Last night’s walk off home run was great. The Angels still trail the all-time series against the Giants, but we won the one that really mattered.
MLB Play of the Week and a seventeen game hitting streak make David Fletcher one hot baseball player. Nice guy, local product, deserved fan favorite. I’m loving his breakthrough season.
Baseball season becomes official when Mike Trout starts taking over leader boards. First one to double digit home runs down, more to go. That’s 9 bombs in the 13 games as a father. Trout homered again last night, but Fernando Tatis Jr. surpassed him later in the evening (more on Tatis to come).
Yogi Berra once quipped “it gets late early out here.” Same can be said of the abbreviated 60 game MLB season which is approaching both the halfway mark and trade deadline.
Houston Astros as sellers? Pretty unthinkable at the beginning of the season, but in the age of all in or all out, it might make sense.
Here’s a list of players that should be on the market. Several are relievers with multiple years of control left, none are Angels. Multiple Giants do show on that list, but they’ll all be in uniform this week.
Looking towards the future, Joe Maddon says first round pick Reid Detmers might make his MLB debut this summer. Keep in mind the college season was cut short so he has far fewer innings on his arm than in normal years.
Angels broadcaster and longtime friend of the site Victor Rojas has started a YouTube show focusing on his family. The first three episodes are up and if you’d like to see Vic away from the ballpark they are a good watch.
From around baseball:
The saga in Cleveland continues to grow. Multiple players were justifiably upset that Plesac and Clevinger decided to break agreed upon protocols then felt the two continued to act dishonorably after caught. Oliver Perez threatened to quit if they were not punished. Trust is so hard to earn and so easy to lose.
Fangraphs looks at a guy who just kicked the Angels teeth in as “struggling.”
SI is trying to jinx the A’s. I think they win the West this year and are set up very well for the next few seasons pitching wise.
Mariners pitcher Kendall Graveman has been diagnosed with a bone tumor in his cervical spine. Sounds really bad but somehow won’t grow or impact his pitching.
Tatis hit a grand slam on a 3-0 count with his team up seven runs, and Rangers manager Chris Woodward was upset about it. Do you have any thoughts on this particular “unwritten rule”? Comment below.
Sorry I haven’t been too active lately, work is crazy. Hope you and your loved ones are healthy and safe.
Bemboom catching today
David Fletcher is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
It’s going to be a scorcher! Giants and Angels are similar teams. With any kind of bullpen both would have 3-5 more wins which would put them in the thick of things.
Is that an unwritten rule you just made up? lol
So here we go with an early game today, it’s an unwritten rule that the Angels win on even days of the month in day games and the Giants should tank again and they also should use “l GOTT nuttin left” in the 9th inning again. Remember l though 3 outta 4 of this home/away series was doable. You GOTT-A believe in these unwritten rules that get made up on the fly so you can catch ’em and be a real baseball fan.
Thought I’d been around to know most of the unwritten rules. This was a new one to me.
Tatis is not supposed to give up his at bat just because the other team is having a bad day. He’ll hit arbitration and every hit and HR will be used to calculate his income. This is a professional game.
Woodward is spineless.
l don’t know about spineless, but making up “unwritten” rules is a felony, and that’s an unwritten rule too. SMFH
Yesterday was a nice show of what the Angels offense can do. Fletcher, La Stella, Trout, Rendon, Castro/Stassi, Goodwin have been a solid six. Throw in Ohtani at DH and future Adell and that is a lineup that goes 8 deep with only one black hole. That hole happens to be the most important hitting position, 1B, but I guess you can’t have everything.
On the other hand, the fact that the Angels barely won that game also illustrates how far the Angels are from being a sustainable winning team.
Ridiculous how Rangers are crying afoul AND Tingler should be damn ashamed for not backing up his own player. Tatis keep doing you as far as I’m concerned.
F*** Woodward. You don’t tank.
“You don’t tank”, well there goes my theory of us losing for a draft pick dang it.
Wow, so get this: Rangers manager Woodward instructed team to drop an infield popup so Mike Minor could record his 200th strikeout last year.
https://twitter.com/philgrogers/status/1295767764708122625
actually i feel like this is following an unwritten rule lol
Wai! wha? More?!? I need the newsletter, so I can keep up. How can I get it delivered to my doorstep?
Rangers are babies and can go fuck themselves. You can’t swing 3-0 with the bases loaded if you’re up 7 runs? Are you just supposed to take a walk or give up an out?
Do you know what 7 runs is for the Angels bullpen? I call it the 7th inning. It’s not that big of a lead with the juiced ball.
You don’t like giving up a lot of runs, then pitch better. I can’t believe Tatis’s own manager thinks that is legit.
And Tatis is a beast. 11 homers, 28 rbi and the guy has been hitting leadoff most of the year and plays shortstop, wow.
Tingler not standing up for his guy when Tatis did nothing wrong is easily the most egregious part to me. Slowly the old guard is changing but events like these remind us that baseball can be quite the backwards sport.
don’t think it’s fair to call Tingler “the old guard”
this gives me another opportunity to get in a cheap shot at Arte, which I love doing. Tingler was on the Texas staff last year, I hear. Why should he now care about Texas? It’s like when Arte had that big “Jeter!!” day. Yeah…a Jeter day when he, Arte, can’t honor Jim Fregosi.
Anyway, Tingler must not understand a) he manages San Diego and b) big innings can happen against your team
How dare Tatis swing on a 3-0 pitch for a grand Slam taking the HR lead back from Trouty, the nerve of that young kid showing off and making himself and the Padres look so good and doing it it in the Doyers division. I’m outraged, there are “unwritten rules” you know. Although l have heard if it ain’t in writing it ain’t been said.
Just a thought!
Sign him to a 4 year deal and have him put want posters in Post Offices and power poles all through out California of “Dangerous Arte Moreno” and then Arte stays in Arizona and we can watch the turn around.
Dombrowski requires a farm he can burn to the ground to operate. We don’t have that. He’s not a good fit here.
Keep in mind however that he built the Florida Marlins and Detroit Tigers from scratch before going to Boston.
Both Florida and Detroit got to the World Series on his watch. So he does know raw young talent ( Justin Verlander and Josh Beckett two outstanding arms in particular ). Billy Eppler is the worst GM this team’s had since Dan O’Brien in the early 90’s and really even worse than him because at least Tim Salmon and Garrett Anderson were in the minor leagues during his tenure.
So is Tatis supposed to just stand there with the bat on his shoulder? Throwing a fat pitch to a seriously en fuego hitter should be the issue here. Yes, if you are the opposing team, that was an embarrassment. Tatis saw his pitch and clouted it. That’s his job.
If they didn’t want to give up a HR (Grand Slam) on a 3-0 count, they could have just walked Tatis (who was clearly hot). Their call 🙂
“Don’t even need to throw the ball” — MLB Commissioner ManBearFred
I’m sure Chris Woodward is not happy about losing the game, but imagine blaming unwritten rules because Tatis took his pitcher deep. So if the bases weren’t loaded or it wasn’t a 3-0 count or they weren’t down 7 runs already it’d be fine… Woodward’s thinking doesn’t make sense to me, no lead is safe. If you don’t want Tatis going yard don’t throw him a 90mph fastball in the zone when he’s on fire
This Giants series just might be the back to back series we need to get the team rolling in to Oakland with confidence.
Here’s to the team gelling!
Pujols currently has a career .299 batting average.
With the return of Simba we will likely only see Albert start against lefties as I suspect Tommy will be at 1B and David slides over to 2b.
Oof.
Wow, numbers really mean nothing to him. RE5PECT
And it’s only going to go down from there. He’s 7 consecutive hits shy of rounding up to .300. He currently has 63 ABs this season. Assuming he doubles that, he’d need to hit almost .330 to get back to .300.