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If you didn’t get to the stadium last night you (like me) missed an offensive fiesta. 11 runs on 13 hits and everybody who went to the plate got at least one hit. That was cool, because Andrew Heaney got off to a rough start. But hey, at least he was healthy enough to have that rocky first couple of innings.
There were stars, of course. Shohei Ohtani and Justin Upton both homered (Ohtani with a 3-run jack, showing off such easy monster power), and Ohtani added a stolen base. That kid is active. If only he could pitch, too.
Kole Calhoun, Upton, Ohtani, Andrelton Simmons and Francisco Arcia all had multi-hit games. Simmons made a great play on defense....Eric Young Jr. made yet another great play on defense...Angels fan makes a great play on defense.
About the only guy who failed to contribute to the cause was Birthday Boy Mike Trout. Methinks he shall be a weekend return at this point. But his night off went great for all concerned. Halos crush Detroit 11-5.
Suck up all these Finally-Beating-Down-The-Beaten-Down-HaloLinks:
A Little Bit Of Shohei Ohtani News
Ohtani will be throwing off a mound on Saturday. Throwing baseballs and not towels, that is.....And wouldn’t that be a pisser of this puts Ohtani on track to get back out onto the field before Trout?..........
A Little Bit Of Mike Trout News
Let’s celebrate Mike’s day............Such as how he kicked off his MLB career. With a bunt. Sweet that it shows off how Trout’s speed kills. Even sweeter that it comes against he Mariners. May he bless them with a lifetime of pain and suffering........Forget Lebron, Trout is our Most Dominant Male Athlete..........27 Fun Facts for his 27th birthday. Won’t it be cool to be linking to 40 Fun Facts later in life?..........Mike spending his day at CHOC, thinking of others. Hey Rob Manfred, Mr. Marketing Opportunity is on line 1..........Miek is elite. So elite that in the world of PEDs free baseball, there are important places where he stands alone..........It’s been a pretty good run so far..........And his HoF trajectory is secure..........
Mike’s continued absence is making for one hell of an MVP race. It’s kind of like spotting the rest of the AL an entire month, just to make it sporting..........
A Little Bit Of Angels News
Public Service Announcement: Big goaled Hailey Dawson threw out another first pitch Tuesday night. She is the young lady born with Poland syndrome, and uses a 3D printed hand. She is on a “Journey to 30” to throw out a first pitch at every stadium in MLB. Her 30th, and final, target will be Angels Stadium. Set your calendars for September 16th. That’s a Sunday afternoon game versus the Mariners...........
Mike Trout is one of the very few non-pitcher MLB players having a better career than Andrelton Simmons. Interesting to think about, yes?..........
Welcome back, Kole Calhoun. (Didn’t Rahul already write this one for those guys?).........
The Shift has absolutely ruined Albert Pujols............And this news comes to us at the same time that Sam Miller plucks out of all the statistical studies on the impact of shifts that pitchers tend to nibble more when their defense is in the shift, and miss the strike zone just a tad more, but enough to result in more runs scored against the shift than otherwise. But it’s in that article that we see these two data points come together: “The threshold for when a shift should be used should be very high. It should be practiced only on those hitters with the most extreme pull tendencies. There should probably be a few thousand shifts per year, league wide, and they should all be against the same 20 or so guys. And those guys should be bunting against The Shift anyway.” That would be Albert Extreme Pull Hitter Pujols.........
Albert will not rule out retiring before his contract ends. Then again, he won’t rule it in, either..........
Rene Rivera going through rehab..........Matt Shoemaker is now playing long toss..........And Nick Tropeano rejoins Tyler Skaggs in rejoining the DL...........
The Angels PR department released the news that Luis Valbuena got his unconditional release, “...for the purpose of granting him his unconditional release”. What other purpose is there?...........
It’s already time to open your minds to the 2018 Arizona Fall League..........
Just another brief pause to reflect on the resurgence of the word “poppycock”, all thanks to Mike Scioscia..........
Everywhere In Baseball
The Texas Rangers picked the wrong image from which to create a bronze status and celebrate their World Series experiences. They chose this one...and got this statue...but, of course, they should have chosen this one...........
Dinosaurs still roam the Earth. For example, we used to think that the Coelocanth died out 65 millions years ago. Murray Chass, 22 million years ago. But here it is 2018, and we still have multiple sightings of a living example of the Wins!-o-saur. (The other sighting is over here, and this latter one suggests that there might be a whole herd of them in the Forest of BBWAA voters.) .........For those of you who are not following Jacob deGrom’s anti-Wins! magical season, reflect on this..........
On those moments when anything does happen in baseball, and all the weirdness concentrates into one play, baseball becomes farcical. Such as this moment yesterday. How they know for certain that the ball deflected off the wall and not out of Ender Inciarte’s glove requires Instant Replay. At the time of the event, did the umpires signal anything? Out, maybe? And it wasn’t so much Juan Soto passing Trea Turner on the basepath for the out, as it was Trea Turner passing Juan Soto in reverse on the basepath. But if an umpire signaled that Soto was out, and he was not out, wouldn’t that be the reason for why Turner and Soto were behaving as they did? So shouldn’t the umpires put the runners back on 1st and 2nd to prevent the farce, having instant Replay just proven them wrong on the field of play?..........
Bryce Harper is killing it. I know that he has been z big fat zero for much of this, his contract season, but in the second half he is killing it with a slash line of 367 / .484 / .673 and an OPS of 1.157..........
Jason Werth scored huge by Scott Boras several years ago. But when that contract ran out, Boras left Werth on the curb, and Werth ain’t happy about it. Sure, Boras pulled his age-old Boras shtick of waiting for the market to get desperate enough to overpay. It always had. But Werth has a point, since he learned that the agent he was paying to market him did not market him to anybody...........
Because South Korea doesn’t have their own Supercuts?..........
Hitting for the cycle is rare for a batter. Two guys hitting for the cycle in the same game? That’s a sign of the apocalypse...........
Robotics might come to the players long before they come to calling balls and strikes...........
Braves announcer Joe Simpson has parked his mouth back into the news again. (Please don’t tell me this is a thing when the team the announcer covers is looking like a playoff team.) This time he is calling out the Nats phenom Juan Soto for lying about his age. Mostly it’s about his size. A 19-year old is not supposed to be 6’ 1”, 185 pounds? What year is this, 1917? For the record, yours truly was 6’ 3”, 190 pounds at 18 years of age. And, yeah, I could kick some serious ass.............
I know that you had your hopes up. But, no, Luis Valbuena was far from making enough PA’s to qualify for failing to cover The Mendoza Line. The Angels had played 112 games when they DFA’s Valbuena, and at 3.1 PA’s per game average, he would have needed 348. he has only 288...........
One very long, very amazing tale of Steve Fields, an umpire who got bullied right out of Baseball. If you read anything to which I link this week, make it this one..........
Luke Heimlich might end up being banned from his chosen profession all over the planet Earth..........And as this example serves to point out, baseball as an international institution is subject to the laws and preferences of more than just the USA and our culture. This has always been a wonder to me. When a player gets into any trouble with the law, MLB might be in a forgiving mood. But what happens when they cross the border? We saw just this year with Bruce Maxwell of the A’s. And the Astros might end up with a similar problem with Roberto Osuna. Imagine if such a thing involved a playoff series?..........
We got our 2019 All-Star Game logo and it ain’t a Chief Wahoo anything. It’s a guitar. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, get it? Maybe we should stop throwing out the Cleveland Spiders after all. The Screamin’ Jays sounds a hell of a lot better.........Plus Indians: honoring a 52-year old ducat after the owner of said ducat failed to make the game due to an auto accident..........
The Duffle Bag
It’s August 9th. It’s been at least 24 hours since you were reminded that social media is the worst.........The All-MLB Slow Pitch Softball team, where everyone meme is a winner..........Who says players don’t follow stats such as WAR? Trevor Bauer certainly does. And Trevor Bauer is correct..........Garbage in, garbage out, I always say..........I would have taken this job opportunity myself instead of passing it along like I always do, except for that stupid “no discernible bias” requirement...........Baseball is supposed to be fun, people. Fun is not supposed to be the exception............When bugs wish to show proper respect...........
How about a UniWatch roundup?.....An Old Timey baseball doubleheader, because they don’t do shit like this in basketball.....Player’s Weekend Caps are out. These are a slight upgrade to the 2017 versions, which were pretty much the normal day-to-day cap.....Oh geez. Taxpayer money buys a business venue on behalf of Texas Rangers billionaires. Texas Rangers billionaires snooker same taxpayers into paying for a replacement business venue just a few years later, decrying the existing venue as not good enough. Texas Rangers billionaires then proceed to snooker money out of taxpayers by celebrating the memories of the inadequate business venue that the taxpayers paid for.....Fortnite info is going to be the death of me as I troll the Internet for news every day.....
