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Man, Garrett Richards sure could have used some of last night's offense. But then, Richards did not get lucky enough to face off against a Mike Friers, moved up to replace the other LAA killer Lance McCullers, who is suffering from arm fatigue. That helped the offense. Which helped the entire team. Angels win 9-1 and we might overlook a strong Tyler Skaggs start, with just 3 singles and 1 BB over 7 innings on just 85 pitches. Hell, that's Justin Verlander territory right there.
In that first inning, with those four doubles, the Angels did something they had not done since 1977. (Victor tweeted this, too, but he didn't have to credit the source). And the Astros had not surrendered as many extra-base hits as the Angels collected in that first inning, against ANY team in ANY inning, since 2014.
Cameron Maybin had a chance to say hello to the entire outfield community of LAA fans in attendance.
It's time for Clock-Ticking-Links:
A Little Bit of Angels News
Yusmeiro Petit, LAA Hero fo the 2017 Pitching Staff. FanGraphs says so.............
Jordon Adell is accelerating to the Instructional League...........
Oh now THIS is provocative! Martin Maldonado snagging the AL Gold Glove at catcher over Sal Perez of the Royals? Could this be the mini version of the annual MVP debate?.............
J.C. Ramirez has a torn UCL. Garrett Richards level of "torn", so he has chosen to pursue GR Therapy. I have nothing else to say about all this. I'm used up..........
Josh Mayhood's Library of Mike Trout Hagiography
Great Moments in Statistical Cherry Picking, Houston Broadcaster style. But of cherries that have already long fallen off the tree, and been smashed by more well-reasoned farmers years ago.............
More cherry picking, where a Ryan Schimpf has not gotten the chance to regress to his mean...........
Once again Mike Scioscia pulled Trout from the game as part of a defensive realignment. 4 PA's only. That bumped him up from 3.02778 to 3.03448 PA's average per LAA team game. Sosh keeps slowing him down, as only Sosh can do............Something weird in the FanGraphs WAR update yesterday. After I posted my review on Tuesday evening, they did their update. Trout jumped back up into 4th place from the 6th place I saw. Ok. No big deal. But I should have taken a screen capture. I could have swore that it had Jose Altuve at 6.9 on Tuesday, and he was only 6.8 last night.
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Everywhere In Baseball
Somebody in the National League is going to pay a small fortune to win the heart of Shohei Otani. And even at that price, it might still turn out to be a bargain...........But, rest assured, Otani IS coming...........
Here is an unintended consequence we were not thinking about. The rise of advanced analytics within the Front Offices throughout MLB, dominated as it has been by Ivy League graduates, has led to a significant hiring skew away from diversity practices that MLB had been trying for years to implement. So MLB is working with Johns Hopkins to figure out what to do about this...........
A moment of suspicion in the Cleveland-Detroit game yesterday, where immediate after having their manager and starting catcher ejected for arguing balls and strikes there was a passed ball that struck the very plate umpire with whom Detroit was angry. Was it on purpose? Nah...........Why are we discussing it? Because the Indians broadcast team suggested it.............
Over with the MFY, mediocre pitcher Jaime Garcia has a mediocre bitching session with manager Joe Girardi, because Girardi had the audacity to yank Garcia when the game was still winnable. It's not like the Yankees have anything on the line right now..........
Diving deep into the data reveals the Fly Ball revolution. But isn't that a strange thing all by itself? How is it that ballplayers from so may divergent points of origin, all working within independent frameworks of the various franchises hell bent to keep their data to themselves, all end up at the same point and time where they are approaching their seasons with an increase in launch angle? And the pitchers all would not know what to do about it?............
I don't want to spend too much cackling at the LAD misfortune, because it's clear they are still a much better team than we have down in Anaheim. But this graphic is just too sweet to pass over.............(But while we are here, the Indians ARE within a handful of wins of taking over home field advantage in the World Series.)............
These September streaks don't really mean anything, right? Right??...........
Here is some media newslets. What's up with the newly announced Apple TV 4K and sports streaming?..........Sling is going old school, with free over-the-air antennas in order to add football to their service (because it doesn't carry CBS)...........An anti-sports cable broadcast development............
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The Duffle Bag
Not every baseball site is a "no politics" zone.............Just recording, for posterity sake, that the Yankees enjoyed a 2-1 series victory over the Tampa Bay Rays, played in Tampa's "home field", 9 miles away from Yankee Stadium............Also, with Miami still pretty messed up from Irma, the Marlins are being moved to Miller Park for their next home series...........MLB is officially putting its foot down on the side of having fun in Baseball...........Sleep well. The Oakland A's found the LAA Doug Fister that had gone missing...........Hey, everybody! Football is dying!!!
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