WeekEnd HaloLinks: Angels win WS preview?

Win/loss outcomes and records from Spring Training games are practically meaningless. Unless the Angels win. Then they mean something, some level of golden goodness that will transfer effortlessly into the regular season. 11-4 over the Giants is such an outcome. It lets me fade away into the weekend with joy, because this is that even-numbered year that the Giants are destined to win the NLCS. And now we know we can crush them.

See you in October, San Francisco.

But you guys. You guys get even more TrOhtani-Spring-Training-Links:

A Little Bit of Angels News

Well why wouldn’t the 2018 Angels be poised or a playoff run? With ¹⁄₃ of MLB locked in a mad dash to lose the most games, the LAA odds go up without even trying. And Billy Eppler is trying...........

Zack Cozart has a donkey to feed. Arte should build a petting stall outside the stadium for Zack’s animal...........

Maybe roto baseball is the new market efficiency. Or, maybe Billy Eppler is the savant off his fantasy leagues. How else to explain Ian Kinsler being a fantastic 2B pickup at low cost but with high upside?............

Luke Bard reinvented himself by use of advanced statistical self-coaching. Eppler picked him off the Twins in the Rule 5 Draft and may have snagged a guy that is far different than what the Twins were leaving unprotected. So pay no attention to that 5 runs on 4 hits and 1 walk against 1 out turn he endured on Wednesday. He’s busy re-inventing...........

ESPN is right. I don’t write about Martin Maldonado near enough..............

Shohei Ohtani may DH on adjacent games, after all. Not that anything is set in stone, and maybe never will be. I like how the franchise is being so open-minded and flexible with the possibilities that Ohtani might bring to MLB...........

Danielle Shoey lives by some tough rules............Shiggy Hasegawa has some words of wisdom for Shohei..........15 runs given up? Meh. “Guys threw well. Things were just kind of flat.”............

Everywhere In Baseball

The Athletic is looking to buy FiveThirtyEight. I guess they should do that before ESPN does that. Oh. ESPN already did?...........The Athletic is subscription-driven, as we know. And it’s growing.....But the pivot to subscription services are a chancy road for publishers............

And the reason that FiveThirtyEight is such a prize is because of great shit like this. They don’t just sit idly by and listen to Rob Manfred lie and dissemble. They spend some of that ad money and hire up an CT-scanning machine and look inside MLB baseballs and visually prove that they are being jacked with..........

The Phillies defensive position switch story to which I linked yesterday might have enough merit to get sticky...........

Nothing says badass like a 16-year MLB replacement player............

If you cannot handle MLB’s pace-of-play, there is now Baseball5...........But not football. Stay away from football. Just ask Jeff Samardjiza and his $64 million career with all his body parts intact..........

This is why I know that we do a much better job of information sharing here on this blog than many a MSM outlet. (I know we scrubs do a ton better in LAA coverage than those guys up north getting all the recognition.) In Seattle, it ain’t Jerry Dipoto that’s the curse. It’s the hats..........Speaking of hats, writer Mike Oz want’s to ask why anyone is upset about how Ronald Acuna wears his cap while nobody worries about how Tim Tebow wears his hat? It’s almost as if Acuna works for a completely different baseball franchise than does Tebow. One with completely different rules? Next thing you know, Oz is going to wonder about the social injustice of the Yankees facial hair ban..............

Hot Stove

Whilst semi-scrubs limber up by working out against Ruby’s Bottle & Smoke Sunday League Specials, clothed in incredibly unflattering baseball-ish attire, some of them make the mad dash to their dugout cellphones at the first ring. Lance Lynn, for instance. It might not be a 4 year, $56 million phone call, as many once expected, but we now know that a 3.43 ERA just doesn’t go as far as it used to..........

What does it mean to ‘monitor’ a guy who isn’t doing anything? The Nats are ‘monitoring’ Jake Arrieta? Does that mean they are taking daily calls from Scott Boras with ever-lowering offers? Does it mean that loads of teams are negotiating with Arrieta hot and heavy and everybody - including the Nats - get to watch? Maybe it simply means the Nats have a nanny cam following Arrieta around town...........At least Boras Arrieta has a strong team of MSM writers working hard to tell GM’s what they need to be doing..........

The Duffle Bag

I don’t mix sports and politics for a reason. Everybody dies (to borrow the phrase we use a lot in my household to describe the plot of TWD)............I’m glad that I have more going on with my time on this planet than worrying about pantone colors..........You know it’s bad when even the Red Sox are embarrassed by their own history. Renaming the street they use as their home address is their idea of solving things. But, Boston being Boston, there are those who protest on behalf of jackassery..........Need a job? Wanna shovel snow 9 months out of the year? The Twins are hiring a web dev person..........If Russell Wilson can moonlight as a baseball player, Pete Carroll can moonlight as a baseball scout..........Ingrown toenails are totally fixable. Just sayin’, Bryce...........Bat flip puzzle. #5 is a laugh riot. (I got 5 right.)............