MondoLinks: Angels Weekend Full Of Bull

Andrew Heaney was dealing again. Even as late as the 8th inning he struck out the side. But he left the mound then having thrown 106 pitches. Too bad. That 116 pitch complete game back on June 5th must have spooked Mike Scioscia. So Sosh went to his indomitable and trustworthy bullpen.

And Heaney’s great afternoon was all for naught. The bullpen turned a 5-3 lead into a 6-5 loss at the 11th inning.

That sounded familiar to anyone who might have followed the game on Saturday, when Sosh went to his indomitable and trustworthy bullpen in the 6th, and a John Lamb 3-2 lead was turned into 6-4 loss.

Particularly fun yesterday was the Sosh moment of pulling Jose Alvarez in the 9th immediately after Alvarez came out to take over for the faltering Blake Parker and struck out Matt Olson for out #2. The Angels still lead 5-4 and were still 1 out from victory. Alvarez was throwing 91 to 93 mph and painting the corners. 6-hitter Mark Canha, 1 for 3 to that point was coming to the plate. But Canha bats from the right side and Alvarez throws left. And Canha is batting 60 points higher against lefties. Sosh, master strategist, had the answer: We need a right-handed pitcher! Hey, that would be Cam Bedrosian! Boom. Tie game. In only 2 pitches. That makes 4 blown leads for Shit-The-Bed in 2018.

Don’t look now, but you have to chew on these Sun-Setting-On-The-West-Links:

A Little Bit Of Shohei Ohtani News

Ohtani with some one-handed batting practice............

ESPN laments the reality of having to move on from their Ohtani Tracker............

A Little Bit Of Mike Trout News

Let’s pepper you with stat-heads working hard to try and keep up with all the wonderment that is Michael Nelson Trout............Over his last 162 games Mike has just given us a 50/30 season...........Yesterday he reached base all 5 times he went to the plate. 10th time in his career he has done that without the defense gifting him any errors............And that was 11 times he reached base in the Oakland series...........Over the last week, Trout walked more times from the plate than he made outs............He has as many games getting on base 4 or more times as he does with 0’fers...........In the past 6 games, he has just blown up Baseball (meaning that he should be AL Player Of The Week)...........

A Little Bit Of Angels News

We now have 15 guys on the DL. The Halos “...had just 12 players from the opening day roster on Friday’s active roster.”.............But Andrelton Simmons is back, so watching defense should be fun again...........

Remember this guy? PTBNL for the Ohtani To Anaheim deal............

Jo Adell still giving us cause to believe in Trout Junior..........

Welcome to Major League Baseball, Jake Jewell...........

News of the 2019 schedule in coming out, and the Angels and Albert Pujols are returning to St. Louis. Pujols has not been back since 2011. Yeah. 7 years of interleague play and the scheduling mavens could not come up with any Cardinals games in STL. Nice marketing there, MLB...........

Everywhere In Baseball

Well done Commissioner Manfred. Your support of the MLB tankership is much appreciated. Not by the fans, mind you, who have gutted your attendance figures by some 2 million butts in seats. But I am sure that the per caps are still doing OK............

Tom Verducci has some ideas for how to get rid of all the strikeouts. (One of his ideas, lowering the mound, is the one I keep bringing up). Of course, until position players start seeing K’s hitting them in their contract negotiations, only scribes and fans are groaning over the issue. FanGraphs jumps in with a major missing point from Verducci’s piece: the zone itself. The biggest problem is that the zone has gotten bigger, mostly by umpires re-stretching the zone downward again after that brief pause of MLB insisting that they call the rule book level of middle of the knee...............

On one side of Baseball we have the ongoing, ever-rising, brilliance of Mike Trout. On the other side we have Kole Calhoun - no we don’t we have not demoted to AAA Chris Davis who is still losing WAR at the MLB level. And the difference between Trout and Davis is stupendous............Buck Showalter is jumping into the fiasco and benching him. Not the Mystery 10-day DL to spend time at AAA and see if he can fix himself kind of benching that comes when you are only at -1.2 bWAR. Just park down by the Gatorade for a few days and minimize the damage. Whatever it takes to keep Davis from the ignominy of history............

Here they are. I’m not a fan of the National League’s ASG uniforms. But I love the American League unis...........The Home Run Derby, though, that one might not be showcasing those informs if they can’t get marquee players to participate and draw viewers...........

Last week I should you an image of Mike Trout’s ability to launch his hardest hit balls up the middle. That is something that keeps defenses honest. Bryce Harper does not appear to have that ability...........

An entire MLB game. 5 runs scored. A 3-2 victory by the Pirates over the Reds. And not a single RBI...........

Dumbass fan on the Field gets just reward, Part 1......Dumbass fan on the Field gets just reward, Part 2..........

Oregon State and Washington both lost their openers in the CWS over the weekend, and they play an elimination game tonight. So the West will only have 1 team standing tomorrow morning, and that team will still be limping...........

The Duffle Bag

The Sandlot lives forever!............Lou Piniella now thinks that he went overboard with his tirades during his arguments with umpires? Kinda late for late, Lou. Can’t undo the boos you brought upon those umps..........After all, there are better ways to bust a bad ump...........Milwaukee Brewers reliever Adrian Houser must have heard some rumor that he might get traded to Anaheim and join Sosh’s bullpen.............MLB wants us to all forget that Terry Collins versus MLB umpire video. Noah Syndergaard is having none of it...........Ouch! Now there’s a fine headache..............Foul balls are for kids. For all the greatest of reasons...........Bruce Maxwell probably considers himself to be some kind of hero..........