I was at the game Tuesday night and the umpiring crew checking pitchers for the sticky icky was evident. Gloves, jerseys, hats all got the once over as guys left the field. It was cool to see the rules taken seriously and I hope it stays that way.
Of course nothing is likely to top Sergio Romo dropping trou to prove his innocence.
In an exclusive Q and A with The Athletic, Rob Manfred says enforcement of the new edict is going very well.
Not surprisingly, spin rates dropped quite a bit across MLB as enforcement was looming. We knew about Bauer and Cole, but an Angel made the list for notable drops over his last two starts as well.
DH? We don’t need no stinking DH. Ohtani continues to make history. Yesterday he hit second and was the starting pitcher. This was the first time in MLB history an AL team did not use a DH while an NL team did.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: the Rays have a stud prospect who is contributing at the MLB level from day one.
How is this guy not an Angel? Definitely the type of injury we’d expect here.
The Asterisks reactivated Kyle Tucker from the Covid list. I’m hoping at the end of this madness Fangraphs or the like does a look at the stats for guys who tested positive. We’re tracking fighters on my boxing site and so far it is a pretty mixed bag.
Cover pic of Jose Mota has nothing to do with today’s links. But Jose is about the nicest guy you’ll ever meet so I figured he deserves some love. If you’ve had the pleasure of meeting him, share your story below.
With the newest no hitter in the books Manfred is feverishly trying to drum up support for pitching from second base. Or maybe banning any pitch over 50 mph
Ho hum. Dodgers get no hit.
Ha ha ha. I loved seeing that! And at home to boot! So all those Doyer fans could enjoy it !!
Cubs No Hit the Dodgers!!!!!
Great day in Baseball
It’s nice news. The highlight for me was Albert 0 for 4. Everybody was 0 for something but Albert’s was the best 0 for.
And Pujols was Strike out victim #2 in the bottom of the ninth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS-rAzKB99Q
“What are the chances that the Angels can improve the pitching staff this season?”
J. Fletcher: “Well, they’re not very good, honestly.”
His bluntness caused me to snort
Frustrating for sure but being 10 games out lessens the urgency. Perry will maintain his bleacher seat in the Independence league but that is about it. Maybe we can milk the Milkmen for another utterly middling arm.
The stronger teams will be vying for the better pitching talent on the market. We will only engage if we have made significant progress. We’ll know by mid-July which way we are headed, buyer or seller. Rasiel, Cobb and Heaney could get us some viable players/prospects.
Bubba named Bundy so we know he was using. His 1st 6 game of the season were good, So I’d say he stopped in May
5/2/ Sea 6 innings 2 runs – loss
4/25 Hou 6 innings 2 runs – ND
4/19 Tex 5 innings 5 runs – loss
4/13 KCR 7 innings 3 runs 2 earn – loss
4/6 Hou 6 innings 2 runs – ND
4/1 CHW 6 innings 3 runs – ND
Runs support and the pen didn’t like Bundy at the beginning of the Season. But looking at his starts were he gave up 3 or less runs, he could have 7 wins.
It isn’t often that you are rewarded for doing nothing, but that was exactly the case yesterday with Stassi’s AB. All he had to do on two different pitches was nothing, and the game would have ended with an Angels win. Instead he chose to swing at two balls far outside the strike zone. 🙁
Yes – that was frustrating. I would have thought he would have been taking on 3-1 in that situation. A straight take would seem to be justified as the pitcher was having trouble with control.
But on the other hand Stassi was looking to drive a ball and got a fastball up. So I can understand why he swung in a split-second decision.
7Yes, why was he swinging for the fences when the guy was just walking batters. Tony had the same issues, but got the jod completed much faster than Max. Swing efficiency.
To my eyes, those balls were just out of the upper strike zone. More difficult to lay off the high ones vs. the low ones. Questionable to swing at a 3-1 pitch but totally understand why he swung at the 3-2 pitch.
So obviously Bundy got the wrong start date for goop enforcement, since it appears that he gave it up at the beginning of the season.
In our last full season in 2019 we had a so-so season out of JUp, as it seems there is one or two bigger names based on payroll at least that just do not play up to expectations. This year the bad luck is Trout and Redon and Bundy qualify for these spots. All are different in what is ailing them but all are the same in disappointment.
Good morning, good news on the door step although not front page news, But the Angels will not lose a game today. So we will remain 2 games under .500. Now instead of rooting for a playoff spot it would seem a more realistic final landing spot that deserves rooting for would be a .500 or better record. On a high note, we are not losing to the teams we should be beating….
Totally disagree. This team has waaaay too much talent to be happy with finishing .500.
We have more talent than Seattle, we have more talent than the White Sox (leading their division), we have more talent than the Cardinals, we have more talent than the Mets (leading their division) AND we have ALOT more talent than the Giants who have THE BEST RECORD BASEBALL.
Yes, we have had bad luck with injuries. Nonetheless, to settle for and be happy with finishing .500 is a losers’ mentality. This team should be competing for the AL West at the very least (if not winning it). If the Giants with their paltry level of talent can have the best record in baseball we surely can do ALOT better than .500.
Just going .500 and again missing the playoffs is an incredible disappointment, and we should be very unhappy about such an outcome, not celebrating it.
The Beatles sang a song, “I’m a loser”, but I don’t of course believe that I nor the Angels are a loser as you stated. But aiming for something less than playoffs is disappointing. Bad luck is an oxymoron btw, but let’s just say Bad Luck anyway, this team has more than it’s share for sure. Having a realistic goal and successfully attaining it and then surpassing it would pick the team up otherwise under pressure this team folds. While not having higher expectations may seem weak, but that is what we are dealing with.
I never said the team were “losers.” I suggested that the fanbase would be adopting a “loser’s mentality” by accpeting .500 as an acceptable target/goal.
I have some electric vehicle stocks and crypto currency I’d like to sell you.
Both those things are great. But with crypto’s I am very selective. Only like two or three long term.
I’m too chicken to try n figure out which ones will last n buy in. I just bought Voyager Digital stock back when it was in the tank and I’ve left all that alone since. Stocks like Coinbase were too frothy from the go. Crypto just feels too much like I imagine the late 90s web boom was….. or spending 300+ million on a high spin rate pitcher in 2019.
Start your own cryptocurrency called the Gitcho, Gitcho Crypto, drop links to it in every reddit forum,and profit.
EV’s are here to stay.
I know the Koch Bros Foundation and the Sean Hannity network don’t wanna hear this, but it’s damm true. As long as Elon Musk doesn’t become the next late John DeLorean and start trafficking in cocaine, he’ll probably be OK. PS He needs to manufacture a EV for the masses ( like a electric Toyota Camry or Honda Accord ).
Career ending injuries or untimely deaths are bad luck.
Not doing your homework in scouting and player development is just incompetence or other bad reasons that you chose to ignore.
We have far more talent than San Francisco, but they are clearly way better at maximizing what little talent they’ve got and what trash to pick up at the dump. We overpay for junk that does little or nothing to help our team. It’s the worst of all possible worlds and shows why we will never go anywhere until we are able to change owners and management from top to bottom.
What they do have that we don’t have is a winning culture. This is the big difference. By comparing our rosters we can really see how important philosophy, leadership and team culture are. They are huge. With those things in place average talent can win a division !! Without them very good talent is left standing on the sidelines when the playoffs begin…..
We don’t have more talent in the pitching area. We have Ohtani, maybe Iglesias, then a very steep drop off.
Look at our team BA compared to SF; we are 4th in all of the Majors with a team average of .255 while the Giants are well below us at 12th wth a team average of .242.
Now, as you say pitching is another matter. This is true. The Giants team ERA is 3.22 and we are way below at 4.85. But stats aside, if you look at our rosters we blow them away. We’ve got Trout and Ohtani, which are the two best players in baseball (one could argue for Acuna or Tatis Jr for second but the list is not long) . Even if we had only those two guys and a bunch of scrubs with them you could fairly say we were more talented than SF who has one offensive All-Star in Posey and one really good starter in Gausman.
But it is not only Trout and Ohtani we have. That is not the case, we have Walsh, and we have Stassi, and we have Raisel, and of course Rendon. Now obviously Raisel and Rendon are performing below expectations (Rendon of course more than Raisel) but on paper we blow them away….
I think the point here is close to what “Marine” said; we have not maximized what we have. We don’t execute consistently enough in the important situations. This does not make us a team or a fanbase that should be happy with .500. We should be a team and fanbase that says “we need to be playing a hell of a lot better.” Instead of lowering our goals we need to be raising them, even if we fail to reach them in the end. The expectations should match the talent we have, or even be higher.
Our top 5 are certainly better than most MLB teams, but the entire roster, let alone the whole org depth? The depth is lacking. Our role players aren’t very good. The overall depth is probably not better than half the teams in MLB, and since role players are called upon at key moments, as relievers, pinch hitters, def replacement, or to pinch run, the lack of comp role players is an esp glaring weakness in baseball.
Good point about the role players. Even more to the point is that the role players of other teams seem to come through more consistently than our guys. I think this goes to team culture. Arte has not created an environment that is permeated by winning. This is ultimately a failure of the top leadership.
What I always thought was the key strength of teams like the A’s, Rays, the Dodgers, and, for that matter, the better Angels squads of the 00’s, was that the rosters were usually deep: there were usually some people who could back up anyone anywhere, make good contact when need be, and provide innings out of pen, etc. Not talking about Percival and GA, to give Angels examples, but the likes of Ben Weber, Orlando Palmeiro, or Jeff DaVannon. Not exactly “good” players, but ppl who wouldn’t suck in general and quite good at certain roles. Right now, we are lost if an OF is out (see the RF issues these days) and the only real backup we have at short is to move Fletcher.
We may a few more talented individuals (Trout and Ohtani), but the 2021 Angels are not a more talented team. There is not a top to bottom organizational commitment to excellence and winning in this franchise. Sure everyone wants to win, but very few actually are willing to do what it takes to be a winner.
Historically, the Angels have been the great Pretender.
Yeah, in recent history one could not deny that the Angels have underachieved in a big way. In fact, going back to the second half of the Scioscia years there was major underachieving! So really, we are looking at about a decade and a half of failure and underachievement. That is pretty sad.
That said, we are not bereft of talent. Even on the pitching side. Seeing Sandoval excel and seeing Suarez do well shows that perhaps our talent is not as bad as we all seem to think. Our offensive talent obviously kicks ass!
But it is the attention to detail, scouting, player development, and all the “small” things that Arte has neglected in his pursuit of saving a buck. Those are the things that come back to hurt us. In short, the failure lands at the doorstep of one Arturo Moreno.
Ummmmmm, yeah. We aren’t more talented than the White Sox.
They don’t have one player who is close to as good as Trout OR Ohtani. Last year Abreu won MVP but he has been very disappointing this year.
Anderson is of course a very good player, but he is one guy.
Right now at least I’d take Stassi over Grandal. Not sure if that will be the case next year. I would also take Fletch any day of the week over Madrigal. Likewise with Walsh over what’s his face…
I think I should have specifically said position players because obviously their starters kick ass over ours…
Preach
The Giants and Mariners both have better pitching than we do when healthy.
Other than Mike Trout, David Fletcher and Jered Walsh we’re not as good.
I’ll take Brandon Crawford or JP Crawford any day over Jose Iglesias. Kyle Seager is having just as good a year as Anthony Rendon. The problem that you’re not seeing that another member has pointed as well as me is we try to emulate the Billy Beane Oakland A’s at dumpster diving and fixing broken toys and to no avail. Already Farhan Zaidi is bringing what he learned under Billy Beane and found two guys ( Kevin Gausman and Anthony DeSclafani……who anybody else could’ve also had for nothing ) take that NY Yankees and Dodgers ( Gerritt Cole and Trevor Bauer making over $30M!!! ). I won’t beat up on Billy Eppler anymore ( Deck McGwire, Odrisamer Despaigne, Matt Harvey, Tim Lincecum……never mind I’m tired!!! ) 😆 💩
Thank you for the links.
The goop check will be over after the All-Star break.
People in power, umpires do imagine there are, tend to not like to do embarrassing things. The players will make this embarrassing for them.
I think it will end quickly even if it isn’t embarrassing. How long did the enforcement of “batter’s have to keep one foot in the box” last?
Did they ever start?
Yeah, a couple of guys got fines for it.
My son and I have had the pleasure of meeting Jose Mota, I have a photo of my son with Jose and Jose showed him his Angels World series ring. Truly a really nice guy.
My daughter and I met Jose 6 years ago at Spring Training. He was very gracious to us and took several minutes with us even though he was obviously hurrying someplace at Diablo.
Awesome. He signed a ball for my son too. He seems to really enjoy interacting with the fans.