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Adrian Beltre - Tony Reagin's Hall of Fame level Asininity - has averaged nearly 6 bWAR per year over the 7 seasons he has played in Arlington. Fortunately for those of us who sit in the stands, Reagins is no longer present to sit in the owner's box and watch his mistake clobber the Angels yet again.
Adrian Beltre's offense plus Cole Hamels continued dominance over the Angels took full advantage of the LAA cosmic alignment of heavenly tendencies, and victory was eclipsed by karma.
As halo24 alerted us yesterday, the Angels don't fare so well in their first game back from road trips. I count 3 wins and (now) 7 losses. They also tend to suck on Mondays - 4 wins against (now) 8 losses. Add to that a pitcher only recently off the DL and fresh off a bereavement leave, and last night was a good time to pony up in Vegas for a bad, bad outcome.
Well, all that bad karma AND an 8th-inning bases-loaded rally shut down by a Jefry Marte appearance against RHP relief pitcher Jose Leclerc. Marte is batting .161 against RHP, while Luis Valbuena is batting .207 against RHP. Valbuena was watching from 40 feet away in the dugout.
Then a 9th-inning rally was arrested by a Ben Revere pinch-hitting appearance against LHP Alex Claudio. Revere is batting .140 against LHP. And he was pinch-hitting for a Kaleb Cowart who is batting .200 against LHP. And, after Mike Trout extended the inning by driving in a run and becoming the tying run on base, we got Albert Pujoled by a ground out to Mike Napoli. Of course.
Have some Angels-Win-14-Out-Of-19-Tuesdays Links:
A Little Bit of Angels News
Uh oh. We aren't sneaking up on so many people anymore. Not only did we already link to how folks have noticed we have 2 MVP candidates, but now they are noticing that we also have 2 Top 100 MLB Prospects. Pretty soon people will go so far as to suggest that Billy Eppler ain't wasting anybody's prime years after all...........Or forcing that asshat Bill Plaschke back on us..........
Andrelton Simmons getting more MSM attention..........
A sign of the surprise is that the Angels are all the way up to #12 in the ESPN Power Rankings. It's pretty hard to quibble about teams 1 through 9 being ahead of them, so having only 2 teams left out of the other 20 that are debatable is pretty damned impressive considering where we stated out this season..........
Jaime Barria continues to climb through the minor league system. He is not in Salt Lake for the race to the finish line in that PCL division. Either this is an indication that Barria is doing really, really good...or it is an indication that our farm system remains pretty thin...........
Lots of roster moves yesterday. JC Ramirez went onto the DL (expected).....Tyler Skaggs reinstated from bereavement in time to pitch (obviously).....Jose Alvarez recalled from Salt Lake (bullpen depth).....because Andrew Bailey went back onto the DL with shoulder strain (crap)..........
Josh Mayhood's Library of Mike Trout Hagiography
I love this headline: "Mike Trout could go 0-42 and still have the AL's best OPS"...........Read the link at least to the part where the MLB rule book is quoted. It speaks to qualifying based on PA's. Maybe I am just not sharp today, but that paragraph has me totally confused..........
Mike is doing yet another thing that is beyond greatness. He, as a right-handed batter, hits right-handed pitchers better than he does lefties. And that is practically unheard of..........
Catching up on PA's, Mike now needs 150 PA's to reach 502. Trout needs to average BELOW 4 PA's, at 3.95 per game over the final 38 to qualify. Totally do-able..........
And, by the way. also going into last night Trout was tied for 3rd with Anthony Rendon in fWAR throughout all of MLB at 5.5. That's just behind Aaron Judge at 5.9 and Jose Altuve at 6.1, and closing. That's spotting those other three guys 40 games. You just have to lower the PA's in the charting tool to see it...........
Also, Sunday's game sent me looking. Trout has played in 80 games this year, and only 4 of those games has he been kept off base. Sunday being the most recent. (For the record, those four games would be April 16th, May 11th, July 27th and August 20th.)
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Everywhere In Baseball
So Aaron Judge has the new strikeout record for consecutive games by a position player? Aaron Judge strikes out. A lot. It's what he does, so who cares? Well, certainly nobody cares so much in this era so I guess it's better than GDP............
What with the umpire protest this past weekend, it's getting to be a thing to make a big deal out of umpires making things a big deal in games. Considering that we have about 15 games per day with 4 umpires in each game and a few hundred pitches thrown each game, the vast majority of the time - and we are talking 99.9 something percent - they are as invisible as we proclaim they should be. Maybe we should all just relax a little bit...........
And the job of being an umpire does come with its share of dangers..........
You younger people probably don't believe this, but those cannons that shoot crappy shirts up into the upper decks to keep the folks in the cheap seats happy have not been around since the beginning. They have a slightly shorter history..........
Forget what Aaron Judge actually told everyone, the MSM wants to believe they know better and need to blame his slump not on regression or league adjustments or any such silly thing. No, it HAS to be because of kryptonite. And they are going to find it, dammit.........
I love this. FanGraphs opens the can of worms that is the debate between the value of scouts and the hard data of StatCast. Like all good citizens, toward the end they get all soft and fuzzy and re-inject the human element. But the example they use is Carlos Gomez, and how the Rangers saw something that the Astros did not. They even put forth compelling numbers. Gomez played only 33 games for the Rangers last year. This year they are seeing what the Astros saw. He'll be lucky to reach 3 bWAR for the $11million the Rangers are paying him. That's a dollar bargain in today's market (FG puts his worth at $14.3MM already), but he can't stay healthy and is back to the DL again..........
Oh look. Mike Trout ain't the only guy being 'wasted' by his team. So has been Joey Votto. Such silly nonsense..........
Rancho Santa Margarita was bounced from the Little League World Series as West representative, losing to Mid-Atlantic 12-9. Don't feel bad guys. You made it to Williamsport. That's a lifetime achievement that nobody can ever take away from you..........
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The Duffle Bag
You are welcome, Baltimore. Couldn't have done it without us..........MLB was about to fine umpires for wristbands??What if they said New ERA on them?.............Curtis Granderson, no longer available since he was traded to the Dodgers over the weekend, celebrated becoming the luckiest player in Baseball (going from Worst to World Series), introduced himself to his new teammates in Grand style. (You would cry if you went back and saw how much WAR Granderson has been worth since we started joking about him. Especially when you saw what positions he plays and how little money he costs.).........Javy Baez with the sweetest slide in the history of Baseball..........Boog Powell to Boog Powell. You cannot make this shit up...........
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Jordan Serena Destiny Watch
No game last night. 66ers skipper Chad Tracy probably used that schedule opening to pencil Serena in at 3B, leading off............
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