Alden Gonzalez at ESPN talked to over 50 people about Mike Trout, and compiled 29 stories to commemorate Trout’s 29th birthday on Friday.
One of the stories was of Trout playing Cribbage with former teammate David Murphy. From Gonzalez:
“I had enough experience with the game to know it’s a mixture of skill and luck, but I was used to winning a decent amount more than I lost,” Murphy said. “Trout crushed me, though. I can’t remember how many games we played, but I just remember he won every game and a lot of them were by a wide margin. After we were a few games in, I took a picture of one of our end results. In the picture, he was smiling with thumbs up behind a cribbage board showing that he had just beaten me. I sent the picture to Francona and put along with it, ‘He’s good at everything.’”
Links & notes
Jose Suarez, on the injured list since the start of the season, is progressing well at the club’s alternate training site in Long Beach.
“He’s stretched out to a couple innings. I think that he’s available whenever we need him at this point,” pitching coach Mickey Callaway said on a conference call Saturday. “Obviously he wouldn’t be stretched out to five or six innings yet, but if we needed a spot starter, we’ve seen that around the league.”
Jeff Fletcher at the Orange County Register wrote about the struggles of Hansel Robles and how Callaway and the coaching staff are dealing with it.
From earlier in the week, Jay Jaffe at FanGraphs looked at the drastic reduction in starting pitcher workloads so far in 2020.
With no minor league season, let’s see how the Angels’ Double-A affiliate is holding up:
You Gotta Love It. pic.twitter.com/9r2eQP5BR0
— Rocket City Trash Pandas (@trashpandas) August 8, 2020