MemoriaLinks: Halos KO’d by HazMatt

What a mess. One of their guys singles...to our pitcher. Another of their guys hits a run-scoring sac fly...to our shortstop. Our starting pitcher gives up 8 runs...before the 3rd inning is out. (Remember, this guy is supposed to be our healthy pitcher.)Their guys hit 8 homers and make national news. Their guys score 16 runs and make national news. One of their infielders - an ex-our infielder - goes 5 for 5. One of our infielders goes 0-5. Two of their guys hit 2 homers each, and drive in 7 total runs. One of our guys strands 7 runners on base.

The guy currently carrying the LAA Triple Crown - most Home Runs, most RBI and highest Batting Average - is a guy the Cubs threw away and the guy this writer considered the biggest foopah of Billy Eppler’s offseason. And he clobbered a grand slam yesterday and represented 60% of the LAA run-scoring machine.

In hindsight, it rained on the wrong day.

The bad news is that the Internet enables us to be masters of angst. The good news is that ($$) Matt Harvey won’t be starting again this weekend. So we should not expect to suffer this level of mess again soon. But Skipper Brad, allow me to correct you. there most definitely HAS been talk about removing Harvey from the rotation. Maybe not with you or the LAA Front Office present, but trust me. Trust me. That conversation has been happening everywhere outside the stadium.

Therefore, let’s celebrate the future with Watch-Canning-Grow-HaloLinks:

A Little Bit Of Angels News

LAA players really did not want to play yesterday. Did it show?............

$$ - Jim Bowden rolls through the top rookies of 2019. When he gets to the To Rookie Pitchers, one of his top players to watch is #6, Ty Buttrey. “Buttrey was traded to the Angels last July in a deal for second baseman Ian Kinsler, and it looks like the Angels really stole one from Boston.” I had to go look up why Buttrey is still classified as a rookie. Less than 50 innings pitched and less than 45 days on the active roster in 2018. Among rookies, Buttrey is the top reliever in the AL..............

We may be having a crappy run at the moment, but at least we have the best entrance video in MLB.............

How is it that Mike Trout has a hit taken away because of this, but Kevin Kiermaier gets credited with an inside-the-park home run because of this?.............

Here they come. The door has opened wide on behalf of Sosh apologists...........

Everywhere In Baseball

This is Memorial Day Weekend. The point of this is to take some time to think about those men and women, just regular folk like you and me, who set aside their original life plans and picked up the call to go fight for a just cause. And in so doing, their lives were ended. That is a sacrifice. Not hitting a baseball in the air so that some other guy can move 90 feet. UniWatch, lover of sports apparel across all eras, has a thing against the growing use/abuse of merchandising the recognition of this National Holiday. This year, there is an interview with Nick Francona, son of Terry Francona and a military veteran himself, who worked in the LAA Front Office for a period. Nick is very much not a fan of this MLB trend, probably costing him his career.

Fake injuries. Such bullshit. Is that really what we want to see our Front Office analytics mavens leveraging week to week?..............And fake injuries do nothing but cause us all to look suspiciously at other injuries, such as with Giancarlo Stanton...........

The Houston Astros have the most wins in baseball right now (tied at 33 with the Twins). That’s the roster of guys they have at the MLB level right now.....And that roster is a juggernaut......The Houston Astros have one of the very best farm systems in baseball right now (top 5 in multiple reports). That’s the roster of guys they will have playing at he MLB level in the future for some time to come.....And the Houston Astros know how to win the off-season Free Agent risk-taking (that would be all about Michael Brantley)............

The Mothership is concerned that the Carter Stewart to Japan result is an important marker for a shrinking talent pool for MLB.....Scott Boras, not necessarily a neutral voice here, believes that the Carter Decision “will have a great impact on baseball”.....But while I agree it means something, I don’t think it will be all that big of a deal since teams in Japan have a limit of only 4 foreign players per team, and they fill those slots with veterans already...........

This is a brilliant look into the ongoing development of pitching repertoire. MLB Curves And Sliders Have Gotten Alarmingly Nasty. There are some fantastic graphics in the article, worth the click just by themselves. The bottom line sums up the meat of the text succinctly. “Pitchers’ pitches will likely keep getting better, moving faster and with more movement. There is seemingly no end to the increasing frequency of strikeouts. While the home run surge has masked other areas of offensive decline, technology and training is giving pitchers a new edge.”.............

Yeah, Dave Martinez!! If you are going down, go down IN FLAMES, BABY!!!..............

You know that moment yesterday when our third-baseman, converted back to shortstop, couldn’t noodle arm his way to prevent a run scoring from third on a bloop fly? Some teams have a third-baseman who can throw guys out across the infield while sitting on his ass. Thanks, Jerry.............

Sorry, man, but if you rank the Top 5 baseball video games of all time and fail to include the paradigm shift that was Intellivision Baseball, you are too young to be making these rankings............

This is a very long read, but it’s a 3-day weekend. After you get through everything else and have filled up your allotted chat time in the comments below, come back and click here. It’s like a PBS NOVA deep dive into the material that comprises the surface of MLB infields.............

The Department of Justice is upping its game on human trafficking of Cuban ballplayers, and increasing the pressure on the Braves, Padres and...Dodgers!............

Mario Impemba is making a comeback in Boston. But read the article and you will learn that he still connects to the roots he put down in Anaheim..........

Let me go on record and say that if the Angels are in Game 7 of the World Series, tie game and bottom of the 9th, bases loaded and Mike Trout steps to bat with nobody out, FOX Sports is totally fine with interrupting their broadcast to let me know that something is headed my way which might be a threat to the lives of me and my family. I really can’t expect Mike to understand int that moment how he should have better planned his heroics...........But move my baseball game to give consideration to hockey? Nope............

The Duffle Bag

Fun discussion topic for the weekend: What’s the funniest misconception you had about MLB when you were a kid? Mine was misunderstanding what it meant to “lay one down”. You can guess for yourself what I was thinking as a kid.............John Cusack vaping at Wrigley? Hey, he gets to sit in the front row. And he is a celebrity. So he is entitled, right?..........Auburn University is 2 outs away from eliminating LSU from the SEC Tournament. And then this happened............Christian Yelich represents SoCal well, knows how to make an impression on sports fans in Milwaukee...........

OT: I am trying to figure out what it says about me that I have been to 20% of the Top 25 Iconic Burger Joints in America?