Thor'sLinks: Chavez and Young scrape out a W

Ok, so beating the Braves is not the same as beating the Astros or beating the Cubs. But these W's still count. And hacking up a scrappy W is just the kind of thing a team needs to believe in itself sans Mike Trout. A 2-1 victory powered by a scrappy Eric Young, Jr. backed up a stellar start by Jesse Chavez. This would have made for some pretty solid Major League baseball had it not been for 3 more boneheaded errors by the Braves. Because Jaime Garcia was just as stellar out of the opposing dugout.

(By the way, after a couple of days now staring at New an Improved SBN, being an old fart it finally hit me what it is that has been resonating within my eyeballs. This place looks like 2001: A Space Odyssey with the HAL9000 UI fonts [Eurostile or Microgramma, the debate rages on]......Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop Dave? Stop, Dave....)

Lost Week Links:

A Little Bit of Angels News

America's Baseball Voters get it right, right when it doesn't matter. Mike Trout opens up the AL All-Star voting as the League leader with ~777K votes. That is second in all of baseball only to Bryce Harper's 900K,............Not that everybody agrees that voters are getting the voting right.............

Trout's UCL surgery was a success. They also fixed something called a "dorsal capsule". Not being a medical expert, I am assuming that is a small plastic toy porpoise that comes in a gumball machine at the local Dollar Tree.........

Albert Pujols love. Why 600 still matters..........Remember when Albert Pujols was great? Those days were fun..........People are finally starting to admit that Pujols left STL at precisely the best possible time for STL..........

Who are our current Halos worthy of a return should the Troutless Eppler become a seller? Remember, the challenge is always to find that spot of when to be trading HIGH.. And by "high", I'm talking player value, not decision-impaired...........

AL West recap. Mike Trout is hurt, baseball is cancelled. I share the link with you only so that I can justify stealing the line: "Trout’s absence is equivalent to roughly three normal hitters going on the DL all at once." and make my Links page far more thought-provoking than it was going to be..........

Interesting factoids posted over at reddit. The Angels are the most successful team less than 100 years old.

Long form. Deadspin reprints a GQ article first published way back in 1990. What Broke Donnie Moore?. I don't know why they reprinted the story yesterday. But there are many untold points of interest in that story. For one, Bob Boone's comment about the quality of Moore's forgettable 3-2 pitch to Henderson........

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Mike Trout is unworthy of being The Face of Baseball. Because Mike Trout is not going to piss off any pitcher by showing up any opponent, and not going to get beaned in retaliation, and not going to charge the mound and start throwing haymakers. No, Bryce Harper is The Face of Baseball, because that's what Bryce Harper is all about, and that's what the fans want to see, and that's what the game needs. Or so says Bill Reiter of CBS Sports. "Bryce Harper is the face of the sport baseball needs: Edgy. Funny. Transcendentally talented. And willing to rush in a fury at Hunter Strickland, fists flying, rage on full display.....The best of baseball -- how it's meant to be played.....Young people live in the moment, and they crave authenticity, and they yearn for excitement. What they're looking for is Harper's fists flying". What, there's not enough pro wrestling and MMA on TV already?.........And then there is Mark Cuban, who apparently is unable to instruct his own children into developing critical thinking skills. But then Cuban is a personality in a sport that has melted into only creating drama in the last 6 minutes of any game, or the last 6 games of any season..........One last one. Jake Arrieta is some kind of tough guy: "If it's my catcher, I want him to wait and give me an opportunity to do a little damage." I am pretty sure that this would be the same Arrieta who made sure to stay safely outside of this melee with the Pirates., waiting to have somebody (initially, an umpire) stand safely between he and the pitcher.........

In the American League, the DH is becoming a black hole, dragging down offenses. Proof comes in the fact that the National League is now out-hitting the AL, with one batting order spot tied behind its back..........

Have some fun with this one. FanGraphs breaks down the changing strike zone. No, the bottom of the zone is not getting raised but, yes, the inside of the plate to left-handed hitters is getting extremely aggressive with strike calls now versus ball calls of old. But stop for a moment and look at the blue and yellow ball/strike plots graphs. The blue dots are balls and the yellow dots are strikes. In theory, there should not be a single blue dot within the black frame (depending on how hard you believe in that stuff). And, regardless of one's faith in PITCHF/x, we should all be able to agree that there should never, ever, ever, EVER be a blue dot in the center of the black frame. LOL..........

Oh, shucks. Beyond The Boxscore did all this work to hype up a home run chase between Mike Trout, Aaron Judge and Bryce Harper, only to have Trout get injured and screw up the plan. A couple of weeks ago I took a cursive look at this and figured out that judge should win this handily. He might push +55 home runs if he were to continue hitting jacks at this home/away split rate counting the number of games remaining in and out of Yankee Stadium. Right now, if everything remained the same concerning his rate stats, he projects out to 57-58 HR's. 28 of those would be coming in Yankee Stadium, and 12-13 of those coming everywhere else..........

All those Top 100 Prospects, and yet it's Parker Bridwell who explodes on the scene..........

More humor. The Chicago Cubs, only 50 games into their title reign as World Series Champs, and only a couple of games out of the division lead, already need to be "fixed"..........

Life as a billionaire certainly comes with expectations of entitlements. The owners of the Dodgers are looking to sell of a small chunk of the franchise to some other billionaire goober who will be granted the privilege of handing over hundreds of millions of dollars, in exchange for no say in what the current owners do with that money. And, yes, since the current owners value the Dodgers at $2.5 billion, even a silent minority stake will be hundreds of millions of bucks. And that is 'silent', as in "gimme your fortune and sit over there and keep your thoughts to yourself.".........

Giancarlo Stanton is joining the Joey Votto revolution..........

Tanking is good. Tanking works. Tanking is rewarded extravagantly: "In 2012, the 55-win Astros were one of the worst teams ever, so much so that General Manager Jeff Luhnow was criticized for bringing NBA-style tanking to MLB. Houston hit a low point on Aug. 31 of that season, slipping to an Elo of 1399. But since that nadir, they’ve added 175 points of Elo over a stretch of 737 games, an improvement a team only manages about once in every thousand chances in MLB history."..........But, of course, forget about the amazement that is the juggernaut the Astros have become. That's not interesting. The Yankees, though, the Yankees are the only thing interesting in the entirety of the American League..........

Both Bryce Harper and Hunter Strickland are getting one game lopped off their suspensions, it is to be reported............

Mike Trout is on the DL. So turn the page on Mike Trout..........

Just because you move your content from subscriber cable to streaming does not mean that you have tapped into the next generation of distribution models. Just ask DirecTV Now.........Also, is Twitter fleeing from Facebook competition on Friday nights?..........

Mr. Met busted for flipping the bird...........Unable to deny any such thing happened, the Mets rush to Twitter to apologize............

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