Thor'sLinks: Meyer mired in lack of run support

Ask Alex Meyer. He now knows how Valuable Mike Trout is. Two great starts, twelve innings pitched, and only 1 earned run surrendered. But those of those starts have been without Trout and the Angels have only scored 2 runs themselves over 18 innings of effort. The Halos have lost both of them.

Ignore the 3 runs that Petit gave up in the 8th, that 3rd inning was all the damage the Tigers would need to scratch out a W over Meyer. And that came from a HBP, BB, E5, Fielder's Choice double-play. Minimalist, if ever there was.

Meyer is looking better and better. Nine of the eighteen outs he worked through came as K's. That's all upside, people. Not everything goes bad for the Angels. Nolasco does eat innings, whereas Hector Santiago has run out of gas. And Meyer is developing into a respectable rotation piece in 2017, while Alan Busenitz is still percolating up through the Minnesota farm system as a promising bullpen piece.

Meh. We knew we would have a heck of a lot of games like this. Especially over the upcoming weeks. The upcoming lost weeks. Where we have Lost Weeks Links:

A Little Bit of Angels News

Eric Young, Jr., on what drives his pursuit of baseball. I mean, besides it being a very cool job that pays a shitload of many and everything.........

Put the brakes on all those Cam Bedrosian hopes...........

But Doug Fister had a pretty nice outing yesterday. We have 2 weeks to call him up or lose him..........

C.J. Cron needs regular at-bats to get his groove on. That's what the team says. Unless it's three games in a row. And a right-hander. Then he needs to not be getting his groove on..........

Miguel Cabrera knows a bandwagon fan when he sees one. He also knows when to strike when Mike Trout is defenseless..........

What sign of the apocalypse is this? Roberto Baldoquin is named to the Midwest League All-Star team???..........

Aaron Gleeman of Baseball Prospectus recounts his history of underestimating Albert Pujols The Prospect..........

The Angel injury curse is spreading downwind into their farm system. Vincente Campos, who has made all of 1 MLB appearance (last year) and was picked up off the D'backs back in November, is off to the operating room. If I didn't write that, would you even know?..........And that leads to the other news, that some other person you may have never heard of, and may not ever hear of again, has joined our farm system. Billy Eppler, still beating the bushes, has flushed out one Jason Gurka.............

______________________________

Josh Mayhood's Library of Mike Trout Hagiography

This section placed on hold indefinitely, in memory of Mike Trout's 2017 season. In the meantime, we provide The Jessica DeLine Trout Recovery Watch tracker. When will Mike be back?

______________________________

The 2017 NCAA Baseball Tournament will resume this Friday with the Super Regionals. Schedule and broadcast info to be found here..........Fastest pitch of the year at 103.5mph. When a 93mph slider will look like a change up.

(Not quite) old man sportswriter takes a whack at trying to homer for immortality............

More than one name on this list was hoped by the media to be their own Mike Trout...........

I didn't link to this days ago. I had no idea where it was going. Now we know. Nowhere. It's going nowhere. The Dodgers' minor league affiliate Ogden Raptors has called off their one-step-short-of-a-wet-t-shirt-contest promo. The promo was "not authorized"............

Mike Trout needs to be informed. It will give him something to do over the next few weeks. Baseball stadiums have weather stations..........

If umpires don't know how to call the strike zone against Aaron Judge, how do we know how good Aaron Judge might really be?..........

Here comes Jim Abbott, take 2. Stories like these always drive home the point of how passionately people can love the game of baseball............

______________________________