HumpLinks: Halos Host an Off Day

Just when you were getting back into the groove of regular baseball action, we get an off day. Because, you know, Spring camp is tough what with all those meetings and stretching and 5 innings of play every other game. Let’s not burn ourselves out. We still have a lot of camp left to play and Cactus Leagues are not won on March 12th.

But my days off don’t come until later this week.

So have some Idle-Hands-Are-A-Coach’s-Workshop-HaloLinks:

A Little Bit Of Angels News

Reading this, I noticed something interesting. The current Halo with the longest commitment from Arte would be Justin Upton, signed through 2022. The interesting part (to me) is that there are only 5 guys in the entire American League with a current contract that goes further into the future - Stanton, Cabrera, Kepler, Polanco and Altuve. (There are 9 such guys in the NL, but 4 of those guys just signed this Winter.)..............

Luc Roy is officially an Angel. How do I know? Because he is being pimped for how well he handles the pitching staff. That’s Halo Speak for “catcher”, formalized over the past 2 decades..........

Cool! Here is a group photo of the LAA audience of Latino players listening in on a Vlad Guerrero, Sr. lecture, where he is explaining...HOLY BALLS LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THE LAA LATINO POPULATION!!!..........

Jack Kruger is coming. He has had a pretty good ST, and this is one of the reasons why..........

My favorite line in this new LAA Prospect Review would be: “Expect Canning to start the 2019 season in AAA, but if any injuries at the Major League level occur...” If? IF??? What franchise are we talking about?..........Which is why I smile quizzically to learn that the most intriguing “position” battle within the LAA organization is who shall be the 5th starter in the rotation? First off, flipping from position players to pitchers is a cop-out. But with our health problems among almost the entire rotations over the past 3 seasons, we should expect easy openings for 3 or 4 of those slots any time before June............

More Jared Walsh, two-way player.....Which was topical on a day off, seeing as the Angels have 4 of them now..........

Just Simba chillin’, talking with his animal subjects..........

Justin Bour and his wife Hayley Milon are expecting their first little cherub this summer..........

Everywhere In Baseball

As ESPN counts up the projected Top 100 players in MLB for 2019, we see Shohei Ohtani coming in at #74, just ahead of something called a ‘Whit Merrifield’. Nowhere near Oakland’s Blake Treinen and his One Great Season last year, even though they admit that “No projection system would expect a repeat of a historic 0.78 ERA...”............

I am absolutely gonna cringe when we play the Royals and try to run on Maldo..........

Mark Trumbo is still with Baltimore, right? And I know him. So we know one guy. Thus, Baltimore is not so anonymous over here out of Villa Park and Anaheim..........

Tim Tebow, with his solitary ST highlight being the launch end of a great defensive play, is being dropped back to AAA. But that’s OK. The Mets are going to follow him there for their final ST game, playing in their own AAA city of Syracuse. Good for extra ticket sales......Credit to Tebow, though. He has at least mastered the concept that baseball and football are different..............

Daniel Murphy, the guy I have wished we had gotten way back in 2016 when he was practically begging for work, talks some very enlightened hitting..........(And, for the record, I still believe he could have been of value to the Halos today. he just signed a 3-year $30M deal with the Rockies with $6M as an option on that 3rd year, when we will be paying Cozart just north of $25M for 2 more years of service. Murphy plays all over the infield, too. Even 1B if you wanted to lump into the conversation the Bour dollars.)..........

To remind, in baseball The Three True Outcomes are a walk, a strike out, or a home run. This, because they are the only thing a batter can do all on their own, not involving the position players on defense surrounding the pitcher/catcher/batter relationship. MLB as a whole appears to have fallen past the event horizon of the TTO black hole (LAA being kinda the middle of the pack), but there still exist the rare games that seem to have resisted the pull............

Clayton Kershaw is making progress. He had a pitching session on Monday. We have 15 days before Opening Day..........

Burr and Hamilton duel again..........

The National League becomes more fun that the American League, only because the National League is late to the game of creating super teams..........

Welcome back to baseball Jimmy Nelson. That was one hell of a rehab. TJ seems quicker...........

The folk in the greater Dallas/Arlington area seem a bit sensitive to observations that their NEW new stadium for the Rangers includes a heady number of style points borrowed from Minute Maid Park down in Houston..........

As Opening Day nears, we enter that phase of Spring where we hammer the foodies with the gluttony of ballpark eats. yesterday we kicked things off with the Rangers torpedo of chicken tenders. Let’s roll formally into first gear and accelerate.....The Astros lineup includes a mighty tasty looking Prime Rib sandwich.....The Marlins are mostly about dropping food and beverage prices to food truck levels.....The Phillies are bringing Shack Shack inside, and adding even more beer......But the minor league West Michigan Whitecaps are simply handing over the choice of new food item to their fans..........And nobody in MLB (yet) wants to offer up Lucky Charms beer..........

The Duffle Bag

Kids, puppies, baseball, Javy Baez...does it get any more fun?............Yes! It CAN get more fun!! We can get bat dogs in the MLB...........Oh, sure, I think when I finish being an international soccer star I will just go and play baseball in MLB. It’s working for Tebow, right?.........I was scouting to see what, if anything, might be magical about the LAA St. Patrick’s Day cap (with zero expectations, of course), when I tripped over this one. It’s Ohio State, and that is NOT supposed to be cannabis..........