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As Mike Trout cruises through the MLB cellar of pitching staffs, and the Angels offense as a whole hack their way into an early demise, Miguel Cabrera comes to town just in time to flash some of his few, remaining, moments of bat brilliance for a national audience. And at our expense. And Jordan Zimmerman got himself a nice tonic of Halo Hacking.
Prior to last week (as late as July 17th), Baltimore had been the worst team in MLB. But a 4-game trip to Anaheim instilled new life into them and lifted them out of the basement. That parked the Detroit Tigers in that basement. Lucky Tigers, because now THEY get a shot at LAA and, in the opener, they made good work of that chance.
Leading the charge was Miguel Cabrera with a 2 for 4 performance with 3 RBI and a run scored himself, having started the top of the 1st inning with a solo home run.
To counter, the Angels rolled out a roster that the had to work pretty hard to collect more hits (5) than errors (2, with Andrelton Simmons suffering his 4th in the month, his worst July since 2014) and a pitching lineup that went from middling to disastrous as fast as Skipper Brad could flip from Jaime Barria over to Ty Buttrey. In between Justin Anderson and Cam Bedrosian were solid, but the Barria-Buttrey bookends flopped. 6 of the 7 runs between them. Luis Garcia’s 7th run in the 9th was rendered a mere moment of extra boredom. And, painfully, 4 of the runs were scored with 2 outs on the board. Only Buttrey was gracious enough to crap the mound with 3 easy runs without teasing us first.
Meanwhile, Tigers’ starter Jordan Zimmerman seemed like a white flag move by Detroit manager Ron Gardenhire. On the season he has had 13 games started, and was 0-8 himself as the Tigers had only managed to win 3 of those 13. His last 4 starts totaled 15.1 innings pitched, 36 hits and 24 runs allowed with 3 home runs. That’s good for a 14.09 ERA to be added to a .450 BA / .488 OBP / .738 SLG and 1.226 OPS against.
That’s not the Zimmerman the Halo bats showcased for YouTube. Zimm went 5 full innings and gave up only 4 hits and 2 runs. That’s his longest outing AND his fewest hits allowed AND his fewest runs yielded all since June.
Angel Stadium must be starting to feel like Disneyland for visiting teams. The Halos are 1-5 at home since that 5-game win streak they had mid-July.
Angels lose 7-2. Zimmerman wins. Cabrera wins. Billy Eppler’s starting pitching history is becoming the losingest of the losers.
Distract yourself with some The-Door-Is-Still-Open-HaloLinks:
A Little Bit Of Angels News
One-time Halo Loek van Mil, the tallest MLB pitcher in history, died in some unspecified fatal accident.............
Jose Ramirez got the call up as Noe Ramirez remains out with a viral infection..........And we also added Adam McCreery in a blockbuster deal that must be reverberating around MLB Front Offices throughout the land............
Here comes JC Ramirez...........
Blake Parker didn’t want to go down to AAA, so he has opted for full Free Agency..............
($$) - Doug White had an odd trajectory to get himself into the LAA dugout as pitching coach..............
Trout Porn: among all centerfielders in history, Mike’s JAWS score just sent him past Joe DiMaggio and he is closing in on Ken Griffey, Jr., which would park him 5th-best all-time...........Baseball has changed, tremendously, as this comp between Trout and Vladdie demonstrate............In the old days a fan had to go to the daily newspaper to get baseball box scores and learn the goings on. Today, the Internet does that for you and makes it easy. But what’s NOT easy, is to get the daily personal box score of Mike Trout. So newspapers back to the rescue............
Jonathan Lucroy makes a rehab start with the 66’ers tonight...........Coincidentally, at the same time we are finding out that Jake Marineck’s appeal was denied and he has to sit out his 2 games.................
Andrew Heaney may not be feeling good enough physically to get back on the mound. But he is feeling good mentally about the prospect of one day feelgood physically............
I wasn’t around yesterday to give you all the weekly Mike Trout WAR perp walk, so we can just let USATODAY catch you up on all that he has passed up this month. He is 0.2 bWAR behind Bobby Grich for 90th place..........
Everywhere In Baseball
As I linked above, baseball has changed dramatically. Actually, it the revolution is accelerating. 2019 is video game baseball with cheat codes, and this time you can’t claim that it’s the players who are cheating..........
Lots to uncork here in this dust-up over the weekend. Pitchers stepping on bats? Batters creating a verbal shout down during his home run trot? Home run batter getting plunked later? Benches clearing multiple times? Ranger Elvis Andrus proclaiming that pimping is not allowed once a player reaches 30 years of age? Yup. All that...............
I am still not over Stevie Wilkerson..........
Trevor Bauer lost it. Completely. Watch Terry Francona lose it on Bauer as he reaches the mound. Bauer cooled off later, and apologized, but throwing a baseball into the batter’s eye? Seems pretty amazing. We should make a new tradition of this. Let The Old Guys Play!.............
The MLBPA is in chaos. Or it is finally in unison. It depends on your POV, I guess. I don’t know, in fact, which way it is but I do know that the recent ‘solidarity’ has not been extremely beneficial to the players............
I think it’s false to declare in 2019 that the Bryce Harper contract is not working out. Harper has years and years of future service time on the contract and the economics of baseball are going to change with Harper locked away from that change. And the marketing impact of Harper has been nothing shy of phenomenal for the Phillies already. Call me when Harper is 35 and let’s take a proper look...........
This I did not know. Luis Tiant was once traded for Ralph Garr...and 500 teddy bears..........
The Athletic is growing. I hope that it is growing healthily..........Deadspin is bubbling up a kerfuffle from within.............
Trade Rumors
All this stuff ends tomorrow. It took MLB GM’s procrastinating to the final couple of days to start a rush of activity. If they have it their way, they will start procrastinating to the middle of August from now on...........
The Phillies made a deal with the Mets and picked up Jason Vargas..........
The Mets, having let it be known that they are shopping pitchers on the market so that they can fix the rest of their roster, pulled off the largest trade so far. They obtained another pitcher, Marcus Stroman......Few rational minds understand what they are doing (and here).....Stroman was expected to be traded to a contender. He was not. Upon hearing the news there was “a commotion” in the Toronto clubhouse......Marcus claims that his getting so pissed off immediately after hearing that he was traded to the Mets had nothing to do with the Mets. Which is pretty interesting, since he had been celebrating his pending trade. It couldn’t have been being traded that pissed him off, and he got pissed off the minute he learned he was traded. So if it wasn’t the WHERE, what’s left?.....Some Front Office exec took a potshot at Stroman on his way out the door.....Stroman believes in Let The Kids Play..............
Thus, we now have a major pitcher off the market and STILL have all those teams in need of pitching...........
The Blue Jays also traded away Eric Sogard, who was in the middle of his best season as a Big Leaguer. (Selling high. An intriguing concept.)..........This opened an infield spot on their 25-man, into which they (finally) promote Dante Bichette............And sending away Sogard also fetched one of the top producers in MiLB...............
The Rangers are now in the baseball flowchart business............
Noah Syndergaard has a sense of humor about being trade bait. He must be hoping to block any American League destinations............
Here is where the trade summary for this season is all pulled together............
The Angels Big Splash this week could be “wait until Winter, when we will be interested in Gerrit Cole and Matt Boyd”. ..............
The Duffle Bag
Hidden Ball Trick of the Week.................Because, for some guys, a baseball glove is simply too small...........Jeff Mathis, Mt. Flushmore Icon. But somewhere out there Lyle Spencer is not taking notice...........Gotta love Sean Doolittle. “Was that up?”..............