MondoLinks: Cyber Monday Blitz

Oh, yeah, we’re back. Did you travel any place over the extended weekend? I saw video lat night of the airports and holy balls did those look horrendous. I guess the economy ain’t so bad, after all. People are traveling.

For my part, Thanskgiving weekends are always spent home. But they are spent working my ass off. The goal each year is to be completely done with interior and exterior Christmas deco before we hit 5PM on the Sunday. It’s hard work. Not Clark-Griswald-1-million-lights-as-seen-from-ISS hard work. But, yeah, I am THAT GUY on the block when it comes to Christams. I build my own stuff, and it’s a form of happy insanity. But it’s done. It’s fantastic. And I am as exhausted as if I had been working all day to get to, and then through, LAX.

Not much went on over the last couple of days, but we have them anyway.

Grab your brew and work your ways through these Save-Us-All-From-The-Smell-Of-Pumpkin-For-Another-Year-HaloLinks:

A Little Bit Of Angels News

Our problems with offense have been solved! The Angels have hired THE Shawn Wooten to come back under the Halo as Assistant Hitting Coach.......His career didn’t last long, but Wooten did have his moments. But I will be hoping that he can slip in some word or two about how playing for the Phillies just stinks. That’s the kind of first-person rumor I need to have spreading around the LAA clubhouse............

Shohei Ohtani wants to play in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Uh, that would be the summer when Ohtani will be back as a two-way player. I don’t think that Olympic thing is going to happen...........

A long time ago the game of baseball was ‘see the ball, hit the ball’. Those days are long, long gone. In the last couple of decades, baseball has shifted even further and we fans are all fully aware of the rise of advanced statistical analysis ruling the Front Offices of MLB, and permeating out onto the field. Well, when you step in to MLB from the day-to-day nature of baseball in some other place, say Japan, the technical nature of the game today jumps right out at you. Just ask Ohtani............

I need that rumor because there is no baseball. So there is a need to create a lot of content out of thick air. Mike Trout makes for great winter chatter. And we have the right to be worried about Mike’s future. People just won’t shut up about it...........

Word is that Billy Eppler has been spotted pushing his shopping cart up and down the aisles of winter pitchers and relievers..........Except for the end cap that is Sonny Gray. Apparently, Eppler is not being seen among the many GM’s checking out the Sonny Gray merchandise...........But, apparently, Eppler keeps going back and checking out Nathan Eovaldi and J.A. Happ...........

Hey. Somebody check in with ZachBBWI @gmail.com. It’s absurd that all the great content being generated on this site is not being included in this weekly rundown...........

Everywhere In Baseball

Here comes Yusei Kikuchi. Wouldn’t a reliable lefthander be nice under the tree this year?..........

The Royals hired ex-Cardinals manager Mike Matheny to work out of the Front Office as a Special Advisor. That would all be euphemistic for “current Royals manager Ned Yost best be looking over his shoulder”..........Meanwhile, Cards fans see the humor in this..........

Busted. On Friday it was reported that SF Giants owner Charles Johnson and his wife both made max donations to verbal idjit Senate candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith...........The very next day, Saturday, MLB matched that donation...........Which brought us to Sunday. All hell broke loose and MLB went public to walk back that donation............To save face, MLB is asking for the money back...........Now, YOU might be reading all this and be thinking to yourself how stupid it would be for MLB to be making donations without knowing even a smidgen about the candidate. I am sitting here writing this thinking that MLB knows full well who she is, and was happy to be donating, because they have word via lobbyists that as a Senator she would be supporting some future legislation that will make 30 billionaires very happy..............

Yes, the great mystery of the next few months will be which BBWAA fool will be the dickhead who refuses to vote Mariano Rivera a a Hall of Famer, blocking yet another great from being a unanimous honoree............

Hot Stove

CJ Cron picked a really bad time to be a merely average baseball player who isn’t very good at his 1B position. Because even though lots of teams could use an upgrade at 1B, there are lots of more intriguing, and productive, alternative paths to take in order to get there...........

Coaches are on the move, too. With Mike Scioscia stepping down and Brad Ausmus creating his own staff of coaches and assistants, long-time faves such as Dino Ebel will be popping up in other places. Like the Dodgers, for example...........

The Duffle Bag

I didn’t know that The Onion is now doing video?..........Extreme pitches of the 2018 season................