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Well, at least it was exciting to think about Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani batting 1-2 in the order...............At least we know that Mike Scioscia is thinking...........But 1 for 6 with 1 walk against 2 strikeouts is not indicative of what these two can do together up there. (Hell, even Kalhoun managed 1 hit.) The timing kind of stinks, too, what with Trout only having 3 singles across his last 8 games, dating back to May 7th. This is a pitchers duel series. Slumps are gonna look worse, not better.
One might, instead, observe that we were doing much better with Fieldin Culbreth behind the plate............
It was bound to happen that the Angels would eventually fail to support Jamie Barria. Yesterday was the day. But still, the bottom line is that the Barria-led Halos won 3-1. Jose Alvarez-led Halos lost 4-0. Alverez trumped Barria. Astros win 5-3..........
Suffer through today’s Our-Pen-Can-Be-Pure-Bull-Links:
A Little Bit of Angels News
Surprise! The LAA six-man rotation appears to be working...........It helps to have a healthy Andrew Heaney..........
Remember Mike Trout getting thrown out at 3B on the Ohtani single in the 5th inning, rally a-brewing? Remember also the old baseball adage of “Never make the last out of an inning at third base.” This is pretty true, but not as costly as the eyeball test would suggest. See Table 4. But still, testing Josh Reddick??? What’s with these guys?...............
Shohei Ohtani: seed-spitting gentleman.............
Throwing fast is fun. Throwing strikes is funner..........
Everywhere In Baseball
The Cano Special:...........By now you know that Robinson Cano has been suspended for 80 games due to PEDs violation. It... has... been... literally... all... over... the... news... leading... every... web... site..........Go ahead. Click any one off those. It’s all the same story. In fact, there are more stories announcing the suspension than are Cano photos to be used to lead the articles. (Notice the repeat imagery.)...........Except this one. Pretty unfortunate timing up there at the mothership. Same image, same date, still the old news about the Cano injury..........For his part, Cano can sleep through all this in his hospital bed...........
Now for the more aggressive coverage:...........Cano’s Hall of Fame trajectory just crash landed......Not that I agree. Voters are already getting over that and as long as he doesn’t repeat people will refuse to consider how many years he may have been juicing......But his HoF candidacy is still a viable discussion.......FanGraphs gives us the metrics on the prospects............Regardless, he is going to be carrying a new PEDigree for a very long time.....And even his hardiest fans cannot polish the turd of this news to be shiny enough..........
Then let’s start to get tough on the guy:..........We need to start asking serious questions........We need to call bullshit on the “I didn’t know” excuse...........We need to never forget that Cano was trying to avoid losing time by denying and appealing until his injury was going to sit his ass anyway, so this is more like a 10-game suspension...........And we need to force him to admit that he is still blowing smoke our way out of his lying ass..........
What we do NOT need to do, is feel sorry for the Mariners:............I don’t give a crap that this seems like just the latest cruel twist of their fates...........So what if they don’t make the playoffs, again?............Does Jerry Dipoto have anything left in the cupboard to trade and try to fill Cano’s shoes?............
And what better way to show the world that Justin Verlander is a knucklehead than letting the history off the Internet play itself out? By Justin Verlander stepping in his own poop...........Finally, the best Cano joke of the day..........
While you were not looking, the MLB June Draft has snuck up on you. It’s one of those things that happens when June rolls around...........
The Boston Red Sox seem to be working to corner the market on stupid this month. Sure, we have the David Price Carpal tunnel injury due to excessive video-gaming. We can add to that a dislocated finger to pitcher Carson Smith because he hurt himself throwing his glove in anger. And we can wrap up the yesterday episodes with Andrew Benintendi doing this..........
Everything about Sports Gambling that you ever wanted to know, or didn’t, all in one place............Except this. This tells us that gambling will make Baseball great again!............
If I am reading this right, the theory for connecting the next generation of fans to baseball is not to speed up pace-of-play, but to have us old farts teach the young fartlets how to sit around and stare at batter shenanigans between every pitch and call it fun..........
The Arizona humidor may be the best part of the DBacks starting rotation this season..........
So forget crying about Robinson Cano and the Mariners. Instead, direct your empathy towards A.J. Pollock and the DBacks...........
The MLB uniform popo have unfinished business. I was guessing that they had been called off by MLB execcs once the bad press had exploded in their faces. Nope. They have moved from cleats...to undersleeves..........
The Duffle Bag
For those off you who have never lived in California out of fear of earthquakes, the POV of this centerfield camera is what you feel 99.999999996% of the time...........C.J. Cron is not too successful at golf, either............This is why I wanted to be a professional baseball player...............Yet one more near-perfecto.............