Good morning Angels fans! Hope you have a Magical Day. I know Bundy needs it. Have some links.
Angels News
The Angels lost badly yesterday. Dylan Bundy had his worst start of his Angels career. The offense did nothing and Trout got thrown at, twice. The team is 8-16 by the way.
Anthony Bemboom has been called up and caught yesterday. That is because Jason Castro has a sore neck.
Taylor Ward was sent down to Long Beach. He was the 3rd catcher anyway. Jamie Barria takes his place. We all know Angels need pitching.
Is Max Stassi actually good? Our own Brent Maguire takes a look.
Around Baseball
The Fernando Tatis Jr. Grand Slam has been dominating the news. First his manager didn’t back him up. Then he had to apologize. So other players from the present and past have given him support. Now there is a giant debate on unwritten rules in general.
Oh yeah and the pitcher who threw that pitch to Tatis Jr. threw at Manny Machado with the next pitch and has been suspeneded 3 games. He will appeal. The Rangers’ manager was also suspended a game and sat out yesterday to serve it.
The MLB playoff bubble could still happen. Favorites are San Diego and Texas.
Reds cancelled game on Tuesday. Doubleheader today. That is at least 21 straight days with a postponed game right?
May be more as the Baves’ Nick Markakis may have the virus too. He has been placed on the sick list to be safe.
Rays two-way player Brendan McKay is done for the season. The hope is for him to be ready for 2021.
Oh and the Astros are still being despised. I think the recent events have only made it worse, not better for their public image.
Royals called Matt Harvey up. Watch as he does not suck because of our luck.
Anything I missed? Post below for upvotes.
there are days when I’d like to not care about the team but 40+ years of rooting for the Angels is one hard habit to break.
In 2002, as we all know from our Halo Lore, we started 6-14 and then went 93-49. Pretty incredible! That 93-49 is a .654 percentage. If we do that now our record would end up 32-28.
check this out, though…I mean it’s such a short season it just might be too late but still…
Through 24 games in 2002 Tim Salmon was hitting .183 and only because in the 23rd game he had 3 hits. Before that he was hitting .158. It wasn’t until Game 32 that he started hitting. His SLG after 24 games was .305 but that went up to .503 at the end of the year, his average up to .286.
So some of these pitiful averages that we have now can change dramatically by the end of September. In fact, I’d say this collection of poor averages is an indication that we *will* improve. There is no way Ohtani will hit .191 for the season, no way Upton will hit .100. and when they bounce back we’ll win games.
That was Tatis’ first grad slam. Tatis is hot and hungry. The stRangers should have known this, and if they didn’t want to be the ones to pay for his Denny’s meal, they could have given him the four fingers, or not to try and pay for that meal with a groovy coupon that isn’t printed on paper.
Either pay for the meal properly, or never invite someone to a hot dish.
Wow! Nick Markakis just opted back in a couple of weeks ago.
WAFFLES!!! No really, good for him.
Weird!
I don’t care how well he does. He will never be Matt “CY” Harvey. We will never face him this season.
I didn’t watch the game yesterday but several people on Twitter said Bemboom called a poor game for Bundy, relying on the fastball too much in several spots. To those who watched yesterday afternoon, your thoughts?
They talk about the game, and how pitches will be managed before the game(day before?).
Bundy could have shook BemBoom off on any call. Bundy’s pitch selection was only working with the fastball, and that is why it was called so often. Pitchers have bad days too.
Poor Ward, number one pick that’s a bust for us. Ward had no business being picked at such a lofty position as he was rated no netter than 93 on the board, we could of picked him in the 2nd round. l do feel bad for him as his heart is in it, just not his talent. Thaiss is in the same boat. Both were catchers when drafted but Thaiss was projected to be a DH/1b.
All that draft capital used on catchers, what a waste. Plenty of serviceable back stops have been on the market over the last several years and for the most part, at very affordable prices. I guess we must have seriously misread the market.
Same deal as when we signed a bunch of mediocre pitchers with fly ball tendencies, thinking a big ballpark and a great defense would make them look good. I guess we missed the memo that the juiced ball was coming and you can’t catch a homer and it’s even worse if you walk a bunch of batters first.
Angels need to stop trying to find that angle, cause it keeps backfiring (like spin rate and velocity), and be more mindful that the greatest predictor of future success is past success, even for pitching. We just don’t seem to have the coaching staff that can consistently turn a lump of coal into a diamond like other teams do.
It’s us, it just has to be us, us being the Angels that have been cursed with just horrible pitching issues. Jered Weaver lost his pitching Mojo early in his career compared to other careers of very very good pitchers. Wilson is signed and within a couple of years suffers from the curse. How about Garrett Richards freak accident in Boston, Not convinced? How many TJS has the team gone through as if would appear that we have it reported every year 2-3 or 4 of our pitchers go down. This year l am not surprised that Canning looks like the next pitcher jinxed. It would be different possibly if we had guys pitching 250-300 innings every year for 5-6 or seasons in a row. This is not new, look what happened to Frank Tanana going from a power pitcher, arm is injured and changes to a junk ball pitcher and Bake McBride in the 60’s. Where does Shoemaker pitch this season, last season it was Toronto. The curse reaches our Pen too. Maybe Eppler gets a pass here with the curse affecting the staff yearly.
I don’t think it’s a bad luck curse at all.
Angel’s have had dubious bad coaching and strength and conditioning people for years going back to the Autreys. It’s just gotten exponentially bad since 2003.
Your comment above…….forgot Ohtani too!
The Weaver story is a tragedy. It really sounds like if he took stretching seriously, early on in his career, he would have lasted much longer. Weaver takes a huge part of the blame there, but the strength and conditioning coach doesn’t get a pass either.
A curse huh? Well if the angels are just destined to be cursed then why bother right?