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This is why these are our lucky years. We are the ones who are always attendant when THE Mike Trout does magic. Nobody else has to miss the news reports and the replay highlights, but WE are the ones who are paying attention every day, first-hand.
And the beauty of live sports is that it is unscripted drama, conflict and excitement that happens in real time. You watch sports for the real-time experience, and nothing in the sport of baseball can top the real-time experience of Mike Trout.
3 for 6, 2 runs scored, 7 runs batted in, a 2-run home run, a 4-run home run, and a run-scoring single. 9 total bases.
Mike Trout is really good at baseball.
Let’s pause here for a moment and reflect. If you are a pitcher and you have Mike Trout stepping into the batter’s box with the bases loaded, you better hope that you have 2 outs already. With 2 outs, Mike’s slash line (37 AB’s) is .297/.435/.486 with an OPS of .921, and 33 RBI......With 1 out, his slash line (23 AB’s) is an incomprehensible .565/.615/1.130, OPS of 1.746, and 43 RBI....Yesterday there were none out. The only other option. Not safe AT ALL. Trout’s slash line here is now (only 9 AB’s) .556/.600/1.333, OPS of 1.933 and 25 RBI....All in, over his entire career with the bases loaded, Trout goes (69 AB’s) .420/.512/.812, OPS of 1.324 and 101 RBI. (NOTE: These numbers were updated to reflect the 9th-inning AB that Mike had with the bases loaded, which I had originally missed in my overnight manual updates to the BBR data.)
Other guys did other stuff. The Angels won 11-6 and have a chance to broom the Blue Jays today. 8 and 3 over their last 11 games, and now 1 game on the plus side of .500.
Bask in the glow of these Break-Out-The-Dust-Pan-HaloLinks:
A Little Bit Of Angels News
I was listening to this on the radio as it was happening and wanted to get a video clip for you all yesterday. None was posted and I was so disappointed. Well, here it is. Hansel Robles playing timing games with Baby Vlad as he worked the final out to preserve a 3-1 victory..........
Tyler Skaggs was not happy that Skipper Brad had the bullpen warming up behind him while he was dealing. This, I can understand. Despite Skaggs’ propensity to implode at about the 5th inning, in this game he was as pure and effective as it was possible for him to be, and better than I recall ever seeing him. For his manager to choose even that level of brilliance to protect the team from calamity would be disturbing for anyone. It’s not as if Skaggs will realize that kind of success often going forward.........(Contrast this to the story about Mets’ manager Mickey Callaway making decisions to pad Jacob deGrom’s stat line.)...........
I am saddened to report that Trevor Cahill will be making a rehab start tomorrow, thus nearing a return to Anaheim.............
Marcus Stroman having fun with Mike Trout..........
Albert Pujols remains a hero. And he is making LAA fans everywhere. (It should be interesting to look for LAA Pujols jerseys this weekend when he returns to STL for the first time.).........
$$ - I have already pointed out this week that as monumentally amazing Mike Trout has been, he is still chasing the younger version of Albert Pujols. So, yeah, Pujols sees a lot of Mike in himself..........
The Angels recently signed their 3rd and 4th round picks.....Their overall board is starting to come along..........
I cannot say that I am too pleased to find that Justin Bour and Kevan Smith were risking the life of Tommy La Stella there in Toronto..........
Ippei Mizuhara has the coolest gig, ever..........
Round One of the All-Star voting ends soon. Just Google your guy’s name and click to stuff your ballot............
Everywhere In Baseball
Cesar Puello did not get past the very first team on the waiver wire. The Marlins claimed him, agreeing to send back cash to the Angels. We will never know how many other teams behind the Marlins might have been interested, too, so we will now never know whether or not Eppler had an accidental trade chip in his hand that could have been used in a minor bidding war for some pocket prospect tidbits rather than mere cash. All we know is that Puello did good enough in his brief stint with us to warrant immediate interest as soon as he was made available..........
Hal Steinbrenner is poised to go all Daddy George on Major League Baseball if he has the chance..........So ther eis at least one person who does NOT believe that “...the Yankees Have the Most Stacked Lineup Ever”..............
Poor Xander Bogaerts. If only he played for an over-hyped team in a major market near some media megalopolis or something. Or won a World Series or two recently. Then maybe the voting public would get behind his All-Star campaign...........
When we get to the point where the lowly Cincinnati Reds sweep the mighty Houston Astros, it’s a fair time to go look at the MLB standings and parse some observations. My takeaway is that we can forget about the Yankees. The Astros and Twins have been the real beasts of the American League. The Yankees record has been built off their intra-division record. Outside of that they are barely over .500. The Astros have feasted upon the AL West, too, but they are also 7 games over .500 elsewhere. The Twins are clobbering all AL Divisions, just being average in Interleague. The AL West is winning 54% of their games against the AL East and only 46% of their games against the AL Central (blame the Mariners). At home, the Rangers, A’s and Mariners are not too far behind .500 within the Division, but the Astros are winning at a clip of .780. The disparity there is mostly because of the Angels,who are only .400 in the West. They are 5-5 against Texas but in the deficit against everybody else...............
Anthony Rendon is a really good baseball player. Anthony Rendon the very good baseball player gets better every year, and is way better now than he ever has been. Anthony Rendon is a distant 5th in NL All-Star voting, and that’s a crime. In terms of fWAR, he is 9th overall in MLB, 3rd overall among 3B, and second only to Nolan Arenado in the NL. But in voting he is behind 3rd place Josh Donaldson (7th in the NL in terms of fWAR) and 4th place Justin Turner (8th) And every NL team but the Rockies would trade their 3B for Rendon in a New York minute..........
LTFTFY: “The Dodgers starting rotation is a team of superheroes hell-bent on destroying hitters everywhere - except in Anaheim!”..........
And LMFTFY again: “Except for when the Dodgers play the Angels, National League dominating interleague play like never before because so many American League teams are tanking.”..........
I don’t know about FanGraphs, but I can tell you what I just learned about Cavan Biggio. He is a pain in the ass............
This moment of baseball confusion brought to you by very stupid construction engineers. Manny Machado saw a home run turn into a base hit + fielder’s choice, and Eric Hosmer saw his jog home trot turn into an embarrassment of situational unawareness, all because of how a baseball bounced off the top of the left field home run wall at Petco Park. Had the builders NOT put that extra bit of buffer padding on the top of a wall where it serves no purpose, the ball bounces beyond the fence and it’s a home run. Machado is not having a good week..........But, fair is fair. The Brewers did not distinguish themselves in that game, either..........
Curious logic trap. If Minor League ballplayers are now using Major League baseballs, why is that the reason that Major Leagues can no longer predict how well Minor League players will do when playing at the Major League level with Major League baseballs?..........
A dollar’s a dollar. And a real man pays off his bets. And who am I to accuse John Cena of not being a real man?..........
Boston fans can now become slightly less maudlin. David Ortiz was not the target of any assassination attempt. He was shot by accident because he dressed too much like somebody else..........
This is true. “...you will certainly have heard players praised for their ability to draw walks, while singles hitters are not held in nearly such regard.” And keep in mind that you rarely see runners on base advance more than 90 feet when the batter draws a walk...........
College World Series update. It’s Michigan and Vanderbilt in the lead..........
The Duffle Bag
Grown-ups too invested in what should be kids having fun and learning/developing. Shameful. Men and women alike............Regardless of any mystery, shouldn’t the real DB Cooper be dead by now?............Yasiel Puig stunned by how fooled he was by Justin Verlander..........BaseballProspectus digging deep for oddball stats..........