Yesterday was one of those days when life slips right past a person. I was well into an afternoon loaded down with a customer who screwed up their operational process and brought down a main system and, in their frustration, needed to lash out at somebody for something. I make the Big Bucks, so I got the job of getting yelled at. "Dude" I am thinking, "YOU were the one who drove the car off the cliff. And now you are pissed at us because we didn't include a parachute with the vehicle?" Happens every few months or so. People are human. So we get past it all. And I am driving home and flip on the radio, thinking I need to dial up some blues and power through the SoCal commute like the pro I am. And before I can start flippin' switches I pick up the Angels score on the sports radio station where I had left off. It had not even occurred to me that it was a Wednesday day game in Oakland. Deep, dark, double sigh.
How the hell do you lose 3-1 to frickin' Oakland??? Especially when I learn that Jesse Chavez went almost 6 innings and fanned 5 while giving up only 2 runs? Then I saw the box score. Question answered. Mike Scoscia had run out another one of his Maginot Lineups. And just like with France, the bad guys merely did the obvious and went around it and the Halos surrendered their offensive option, sheepishly.
I keep pointing this out, but it keeps looking more and more as if our issues have more to do with those parts of the roster we thought were the locks (offense, Shoemaker) and less to do with what we thought were the chasms (injured starting rotation, bullpen). It sure ain't the fault of the defense. At least we were right about that.
Let's just move on and welcome to town the Tigers. Have some Lynx:
A Little Bit of Angels News
Today is Day-7-of-the-Not-10-Day-DL Mike Trout Experience. And the prognosis has only risen to the level of hopefully...........Fox Sports is playing Magic 8-ball with the forecast..........
Huston who? We got Bud Norris to back up Cam Bedrosian, and Bud Norris has made himself "lethal"..........
Several Halos were on hand to watch the Ducks advance over Edmonton in the NHL playoffs. Most were there for ceremonial reasons......One was there to get a taste of the playoffs............
Thing I Learned Today: I totally whiffed on the knowledge that the Aaron Cox that Jerry Dipoto drafted in the 19th round on his way out the door is a fellow Thunderbolt of Mike Trout's, being a graduate of Millville High School in New Jersey...........(FYI, my most famous alum is Freddie Freeman. Not too shabby.)
The Angels had another player that was good enough that some other team wanted them. Jose Valdez was put up on the waiver wire and was claimed. Ok. so it was just the Padres. But still...........
Don't look now, but Danny Espinosa is having one of those streaks he is infamous for. He has 2 hits since April 19th, going hitless in 17 of those games, and he is currently 0 for his last 32............
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Everywhere In Baseball
Nice backlash. MLB has been going apeshit trying to promote Derek Jeter this week. It's all because the MFY will retire Jeter's jersey this upcoming weekend. ESPN is going to be covering that for all of our viewing pleasure. I am been deliberately ignoring all that promo, but NBC takes MLB to task for pimping so hard a person who no longer plays, in ways that they have absolutely failed to come even close to in order to promote the games and the players of today..........
Meanwhile, Trout Porn. This link is here and not in the section above because it plays so well with the Jeter link. Mike Trout is better than ever and nobody is talking about it. That headline, itself, is old news. So it's kind of ironic that within the article the author points out: " 'Mike Trout Is Good at Baseball,' on the other hand, is two things: Old news. A lousy headline, to boot. " But the deal here is the dichotomy between the Jeter situation and the Trout situation. With Jeter, MLB (and ESPN) volunteer to go hard at the topic and promote the unholy shit out of it, driving it down our throats. Meanwhile, for Trout, the process of promotion is to allow the news and information to come to the audience organically. The audience, however, never changes. Even today the lamentation is that Trout plays in the wrong time zone, plays on a non-marquee team, fails to appear on prime time games (such as what happens during the playoffs). Audiences have ALWAYS struggled to find the details of baseball greatness. The modern information infrastructure makes it EASIER to promote a player than it was even as recently as Jeter's prime. But, besides us, who is doing that work?...........
The Doyers are in trouble. MLB has jumped in to investigate a case where they appear to have created an HR issue with the son of Terry Francona, Nick. Apparently, everything was going swimmingly between the LADs and Francona until Francona reached out to a support group to assist him in dealing with PTSD suffered as a result of his service time as a Marine in Afghanistan. It looks like the Dodgers fumbled all over themselves here, something pretty easy to do these days when it comes to employee relations. I am not making any conclusions about the goings on over there, but I do know that it is a far different world in the star system of HR than it was just a dozen years ago when I had a very senior manager role. I would not assume a single thing from my training back then if I had to apply my skills to an employee situation today...........
This should be fun. Some politician in New York is introducing a bill that would mandate the extension protective netting from foul pole to foul pole in all MLB and MiLB ballparks. Can you imagine the fan push back?? How about, instead, all teams mount a warning on each seatback in the lower sections to the person sitting there to ALWAYS pay attention to the event going on right in front of them that they just paid good money to attend?............
This is classic timing. On Monday FanGraphs dug a little deeper into the fly ball, uppercut swing, revolution underway, using Yonder Alonso as the new "poster boy". Just in time for us all to watch Alonso homer twice against eh Angels on Tuesday. Read the article. The career power flip on Alonso is staggering. If it were not for the fact that the flip is with his flyball rate, and some of those are naturally going to travel farther than others, one would be inclined to suspect something more nefarious.............
It's insane that the Angels are not even on the list of teams that want to see a closer look at Luis Robert..........
Adrian Gonzalez is on the verge of getting Wally Pipped..........
The sun is truly setting on the fabulous career of Jered Weaver...........
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The Duffle Bag
(h/t reddit) Max Scherzer knows damn good and well he can handle Manny Machado. For the record, he got 'im.........Dear Yasiel: baseball bats are made to be hard. On purpose..........Now it makes more sense. Matt Harvey was out with his bros to commiserate after getting dumped by a super model? If that's the case, how did he get over it by only 4AM??..........Who has University of Houston's Seth Romero in their mock draft? Maybe not the Astros............Derek Jeter can be a whiny bitch, can he not? I mean, shit, he got the chance to sit next to one of the greatest shortstops of all time. So what's he so upset about?..........This is the kind of shit that keeps blessing the Astros. Marwin Gonzalez should be dead on the basepaths for that mistake. But it happens against the Braves and not the Angels..............See people, THIS is why adults should shut their shit down on the whole foul ball thing. (I'm thinking that maybe I should buy a couple of balls in the stadium store and just hand them out to random kids and tell them they were fouls, just to create this kind of joy in the world.)..........
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Jordan Serena
Last night saw J-Ser playing RF against Visalia. Since moving up from Burlington, where he was primarily 3B, Serena has been floating all over the field on defense. The 66'ers have Anaheim native Jose Rojas locked in at 3B and some dude named Matt Thaiss blocking him at 1B. So Serena is fitting in at RF/LF/DH so far. But it's only been 7 games.
Jordan was 0 for 3 with 2 strikeouts as IE defeated the Visalia Rawhides 3-1. That drops his BA to .321. I blame Thaiss.
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