Weekend HaloLinks: Firing on all cylinders

It’s the job of a good team to win the games against bad teams. It ain’t gonna happen every time but if a team wants to be a contender, it needs to happen a lot. For the Angels, it’s happening a lot. Good times. After sweeping the Rangers, kicking off a 4-game series against the Royals with a 7-1 win is an excellent, and necessary, sign. It’s too bad the franchise chose this time for maintenance on the halo, which remains inoperable.

This one had a lot. 6.2 shutout innings from a rejuvenated Nick Tropeano. 6 hits, 6 strikeouts, 2 walks. An Ian Kinsler home run on the second regular season pitch he saw under the Halo. A Mike Trout bomb to dead center field, meaning perfect contact, on the 11th pitch of his 8th-inning at-bat. A Shohei Ohtani bases-clearing triple, his first 3-bagger of his already illustrious career (and impressing viewers with his base running speed). That finished off a 3 for 4 or Mike, which paired well with Justin Upton’s 3 for 5, Albert Pujols’ 2 for 5, Andrelton Simmons’ 2 for 4, and Luis Valbuena’s 2 for 4. All that to say this offense is cooking with gas, and we are still only seeing a taste of Trout and Ohtani. Just imagine if our starting rotation holds up!..........

11. The most wins in Baseball. Let’s have a great weekend.

And chew on these T-Minus-11-and-counting-Links:

A Little Bit of Angels News

Ohtani likes playing this baseball game thing. He wants to do more of it. Can’t say as I blame him. He appears to be kind of good at it..........Except with the inside stuff. Pedro Martinez advises everybody to pound Shohei hard inside, because Pedro suspects he ain’t good at that..........And how about this? 25 MLB at-bats and one team has already started to try the shift against the kid..........

And then there is Ohtani, creating new Halo fans one small step at a time...........

ESPN now with an Ohtani podcast...........

And analysts are now left playing catch-up after grossly missing their forecasts for Shohei..........And Jeff Passan is being forced to travel in Ohtani’s wake (jump to 5:30) and observe in person the magnitude of his mistake, as penance...........By the way, in that video, go to the 3:26 mark. Apparently, MLB still has guidance to their umpires that in the case of a catcher running a Yankee baserunner back to 3B when 3B is already occupied, the defense is only allowed to collect one Yankee out. Because, yes, you have seen that before...........

Matt Shoemaker has been shut down “for a few weeks”..........

Ryan Schrimpf was optioned back to Salt Lake to make roster room. I could have sworn that I had read earlier yesterday that Jaime Barria had also been optioned (so that we could activate BOTH Ian Kinsler and Nick Tropeano), but I’ll be damned if I can find anything anywhere tonight to confirm...........

What we have here, my friends, is a testimony to Billy Eppler depth building. Because, these days, pitchers are going to get hurt everywhere..........Baseball American knew about Eppler’s pitching depth, especially that Jaime Barria part...........And Eppler’s roster is kicking ass right now...........Oh, Baldo. And this comes right when he was showing some signs of usefulness. I wonder if the Mariners might be interested?..........

Everywhere In Baseball

The after-effect of the Wednesday games created quite a maelstrom of testosterone stew. In the Yankee/Red Sox story, we begin with everybody being upset with sliding.............Then pitcher Joe Kelly saying all the right things, that the pitch just got away from him. Pedro Martinez (yeah, we are back to Pedro again) speaks out that Kelly did almost perfect, except that Kelly should have plunked Austin Tyler the first time he came back up to bat............Managers and ex-managers are bitching about one another, across generations...........Players are bitching about the incident, across generations.............Other ex-players are bitching about the slide rule itself...........Hit batters are occurring at a more rapid rate..........And the DBacks want to take credit for starting it all..........But, oh hell, baseball fights are fun, people!!!..............And then we can have all kinds off fun dissecting baseball fights for hours..............

And not to be outdone by baseball fights, we have unwritten rules and respecting the game to fall back on.............Clint Hurdle is pissed about Javy Baez bat flipping...........And that just means that Javy gets to get into a pissing contest..........

If MLB ever manages to steal their way into the revenue stream of people wagering on baseball, the players are lining up to make sure they get their share............

Grant Brisbee is back in the saddle, and he takes MLB to task for merely thinking about a stupid-assed mercy rule..........

Major League Baseball is making positive strides in diversity hiring among the non-player side of the industry..........

This is fantastic, tripping back to 1968..............

On the injury side, Jordan Zimmerman took a comeback shot to the face...........David Price, who had to exit after only one inning of work against the Yankees Wednesday, now needs to undergo testing on his hands. But do not think for one minute that this means Price won’t try to make his next start. It’s his non-throwing hand. People should bunt on him all game long..........Elvis Andrus has a broken elbow, and is gone for a couple of months...........And Joey Votto? Votto just took a little vaca..........

The Duffle Bag

Yessir. This is the kind off outcome that can put stuffing into the mouths of Doyer fans...........Good job, Phanatic..........Nice work, Rob Manfred. Nice job you did with that whole Miami ownership transaction............I’m an IT guy. I have been since the early 80’s. And I am here to tell you that this kind of stupid shit will never, ever stop happening...........Need a job? Here is another TrackMan Operator gig. And here is an IT app development analytics job with the DBacks...........Brandon McCarthy’s wife with the superior diss-tweet..........