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Well, now the Angels pitching staff are certainly in good company. I suppose we will just chalk it up to learning pains.
In this 2019 season, the Pittsburgh Pirates have now scored 10 runs or more in 11 games. And their opponents in those games are the Cardinals, the Rockies, the Brewers, the Marlins, the Padres, the Astros, the Cubs and the Reds. There are some good teams there. We should be proud to be considered among them. Giving up 4 home runs is a sign of the Halo commitment to that club.
The position players should also be proud to commit more errors on defense than they do scoring runs on offense. Not to mention dropping rookie Mitch Keller’s ERA from a whopping 10.50 down to 7.94. Giving up 3 K’s to LAA drop-out Chris Stratton (really, a guy not good enough to stick on one of the worst staffs in MLB) is a sign of the Halo commitment to the club of ironic fail.
The Angels hop back into the “L” column for the entertainment of the home fans, losing miserably 10-2.
Distract yourself with these We-Are-Dust-But-We-Still-Got-Live-Baseball-HaloLinks:
A Little Bit Of Angels News
MLB published the Angels’ 2020 schedule yesterday. My takeaways:
1. Really? We burn an off day after only 4 games so that the Halos can travel all the way from Houston to Arlington for a 3-game series (when we christen the Ranger’s new field with the first of what should be hundreds of losses)? Why not use that off day on the back end of that Arlington series so the Angels have a travel day to get home after a night game in Texas, before their night game home opener against the Astros? That kind of stuff is going to add up when they get to the part of the year where they go from July 17th to August 23rd with only 2 off days (assuming neither are burned with a makeup).
2. April fun: Anaheim to Detroit back to Seattle down to Houston back to Anaheim across to Chicago back to Seattle.
3. In May, they catch a well-scheduled road trip back east that starts in Boston with the Red Sox, jumps down to the DC area for the Nationals and then the Orioles, and then home, all book-ended with travel days.
4. We pay the NL East next year. The Angels get the Marlins 4 times whereas the rest of the AL West gets them only 3. But Houston gets the Marlins in September, when wins might be their most precious.
5. Mike Trout gets a solid 5 days in The LAtrine. A Friday/Saturday Interleague set against our favorite punching bags, leading into the All-Star Game on the following Tuesday.
6. August/September are loaded with home cooking. In August they play 27 games in 31 days, with 17 of those right here in SoCal. They are home solid from the 13th to the 27th. They then play 2 games up in Seattle before coming home again for another 10 day stretch, the 11th day being a travel day to Cleveland. After 10 days on the road, they close out the season at home with 6 games. That means that 15 of their 24 September games are spent in Anaheim...........
Max a-Stassi-n! He got a base hit!!..............
No hurry, here, Andrelton Simmons. It’s not as if your risking your health on the field by coming back too early is going to fix the starting rotation............
Trout and his bride Jessica picked up a nifty little AirBnB pad in upper Newport. You can see a bird’s eye view here. This means that they drive past both my work and my home twice a day to/from the stadium. They need to drop in and say hello..........
Victor and Gubi hold on to the #6 spot overall among MLB broadcast fan favorites. “I believe the Angels are the only team to increase their grade every year we’ve done this. They don’t seem to take themselves too seriously, yet still provide interesting and insightful analysis and commentary. It’s purely anecdotal, but I think more people are attempting to tune into Angels games because of how awesome Mike Trout is, and are gaining more of an appreciation for this broadcast crew.”..........
TL;DR = The Halos were pretty decent the first half, and suck pretty bad the second half...........
Everywhere In Baseball
About that 2020 MLB schedule. MLB has all 30 teams set to play the same Opening Day. But, that date is March 26. As in March. Theoretically, just days after Winter is over. Do we have any games in cold-weather cities that day? Why yes, yes we do! We have games in Baltimore, Toronto, Cleveland, Chicago, Seattle, New York, Milwaukee and Cincinnati. Some of those have roofs, but that won’t help fans trying to get to/from the stadium..........
I want to be rooting for the Angels to steal away the entire Front Office of the Tampa Bay Rays. Them people know how to market the shit out of a frikkin’ schedule release!...........
With MLB doing a “Field Of Dreams’ game next year, it’s open season for hipper-than-thou writers to take their pot shots at the movie which inspired the event..............
It was 25 years ago the we had a major MLB strike. It’s important to reflect on what happened, because it is happening again. On the ownership side you have Rob Manfred saying “The idea of anybody associated with the MLBPA or a player talking about a strike in 2021 — given that we haven’t even started negotiations and we have two years left to go on a contract — I find it to be mind-boggling.” Well, be boggled, Manfred. Because on the players side back then we had Gene Orza reminding us that “The origin of the ’94 strike really is the conclusion of the 1990 negotiation, when the clubs were very dissatisfied with the 1990 deal...” Sound familiar? It should.......An oral history.......Some fans never came back..........
Oh, this is tough. The Phillies may have a pitcher who has a boo boo. Jake Arrieta may be done for 2019. Of all the calamities! How can a team survive such a challenge??............
Here I had just linked to an article revealing that players don’t care too much about Batting Average anymore. Front Offices care about On Base Percentage far more, and pay that way. So they impose that priority on players. But writers will be writers. Chasing .400 is hard. (If it doesn’t pay, it ain’t so ‘magical’ anymore.).....Fernando Tatis, Jr. has a shot at the BA title in the NL as a rookie. Very rare, indeed. He is within 15 points of the NL lead. Too bad he is 44 points behind in OBP..........
Uh oh. It appears that the state lobbyists employed by the Yankees were asleep at the ATM machine. The State legislators passed a law that might seriously hamper the long-standing MFY ban on facial hair..........
That bit that I linked to yesterday where Angel Hernandez squeezed Joey Votto into 3 called 3rd strike AB’s? Give it a little time, a little post-production data processing, and a different system altogether and what you have is Hernandez being right all 3 times. (read the comments about those high strikes.).........
My grandfather used to chide me all the time back when I was a toddler. Like any petulant child, I used the phrase “That ain’t fair!” all the damned time. As he put it, “FAIR is where cowboys in coveralls throw buffalo chips for distance!” (Yes, by the way. That is a thing.) There is no Universal Law that mandates fairness in all things. It’s something we humans might strive for, but that in itself is no guarantee. Women’s Baseball has a history of being just such a thing...........
Here is another story from my youth. After Little League comes PONY baseball. 13 and 14 year olds. I played in the Orange Pony/Colt system in Orange, CA. As a 13-year old, I was one hit away from a perfect .666 season, more than doubling up on the 2nd best in the League. But regression is a bitch. In my 14-year old season I was drafted by a Pop Warner football coach who was forced to step in due to a shortage (and his son wanted to play baseball). I started the season with a hitch in my swing and nobody around skilled enough to coach me out of it. My OBP percentage was decent enough (walks and errors), but I couldn’t buy a hit. The worst was a line drive deep down the right field line that should have fallen fair and landed me a triple (I was a base-stealing demon when I got on), but the fielder out there had just started trotting back onto the field after shagging a loose baseball lost by some punks trying to play catch. He just happened to be standing right on that line when the ball was mashed. Dammitalltohell. Anyway, I ended up an official 0 for 17. needless to say, I did NOT make the All-Star team that year. And that year the Orange Pony All-Star team, loaded with a lot of my friends, won the World Series (search for 1971). The 2019 edition of that World Series is going on now..........
I am confused. What is this MLB team retires jersey number of franchise legend thing?....Will Clark had a pretty good career back in that era. If only we had a guy like that.............
The Duffle Bag
I’d have no problem taking down 29-year old bubble gum.............How would a dog wear pants? It’d wear pants with a batting glove safely tucked into the back pocket, is how..........When good sportsmanship in baseball is rewarded..........Twitter: that Internet Land where noting real things merely triggers the most ignorant thumb reflexes out of the dumbest of minds with which the world then needs to contend..........Now we know why Jessica Mendoza missed the Sunday Night Game in San Francisco. Rear-ended at high speed on the freeway. Here in California, that phrase is euphemistic for “hit by someone texting while driving”...........Tim Lincecum sighting.............NFL poaching out of the Front Offices of MLB...........