This weekend saw some roster moves, including trading away Hunter Strickland and the return of Jack Mayfield. The Angels traded Hunter Strickland to the Brewers for cash considerations. Shohei Ohtani hit Merrill Kelly with a line drive over the weekend. It freaked him out. Jo Adell watches a lot of video of himself to try and figure out how to strike out less often.
The All Star Game Lawsuit
The plaintiff in the lawsuit about the All Star Game being moved tried to get an injunction that would require the Defendants to move the All Star Game back to Atlanta. The judge is clearly not impressed with this lawsuit. The injunction is denied for now, but the lawsuit is still underway. As a correction to this article, denial of a preliminary injunction is not the same thing as dismissal of the case. There’s still the matter of the two billion dollars Plaintiff seeks.
Old Friends
Nick Tropeano is now back in the Mets system.
Matt Harvey is still terrible.
Former Angel prospect Josέ Soriano has additional elbow damage and may require another surgery.
Links From Around Baseball
In the crackdown on illegal substances, it looks like most of the equipment checking is going to happen in the breaks between innings.
This little league play is nuts. Whose idea was this?
We have yet another groin injury. This time it’s Luis Severino.
The Diamondbacks General Manager took a leave of absence to be with his wife, who has brain cancer.
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
https://twitter.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1404586882806128646?s=20
Not surprised, wasn’t that what we expected. My concern would be that he returns fully healthy because we will not survive another of his layoffs. Coming back to early a la Rendon is not going to be helpful. Get well Trouty, we miss you.
I would take 1-2 vs Oakland but 3-1 vs Detroit.
This would be Trouty would help out, he does well against division rivals Oakland and Seattle.
Our own Max Stassi is AL Player of the Week!
And yet not on the All Star ballot.
Batted .455, three HRs, 3 doubles, 8 RBIs, and 1.478 OPS. That’s a good month for a lot of players.
I have been watching it and I still can’t believe it.
https://twitter.com/Angels/status/1404501066360582146?s=20
They should invite Rizzo
Going to my first home game in like six years this weekend.
Might buy some Upton gear to anger some people here.
Might believe in this team to anger myself.
My best case projections had the Angels getting back to .500 after the Detroit series.
Really need to win 2 against Oakland and 3 against Detroit to give some cushion for the much more difficult next two weeks.
Pitching match ups in Oakland really favor the A’s, though.
I’ll be generally satisfied winning 1 out of the next 3 with Oakland and being .500 at the start of the Detroit series. That said, I would love the Halos winning 2-3 and absolutely over-the-moon with an Angels sweep of Oakland.
A’s will be playing hard for a sweep to pop the Southern Cal balloon.
We will know soon enough! Going to require the Angels to play GREAT baseball.
Realistically, I can see us going 1-3 in Oakland this weekend then 2-2 or 3-1 vs. Detroit. I’d take another split vs. SF.
That TB/MFY road trip next week is a tough one and we have Boston at home for 3 and they sadly own us historically.
This is why I’ve thought if they could be at or a couple games over .500 when Trout returns it would be significant.
14-7 over last 21. That goes back to the 21st of May. If you want more optimism skip to the next series and the are 13-5 over the last 18. Yes they played some “bad” teams but they also played very good ones (Oakland and SF) as well as very decent ones (Seattle and KC). So it was not just crappy teams that they played during the stretch.
The reality is there really are no awful baseball teams in MLB. The margin of difference between a really great team and a poor one is finer than many think. On any given day, a poor team can crush a good team. It’s not automatic.
So in that streak winning all 8 games against Texas, KC and Arizona is something to be happy about. The Halos won the games they were supposed to and then basically split series against the Oakland, SF and Mariners teams. That’s good baseball in a highly competitive league.
This next series will help us all to gauge how far this team has really come.
They’ve dug themselves out of the hole, but now they need to stop the A’s (and the Giants, Rays and Yankees) from pushing them back in.
A playoff contender would take the momentum they’ve built into the series against the A’s and win at least two. A .500 team won’t. Let’s see which they are.
Agree 100%
In the last 10 games, the Angels streak came at a time where the As went 8-2 and Astros 7-3. While we may not have moved in on the division front runners, kept us from falling back by double-digits. The pitchfork society would have been loud and proud if that occurred.
Agree with Jeff, to continue in relevance, it would be awesome if we could take 2 out of 3 or even a sweep. A’s are getting quality starts from their staff but still lack offensive firepower across that line-up. This is going to be fun.
The A’s bats have come alive the last few games. Olson homered twice in yesterday’s’ win and Chapman is now hot again.
While our offense is also potent right now, as Jeff mentioned above the pitching matchups favor Oakland.
I can see Bundy giving up two or three runs in the 1st and we will be fighting uphill all night.
It will probably be 2-0 or 3-0 A’s after one inning. It might be 5-2 after 5 innings and a late push by us might not be enough. Possibly a final of 7-4 Oakland in this one.
This is where the weakness of our starters will hurt us.
Bundy and Heaney are capable, don’t sell them out yet. Angels bats are better and more balanced. Plus, there is a new instilled confidence level that was not there before the last time we played the A’s.
Time to put the big boy pants on and punish Manaea and Montas. Irvin vs Canning is a close game to call but leans slightly towards the A’s. I’m all in.
I’m all in too. We have no choice but to be all in.
That said, I don’t want to get my hopes up (some folks saying sweep is possible, and frankly I don’t see any way we sweep). Taking two out of three would be awesome, and I humbly hope for that. However, I have been buttercupped way too many times to be overconfident coming in to this series.
Plus, I have seen over the years how fortunate/lucky whatever you want to call it that the A’s have been at Oakland Coliseum when it comes to winning close games.
Let’s say win can win 2 out of 3, but that one we are supposed to lose were we give up 10 runs is that one game were the offense scores 13. Sweep is possible
I won’t say it is impossible, but it is very unlikely. As I mentioned above Oakland’s bats have again gotten hot and they are a streaky team. When they are hot they are very hard to beat.
And again, the starting pitching favors them here. If we can score early off Manea (not holding my breath) that would be our best chance for tonight, but he has been very good lately.
Non AMP’ed link for those who don’t want to give Google their info:
https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/06/14/sticky-stuff-bubba-harkins-speaking-out-daily-cover
In my son’s local Little League that runner would have been called out for leaving 3rd base before the pitch was released from the pitcher. That rule is in place probably for this very reason, as that kid could have had hit head crushed by that bat and ended up with a life long injury. If his coach sent him then his coach is an idiot who should never be allowed to coach Little League.
it’s fake, but yes, against the rules of play in all leagues that I have ever been involved in for kids that age.
No leads until the ball crosses the front of the plate(LL) and no stealing home in leagues that allow just leads.
I couldn’t tell that it was fake but I hope you’re right. Little Leaguers can’t run before the pitch reaches home, otherwise all walks would be triples. If it were real then the league would be closed down.
It’s fake. Neither the batter, catcher, shortstop nor umpire make any reaction whatsoever to the kid coming home, nor is there any shocked noise from the crowd. The batter also practically runs through the kid on his way to first, without even so much as looking at him to make sure he doesn’t run into him.
Someone overlayed the video of the kid sliding home onto the video of the hit.
Good Morning yawl, Boy is it warm this past week up high in the mountains and to get warmer still. Up here at 7200 ft and the thin air it is hard to get air to catch a breath at that temp.
If you missed that Little League play check it out, it’s crazy.
I’m thinkin’ we finish the month out with a 9-6 record. Yeah I know we play a couple of tough teams but we have the beef, sorry Arby’s I just had to do it, as our starters know what has to be done.
Someone (Joe) was reading my mail. Last week I suggested moving Walsh up in the line up and wha-la it took place and he is back to hitting the ball hard.
Yes we played weak teams but Upton, Rendon, and Ward raised their BA and OBP.
Wong and JUp made the weekly plays of the week on MLB-TV.
7th inning on the Angels can get back into any game and have shown this all season long.
Bundy will win his second win of the season tonight.
Max is the biggest surprise of the season followed by Ohtani and Sandoval.
Trouty must be chomping at the bit to return and join the fun.
See ya at game time and enjoy the day (In AC of course.)
Very nice to see Ward hitting well. He had a lot of chances over the years and he’s finally earning a spot on the team as at least a 4th OF. Also very promising to see Upton hitting again and Rendon starting to.
I hope you are right about Bundy.
Max definitely isn’t the biggest surprise. He isn’t even a surprise. He was doing that last year. It was a question mark whether he could keep it up, but not a surprise. Biggest surprises have been Pujols’ release, Ohtani, and Sandoval, followed by Upton’s resurgence. I’d put Cobb in there too, but his ERA is what I expected, even if he’s pitched better than his ERA suggests.
Well played.
Although more realistically, I would say this is more along the lines of salvaging something useful from Ward rather than being excited about him.