Thor’sLinks: Welcome Home

Off days are always good when a team is slumping, struggling, and losing.

Not because it gives the players a chance to clear their heads and reset. No, it’s because it gives us fans a break from the misery.

The misery is over. We will some games this home stand. Rejoice!

Have some tasty Welcome-Home-HaloLinks:

A Little Bit Of Angels News

Brandon Marsh, zooming up the prospect list to an MLB park near you..........

Mike Petriello sees the LA offense and struggles to understand how the numbers can even add up the way they do?.....Well, one way that they can add up in such a bizarre way would be this. (P.S. - It doesn’t help that the leadoff spot went 0 for Seattle.)..........

Bill James is getting real crotchety in his old age, but I agree here. With the absolutely gorgeous 70’s uniforms to fall back on, the Angels need to lose the red..........

I cannot even imagine how much better you feel knowing that LAA batters are turning to Shawn (“87 OPS+”) Wooten and Jeremy (“78 OPS+”) Reed to solve their hitting woes..........

So you are planning to go to Angel Stadium today. Important notice #1: go very freaking early. When the team says that, you know it’s real.........Important notice #2: the team also wants to warn you that you will enter the gate bearing an e-ticket if you are presenting the ticket via the MLB ticket app..........Important notice #3: JeffJoiner informs us that you will probably be just fine getting through the gate using a screen shot of your ticket rather than the active app. As Jeff notes, the Angels have yet to invest in the kind of cellular service density needed to handle the stadium population, and your app response standing in that line next to a couple thousand other people might be pretty bad. Jeff also has some 3rd-hand confirmation from a ticket agent that this works just fine..........

Here is your home opening series event schedule. Wanna know how Arte is splurging for that C-17 Globemaster? It’s all here, where you can see why we don’t get too many B2 bombers anymore. (The things I track down for you people!)..........

Everywhere In Baseball

Your 2019 draft bonus pools and slot values have been published..........

On Monday night Xander Bogaerts tried to take one too many bases on the throwing arm of A’s center fielder Ramón Laureano. It did not end well for Xander. On Tuesday night Xander was granted another chance to decide whether or not to test Laureano’s arm. Xander did not choose wisely..........

Just to remind, but lawyers can and do serve a valuable service to society. Case in point: it will be lawyers who finally force the LA Dodgers to spend the necessary portions of their revenues in order to ensure that the entire baseball experience is safe and secure...........The Dodgers do know a thing or two about the power of lawyers. Theirs are already busy trying to get their money back from a bobblehead maker that failed to deliver the goods..........

AwfulAnnouncing.com noticed the very thing I called out earlier this week. Rob Manfred’s Idiots of MLB have taken yet another step to prevent people like me from readily promoting and marketing their enterprise for free, by eliminating the search tool from their video site. This is the same guy who claims to be caring about connecting to the up-and-coming tech-savvy future fans so much that he is dashing about trying to re-write the rule book all over the place..........

Cuba has released the first group of players eligible for MLB under the new deal MLB and Cuban baseball agreed to late last year...........

Yesterday the sun rose...Troy Tulowitzki got injured...and the sun set...........

Christian Yelich is not regressing. Maybe that’s because he is already at his mean?..........

Craig Kimbrel can’t get a job. But he can still get a ring..........

Manny Machado courts controversy, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see that controversy has married Machado for life..........

The Mothership is trying to improve MiLB projections into MLB..........

Thank you, UniWatch.....great color footage of 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers training camp.....equally great footage of 1940’s Chicago Cubs..........

With so many pre-FA contract extensions getting handed out lately, the Cubs must have felt that they were missing something. How else to explain extending David Bote? Bote isn’t even a David Fletcher.........

The Duffle Bag

Jose Alvarado is a godamn warlock.................The Mariners will have the AL West locked up before the Cardinals or White Sox ever play a 2019 game at home..........Matt Shoemaker doing well. Before you whine, consider how well he might hit behind Trout, which is what we actually need............Somebody needs to get Luke Voit a mirror..........Step one, trade away Kevin Pillar. Step 2, rush outside and try and pull down the ginormous Kevin Pillar promotional banner hanging outside the stadium before any photographers come by and snapshot the irony..........Does this mean that the Yankees are going to overhaul their stadium food fare?..........