes and track the twin stars orbiting each other in the distant time zone for the 15 or so years?............
Hrm. If Buster Olney is using Yadier Molina as his reason for proclaiming that baseball needs to clean up its foreign substance rules, shouldn't Buster Olney have reported first that he has proof that Yadier Molina is using a forcing substance? (By the way, clips from more recent Cards' games show Molina STILL has that hole in his chest protector.)...........
I don't understand. How is it that the Angels have produced so few of the players on the 2017 Opening Day rosters? It's such a puzzling mystery. What could possibly be the cause for this enigma?..............
The Cubs are rolling with an unearthly promo schedule this season, now that they are World Series Champions. This leads us to one, and only one, natural conclusion: the rise of Advanced Swagalytics................
If you are a prisoner of Charter cable, you might be on the verge of being blocked away from everything Fox.............
______________________________
Season Update
The Royals were the last team to pick up a win in the 2017 season. They claimed it Friday night, at 10:22 PM local time in Houston.....The Orioles were the last team to lose a game. That happened at 4:57 PM local time in New York City......There are still 9 teams which have yet to win at home, 13 teams which have yet to lose at home, 10 teams which have yet to win on the road, and 9 teams that have to lose on the road. Keep in ind that a LOT of teams have yet to play on the road, or at home..........
______________________________
The Duffle Bag
Tim Tebow hist a SECOND home run..............And, suddenly, Tim Tebow has an admirable swing?...........What the heck is this? Cubs WS rings will have 108 diamonds? Do diamonds come that tiny?..........Foul balls are fun, but they should not come at the price of one's popcorn............Dear umpire. This was NOT a balloon.............THIS was a balloon, a balloon frightened to death by the mere thought of being chased down by Mike Trout...........ex-MLBer Otis Nixon, a pretty troubled guy already, is getting his own likeness on a milk carton...........Here's what happens when GOOD athletes take up launch angle.............
______________________________