Mike Clevinger was a beast last night, allowing LAA batters only 3 hits and 2 walks over 6 innings while striking out 6. Only 1 run was scored (barely) against him. BUT THAT'S OK! Because Mike Scioscia could counter with Vinnie Pestano!! Um...no...no he could not. Clevinger was once OUR guy. But in 2014 Jerry Dipoto sent Clevinger away to the Indians in exchange for a Vinnie Pestano, who would pitch all of 21.1 innings and be out of Baseball. Forever. As in, "still". Now, in a year such as this, you might be inclined to believe that a Mike Clevinger would prove handy. You silly rebel, you. But there he was, Mike Clevinger making his Angel Stadium debut pitching AGAINST a Halo team that was fighting to make a 2017 playoff slot, just like Mike Clevinger's Indians had already sealed with a large helping hand from Mike Clevinger.
Tyler Skaggs held the Tribe to 2 runs, but the offense only scored 3 (a too-late homer by Upton making things slightly less tortuous) and the bullpen gave up another 4 (with some extra special help by a rather weak-assed attempt on a pop foul by C.J. Cron in the 9th). And the Angels lose 6-3. Sad.
Do The #TeamOfLamentably Links:
A Little Bit of Angels News
A little bit of Andrelton Simmons love from FanGraphs. Of course, this is more of a season recap, as Simmons is having a particularly lame September (.211/.274/.281 with an OPS of .555)...........
The Angels get Verlander again on Friday, rolling out Garrett Richards to face him. Sound familiar? But Andrew Heaney will NOT making any sort of start this week after all, and the Angels will roll out an all-bullpen pitching roster on Saturday. Because Heaney is hurt worse than initially hoped. Sound even more familiar?..........
Um, Brandon Phillips? Nice idea. Bad execution. If you are going to drop a line drive to start a double play, it helps to not first catch the line drive..........
Yunel Escobar is seeing the same rehab medical team as Huston Street..........
The Angels saving $750,000 via "coincidental" roster moves is a good thing, right? Well, maybe not for the players. But, hey, accidents happen..........(Minutes after these articles were published, Bud Norris made another relief appearance, which did NOT go well.)..........
Josh Mayhood's Library of Mike Trout Hagiography
Welp, it cannot be said anymore that the Angels are wasting mike trout. If anything, it's the other way around right now. These guys got this team into the playoff race with trout missing 1/3 of the season. And here over the first 7 games in this tough stretch of 9, against the toughest competition down the stretch, trout is batting .174/.286/.348 with an OPS of .634. The dude really has to figure out how to close a season, before this starts to eat into his reputation...........But, hey, he still hits the ball real hard so we're cool, right?
Meanwhile, Baseball is passing him by..........And with 4 PA's last night, Trout is at an average of 3.06667 per LAA game to date. These 4 PA games, should they continue (and they have now for 8 straight games), would run Trout out to the 25th for 'qualifying'.
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Everywhere In Baseball
I am happy that Aaron Judge is heating back up just as the Twins came to town. A 5-2 win over Minnesota keeps the Angels close. If I were the Twins, though, I would have been bunting from start to finish against C.C. Sabathia until it stopped working altogether...........
It's already been proven that modern day baseballs are being manufactured toward the end of the acceptable range that allows for more batted balls to reach over the home run fence. This is a major contributor to the rise in home runs being hit. Well, further research shows that baseballs this year are far more consistently manufactured than in years past. Add it up, and it means that MLB is doing a better job of ensuring that juiced baseball are more often in play than ever before............Which means that more home runs are being hit than ever before, the new record being reached last night...........
Giancarlo Stanton, who had hit only 3 home runs all month (he hit 18 in August), finally got back on board the other night, collecting his 55th. He has 11 games left, about 50 PA's, to catch fire and get 6 more HR's to reach the quasi-magical 61 mark set by Roger Maris in the pre-steroids era of 1961..........
Wow. Things really ARE dire in Arlington these days. Even to the extent that dejected Rangers fans are suggesting that they allow Adrian Beltre to be traded away if he requests it. Because they owe it to him. Because they sucked..........
Yeah, if you think that the Baseball world has had a tough decade making the transition to the current state of the art in advanced analytics, just wait until you read what's in store over the NEXT decade! Think robot managers. But to paraphrase one of the final sentences in the article, "Maybe a couple of years from now, Mike Scioscia will be checking an iPad...Maybe it will tell him that Albert Pujols is the worst player in all of Major League Baseball and should not be batting cleanup. But will he listen?".........
So you know how yesterday I linked to the fact that FOX Sports has lost 88% of their audience since flipping to all-video content? ESPN is taking full advantage..........
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The Duffle Bag
This Phillies fan, for one, is a stand-up guy. Chicken nuggets for everyone!...........Oops. A tad too early there, Wichita Wingnuts..........Boston is figuring out that it's decade-old Boston problem is not a good look..........Protective headgear, people. It's not real difficult...........Team Magnum P.I. gets booted from a Detroit Tigers game, because they were too cool for Detroit. That, or they were just being bachelor party assholes. Can't say which, for sure.........Baseball jobs! The Phillies are looking for software and analytics people, and the Tigers are looking for I.T. and video operations people..........With Rob Manfred in town to talk to the Angels, did anybody ask him if he had received permission from the Red Sox to so far away in case they got caught in yet another controversy? Looks like the answer is no, nobody asked..........Matt Stafford, starting QB of the Detroit Lions and childhood buddy of Clayton Kershaw, has himself a new signal for audibles..........
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