TuesdoLinks: Angels banging on East Coast door.

Sweeping the Mariners has really caused a stir among the Wild Card forecasters...........As of yesterday, the prognosticators had to rejigger their math in order to triple the Halos' odds..........

And that weekend does give some people in other time zones cause to pay a little bit of attention to #tod..........And they are getting enough attention that those giving the attention are going beyond mere reporting to start digging into some of the amazing that we are following...........

Local SoCal golf fans get to see ex-Angel Shigetoshi Hasagawa tee it up at the U.S. Amateur this week here in L.A. The Championship tournament will be held at the Rivera Country Club in the Palisades, from the 14th through the 20th. I volunteered in quite a few tournaments there in my younger years. If you have time on your hands and even the tiniest interest in golf, walking that course on a Saturday or Sunday is one of Southern California's finest outdoor experiences...........

Over in bWAR land, Andrelton Simmons is 0.2 bWAR behind Jose Altuve for tops in all of MLB among position players. And BBR comes up with an amazing bit of historical perspective, showcasing Simmons in the rarest of SS company........

Trout and Simmons are not alone. Now with regular playing time, C.J. Cron is killing it and analysts are taking notice..........

Mike Scioscia loves his old-school National League double switches..........

Victor and family taking full advantage of a summer in the Nation's capital on an off day. Great for them..........

Single guys get your tickets now. Your chance is right around the corner. Miss America California will be throwing out the first pitch next Monday..........

Josh Mayhood's Library of Mike Trout Hagiography

Is it just me, or have the Cubs turned into prima donnas? Now MLB cannot even schedule a game that includes them without getting prior approval as to what fits their need for comfort...........

Rafael Devers, the latest athletic curiosity from the Dominican Republic, has the chance to take over from Aaron Judge in the hearts and minds of east coast baseball media outlets. His 9th-inning home run against Aroldis Chapman got a lot of pub yesterday. TheSportingNews is using that one moment to launch an imaginative career trajectory for Devers..........SBNation got excited enough over home runs to call the whole thing "impossible"..........That one stroke got it's own analysis and breakdown column at FanGraphs..........The New York Times, however, they have chosen to switch their horse from Judge and start riding Andrew Benintendi..........

Are the Astros players slumping (only 5 - 11 in August) and whining (looking at you, Dallas Keuchel) their GM into a corner where he is forced to pull the trigger on a Verlander trade?..........

The rich, and by "rich" I mean every MLB owner, just got a tad richer. $50 million richer. And think of it this way: they get $50MM each just to get a major content provider to pay them even more for broadcasting their content. The players? They get none of it by the way. I wonder who gets that in Florida, Jeffrey Loria or Derek Jeter?........Oh, and cord-cutters/ You have nothing to worry about. Instead of paying the rates that Disney has always imposed on cable companies, rates they have always argued as "reasonable", they promise that when they go direct-to-market and sign you up for baseball their rates will be, yes, "reasonable"..........

When you are doing the mind game of projecting big assed player contracts for soon to be free agent superstars, age is one consideration. But also, as in the case of Bryce Harper, is the injury rate..........

One can make a lot of jokes about the coincidental high rate of gioblastoma deaths among baseball players, especially Phillies. But I shall refrain out of respect and just wonder if the medical research world will ever figure out an answer either way...........

These are always fun stories, when MLB stars had success in the Little League World Series. Todd Frazier seems to have a potential family dynasty in the making.........By way of example of our own OC representative, Rancho Santa Margarita, winning a Regional and making it into the LLWS results in a rush of scrambling and a lot of full-fare last-minute travel expenses. Kids and their families are launched into mess of excitement and duress..........Competition starts the 17th..........

Giancarlo Stanton is on an other-worldy home run tear this year. (Stanton is a California boy). Even with what he has already done, he would have to amp up his game to an even greater level to catch the pre-steroids single-season HR record.Sadly, that level would have to be a juiced-up Barry Bonds.........

Interesting podcast. Jump to 46:00 to hear how girls are resisting being pigeonholed away from baseball and into softball..........

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Yankee fans everywhere, in microcosm. This needs to be bookmarked forever...........The SoCal real estate market is pretty hot in many places. But not so in one of the places that is actually too hot to live at this time of year, as Coco Crisp just found out...........Even Big league managers with a life time of experience can get lost in the arcane rules of baseball..........What is this? A better David Eckstein than the original David Eckstein?..........Even in advance of Bryce Harper's injury, Buck Showalter has been warning us all about the dangers of hard bases. He also notes that MLB's desire to auction off game-used gear plays a hand in this..........Aaron Judge is selling low. Getting a sponsorship deal in the nadir of a slump that has become a public spectacle winnows down the list of competitive bidders..........