Julio Teheran hopes to join Angels soon

Angels pitcher Julio Teheran hasn’t yet been in the club’s summer camp in Anaheim, but there’s a chance he could join the club by this weekend.

Teheran spoke with Enrique Rojas at ESPN Desportes, and said he’s still in Atlanta, after he and his family experienced coronavirus symptoms. Teheran is currently awaiting test results.

“I was not feeling well, I had pain in my body, in my back, and we preferred not to take the risk. We are waiting for the results today or tomorrow and, if negative, I’ll travel to Los Angeles this weekend,” Teheran told Rojas, in Spanish.

Teheran signed a one-year, $9 million free agent deal with the Angels this winter after pitching nine years with the Braves, and is expected to be a part of their rotation. But given that he will have under two weeks until opening day by the time he arrives in camp, Teheran might not be ready to join the pitching staff right away.

“We’d have to see him,” manager Joe Maddon said on a Zoom conference call Wednesday. “But in my mind’s eye, you would not want to push it you would not want to jeopardize.”

Links

• Mike and Jessica Trout collaborated with Tiny Turnip to create custom sports apparel, proceeds from which will help support the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Jessica’s brother Aaron Cox, who was a minor league pitcher in the Angels system, committed suicide in 2018. “The main focus of our design was the semicolon, symbolizing a punctuation mark in literature where the author could have ended a sentence, but decided to continue the sentence instead,” Jessica Trout wrote in a blog post. “Our design is meant to empower those who are struggling to know it’s okay not to be okay, to seek help and to know that their ‘game isn’t over yet!’”
• Andrew Heaney, an Angels player union representative, said of summer camp in Anaheim, “I think everybody here feels pretty safe and comfortable with the way we’re handling things,” per Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register.
• Marly Rivera at ESPN reported that MLB intake testing is complete, with 3,740 coronavirus tests and 66 positive results (1.8 percent), including 58 players and eight staff members.
• PECOTA results are out at Baseball Prospectus, with the Angels projected for 31.4 wins and a 36.6-percent chance at making the postseason. As Rob Mains at BP pointed out, the Angels were one of the largest gainers in playoff probability thanks to the shortened season, after their 31-percent chance back in March.