LA Angels Thursday Links

Trudging through this thing we call winter in SoCal, it is shorts weather and we had some Angels sightings.

The Anaheim Ducks hosted “Angels Night” last night and our trusty new manager along with OC sons David Fletcher, Griffin Canning, and Patrick Sandoval were there for the festivities. OC transplant Ty Buttrey joined in the good time.

A pretty cool thing happened in that game. Call it what you want; coincidence, sign, message, I don’t care. Just call it cool and don’t argue about it here.

I heard a pre game interview with Canning who said he feels good and started throwing in early November, which would be his normal time to start ramping up. This blurb on Canning shows some serious promise and an obvious flaw. 13.8% swinging strike rate is superb, but he needs to get ahead of hitters more often.

The Angels will need some improvement from Canning to have any realistic shot at hanging with the Astros, who got themselves a new manager yesterday. Dusty Baker, come on down. And with this new gig, he’ll get to manage the AL in the All Star Game.

Dusty will not only put a new, scandal free face in the Astros he has experience managing players involved in both cheating and domestic abuse. Maybe Barry should be their new hitting coach, he’d fit right in.

One last thing on Houston. One graph from this study was linked yesterday, but this chart showing the number of trash can bangs correlating to the number of pitches seen is damning evidence of just who was really cheating.

Yeah, the Twins and their fans have reason to be pissed. Looks like Marwin Gonzalez cashed in on numbers he didn’t earn.

The Southland is rich in shortstops and Fangraphs takes a look at the young Tatis Jr. who made quite the name for himself. Tons of highlight reel plays but also below average defensive metrics. What gives?

For some reason, the Kris Bryant grievance took longer than The Irishman. He predictably lost, but apparently holds no ill will and will have to settle for $18.3 million and free agency after 2021. This delay undoubtedly affected Bryant’s trade value and hampered the Cubs.

Service time guidelines in the CBA are pretty clear. It is a bad look that baseball took so long to decide something that is pretty straightforward. Yes, the Cubs manipulated his time and acted in poor faith doing so. But his gripe is with the CBA allowing so, not the Cubs.

And, yes, as long as service time matters and there is a line in the sand, clubs will try to use that line to their advantage. So I have no idea what a fair solution might be.

But the moment the Bryant news broke, the trade rumor mill began, including a potential Bryant for Arenado blockbuster that is destined to go nowhere. It does seem like the trade market has been pretty non existent this off season. I’d love to see that change.

Two weeks from today will be the first workout of 2020. Three weekends from now we’ll be watching baseball from the Valley of the Sun. The fact it is shorts weather makes it feel all that much closer.

Enjoy your day. Please add anything I’ve missed.