Enjoy that song in your head for a minute. But, for the Angels nothing could be more true at the moment.
After taking 2 of 3 from both the Nationals and the Rays, the Angels have moved up to #5 in ESPN’s power rankings and up to the fourth spot on CBS list.
As of May 12th, the Angels have the second highest run differential in the AL and third highest in all of MLB. Of course the only rankings that really matter are the standings, where we are tied with the red hot Asterisks for first place.
The big talk of the week is Reid Detmers and deservedly so. The fact he pitched a no hitter while only striking out two batters is a testament to soft contact and team defense.
I know we’ve rehashed the game here plenty of times. We’re fans. But when Fangraphs gives it a full breakdown and labels it an exciting game, that’s a nice validation.
Remember last week when I posted how well the 2021 draftees were doing? Well, one of them is about to make his MLB debut. Welcome to the show Chase Silseth.
Sandoval, Detmers, Diaz, Silseth…what happened to “the Angels don’t have any young pitching?”
For all the insanity of the last few years, one thing is finally feeling like normal: Mike Trout is leading the polls for MVP.
With Shohei Mania and the no hitter, and Taylor Ward acting like Superman, the greatest player in a generation or more is getting quietly overlooked.
Thing is the team isn’t just Trout and everybody else. This year, the key to our success has been the supporting cast. Perry has given the GOAT a real shot at the playoffs this year.
How legit of a shot? Currently we are pegged as 78% likely to make the big dance.
SI does a solid job of introducing expected batting average to the mainstream audience. It shows that hitters aren’t living up to expectations and that the baseball is to blame.
Can’t decide if I want to highlight the Rod Carew comp or remember when Howie was projected as a sure fire batting champion. Either way, meet Luis Arreaz who is on his way to said title.
In a pretty cool move both the Dodgers and Giants will wear Pride themed hats for a game in June. As Pride month and Night are ahead of us, I found a link with every MLB team’s ties to Pride.
In networking news, I’ve made pals with the owner of ballnine.com and think the site deserves some clicks. The owner calls the site a “punk rock baseball site” and is a bassist in a punk band himself. And yet, thus far no biological link to Rev has been discovered. But I’ll keep looking ha ha.
Enjoy your weekend. Two games on Saturday!
https://twitter.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1525323861704577024?s=20&t=mVcaIt3tY0nu7MFe1Gq43A
Sam Bachman’s evening is over for Rocket City. 4 innings, 33 pitches, 0 runs, 0 hits, 1 walk, 2 Ks. ERA still 0.00
https://www.milb.com/gameday/trash-pandas-vs-blue-wahoos/2022/05/13/674212#game_state=live,game_tab=,game=674212
Chase Silseth maybe the first pick from the vaunted 2021 draft to make it to the show but I got a feeling, you ain’t seen nothing yet
Sounds like he’s takin’ care of…naw, I need a new one…
4 innings isn’t workin’ overtime? Naw…
I think that
Any ERA below one’s good
But we’ll take what we can get
Yes we’ll take what we can get
And then we’ll look at the standings
And say you ain’t, etc, etc, etc
Naw.
Depending on how this season goes, wouldn’t hate some kind of Andrew Miller type role for a guy like Bachman who could come up and pitch for 2-3 innings out of the bullpen to give starters and back-end bullpen guys some added rest.
Well this sucks but is not surprising.
https://twitter.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1525266495500001280
Still waiting for the Astros to come back down to earth. Man those guys are pesky.
I Thought the Angels are up to something to keep from putting Silseth on the 40 Man but someone new must have got the Covid.
https://twitter.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1525248492377059328
To pitch tonight Silseth does not have to be on the 40 man roster? I thought everyone who plays MLB you had to be. I am wrong?
Not if the team has a COVID IL exemption. If a player has the COVID ( like Jose Rojas, Max Stassi, Matt Duffy & Kurt Suzuki have right now) The team can replace them with someone that is not on the 40 man and do not have to put them on ( or take them off) during the COVID IL stay of the affected player. This is why Whitefield , Chad Wallach and Austin Romine can play for the Angels right now even though none of them are on the Angels 40 man roster.
These were rules that MLB instituted during 2020 when everyone was using alternate training sites and taxi squads. they kept the rules in place in case teams have COVID breakouts for 2021 & 2022.
Huh. That’s very useful info. Thanks!
Punk rock baseball guys. Yes. Makes sense.
Meanwhile, when I began a site for Late Baroque (esp Bach, Handel and Scarlatti) and baseball, no one bit. It was embarrassing!
Punk Rock Baseball? Hey, I signed up for your Baroque site and sent my 4 quarters in. But alas it was returned, my used stamps didn’t work.
Kershaw out with hip issues.
Like way out. I dig, daddio. He’s so out he thought Bitches Brew was strictly Squaresville, man.
Funny Stuff.
Now that’s a proper lineup.
Angels lineup:
1 Ward -9
2 Trout -8
3 Ohtani-DH
4 Rendon-5
5 Walsh-3
6 Marsh-7
7 Wallach-2
8 Wade -4
9 Velazquez-6
P Silseth- RHS
I approve. Don’t think I’d change anything
Love it all, but worry it’s a bit of a rush for Silseth. Hope he proves me more wrong than sweater vest at a dive bar.
In the last few years, the kids have worked and learned, such as CRod, Sandy, Diaz and now I think Selseth. I do not know why we need to use him now though. And why not Barria if we really need an additional starter.
Still missing Stassi, Fletch & Duffy but better than what we used during the Rays series
Grandpa approves but would have liked switching Rendon and Marsh maybe.
reading about the draft…oh yeah, Kumar Rocker. Anyone still interested?
Maybe But we better make sure he doesn’t blow out his elbow first though.
Maybe soon
https://twitter.com/ValleyCats/status/1525159370346180610?s=20&t=q6P3ag1d4DH2c5rci1FQZA
All I remember about Kumar is that we were idiots for passing on him. Arte was also cheap and evil for not wanting to pay top top dollar for a “proven” pitcher who has yet to pitch professionally.
As a 2nd round pick
No, I don’t think so. If the cash rich Mets did not sign him then there is something else. Must have been after the medicals. Besides, we need position players in our pipeline; OF, 3B, C and 1st.
Are he and Harold still going to White Castle?
Forest bath in this.
https://twitter.com/brianmctaggart/status/1525128029671915521?s=20&t=7dD9hxBG7laN6NT6YO3RbQ
Lies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnbQFVxiSmk
https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.5v0eSPyXWdi44YAY_alxxAAAAA?pid=ImgDet&rs=1
They’ve both been good luck for us……….admit it!
💪 💪 💪 💪 🤘
this guy sucks. Like most of your comments but a little less
The game (two?) of him and Bobby V almost put me in the crazy house. Sync’d the radio to the video stream.
Thank You!!
You’re Welcome!!!
Yes, but Erica is prettier!
You didn’t wait for Asstros game 2 results last night, Angels are in 2nd place
Season lost. Everybody stick your head in the oven and have a good cry.
Mariners option Jerred Kelenic down to Tacoma. Still can’t hit MLB pitching.
I wouldn’t know who that is unless you post a picture. Maybe 2002 can help with that.
Neither can Jo Adell..
Also Brandon Wood and Jeff Mathis couldn’t hit a beach ball with a tennis racket.
Plus Shawn Abner.
and Buddy Biancalana.
This is the best comment you’ve ever made.
This year’s Brandon Wood, but it couldn’t happen to a better GM.
Are there any more trades I can veto?
😠
I missed you dude. never change.
So what happened to Arte?
Nothing happened to Arton, He’s actively plotting right now how to purposefully make this Angels team suck again…not going well
You know what’s wild in a “life is a trip holmes” kind of way? Both Pederson and Stripling, the two players you keep tootypooing over, have pretty good looking stats as I look…. but both have a -0.1 WAR for some reason. In any case I am not sure who is on the other end of your prolapsed anus. Do we care about the trade veto because of Thor? Sandoval? Lorenzen? Ward? Trout? Marsh? Or were you just feeling itchy and this was all you could mush through your play-doh fun factory brain?
Old picture, dude. He shaved.
2-2 2.74 era marlins $11.2M/5 yrs
WhoGAF???Don’t even know WhoTF that is.
Who is on 1st
It’s one of tootytoo’s patented Hindsight All-Stars.
After the Detmers No-No, Soggy Joe praised Matt Wise and Dominic Chiti in the post game presser for their work with Detmers. With the advent of Detmers and other young pitching, maybe PTP has quietly and effectively improved our major league and minor league coaching/development of pitching? Interesting that his 2 previous successors failed in this area.
I realized the other day, that since we were playing so well, I had no idea who all of our coaches are. Guess I zone in on the coaches when we’re not doing well! Anyway, we have a lot of coaches, I had no idea. Do we normally have this many?
https://www.mlb.com/angels/roster/coaches
For example, we have a hitting coach, asst. hitting coach and a hitting instructor.
Whatever is going on, it’s working!!
The only coaches that matter are the 2002 connections…Bengi Gil and Joe.
Nice coaches link. Do you think the outfield and base running coach hiding his face is related to Adell?
LOLOL. I’d be lying if I didn’t think immediately about Adell’s defense when I saw this coaches job title.
Except for the replay decision guy! He needs to be fired immediately!
I have no ill will towards Matt Wise but let’s give Detmers another 40 starts to see how effective he really is. Plenty of marginal pitchers have thrown No-No’s. This is more about Joe Magoo just passing
gaslove around than evidence we’ve become a pitching stable like the Tampa Bay or Cleveland organizations.It’s funny how a few weeks ago we had the worsyist defense ever but now we have amazing defense that carried Detmers to a no hitter. He may have only had 2 K’s but even Adell could have caught most of those soft fly balls he induced.
Maybe THE OLIGARCH is staying the f**k outta the pikchure for
wunce.
💪 💪 💪 👈
Hey Tooty Toots good luck with your efforts. we’ll be pulling for you… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd1ciPnTGKg
Best medicine for only winning 2 out of 3 against a good team, is a 4 game sweep of a division opponent. 🙂
Just for the record we will win tonight 6-3. We are in a real race with the Astros now that we are tied for 1st in the Western Division and in the time span of the next 6 weeks we are going to see that we are The Real Deal.
Notice that Walsh is slowly coming back into his own, and I am glad he is back hitting against lefties and doing well. Right now he is leading the team in RBI. Trouty has HRs, Ohtani has Games and at bats, hits.
Who is the fastest player 1st to third this season? Contenders are Caveman, The Kid, Showtime, Wade and Squid. Tough call right, but if you had to pick which one is fastest who would you want going first to third?
I would want Trout going first to third, even if I don’t necessarily think he is the ‘fastest’ (he is an elite baserunner).
Trout definitely gets the best read and the best jump, making up for a little bit of speed.
Caveman is a very close second. I wouldn’t argue either way.
The team speed is a great asset this year.
But despite our team speed, I believe our base running/base stealing is our biggest weakness. Too many caught stealings, too many misread balls that have prevented us taking the extra base or scoring when it was hit well enough to allow it.
Three or four of those caught stealing are on Wade simply because he cannot manage a slide without going past the base. That should be an easy fix.
Wade truly seems to not have any kind of base awareness.
But in his own words his speed is legendary and unstoppable. https://twitter.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1509991823099367431
This is why he reminds me of Uncle Rico. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8cIBdghu5Q
Have we seen him do that yet? I can remember lots of CS and balls through the five hole but not and singles turned into triples.
Who? Uncle Rico?
To be fair here, extremely small sample size! 😂
Is it the coaching or the players,or both?
We have a base running coach, Damon Mashore. I remember him as a player but I have no idea how good he is at coaching. Josh teams always seem to run the bases well even if we weren’t that successful at steals. I don’t feel that way with any of Maddon’s teams and that includes players that were here when Sosh still managed.
So to finally answer your question I think it is both.
So, we got the same guy to blame for all the caught stealing AND Adell’s defense. Damon’s got a tough job!!
Squid. Because that means he got on base, and Trout or Ohtani are probably at the plate!
Pujols!
Ha! No doubt.
With the latest version of the Manfred Ball, it not traveling as far, pitching is the name of the game and boy do I love that a lot of “Old School” baseball is being played as in bunts moving guys into scoring position, sac flies and sac bunts along with SB’s. The HR is still out there lurking behind every pitch still, but ground balls for hits is becoming common place because of the runner’s speed. Don’t tell Ward that HR’s are down as he is capable of hitting one every AB. Trout is no slouch either when he comes to bat, he is a launching pad his own rightful self.
I’m with you. I loved 80s baseball with lots of balls in play makes defenses get engaged, gives base runners an opportunity to have fun. Rallies are possible.
2002 Angels baseball was sweet as well, putting pressure on opposing defenses with great regularity.
I’d even take it back to the 70’s. In 1977, George Foster hitting over 50 home runs was really cool to me. Getting over the 50+ mark had not been done in the NL since the 1965 season when Mays had 52 home runs and in the AL, went back 16-years to 1961 when Roger Maris hit 61.
Lou Brock, Tim Raines, Ricky Henderson, Kenny Lofton — it was exciting.
Are they still available? How about Granderson?
But then we would be out on Wilson
Good morning to everyone, as we are all rested and ready for tonight’s surprise starter, Chase Silseth, arriving from AA ball to assist us with our quest to beat the A’s. Did you know that we have the best fielding SS in the game this year? Yup, the Real Deal with the leather is an Angel. A few years back I thought one of the slickest trades in Angels history was acquiring Simba, and he was just the best fielding SS in our history, and boy was I sad to see him move on. Squid is another slick fielder in the same vein as Simba and like Simba was prior to landing in Orange County, Squid can’t hit to much, but like Simba did I’m betting he will learn and soon.
Of course I like this post ….
It isn’t really a fair charge that Simba couldn’t hit. He didn’t hit for power until later, but never had a batting average in the .100s, like Velasquez has.
Velasquez has had three seasons, with three teams, not once hitting as well as Simmons at his very worst. Simmons worst OPS+ was 75. Velasquez’s best (with the Yankees) was 61 (which is just awful).
Velasquez is already 27, he isn’t going to learn to hit MLB pitching at this point – so live with the glove or cut him – he isn’t going to change.
I like him as a late innings defensive replacement, not as a starting SS.
I keep hearing this around here and I have to wonder if any of the people typing this sentiment out regularly have looked at the other options as they wank.
I know the two options I liked, sign Harrison and play fletch at SS or sign Jonathan Villar, both look HORRIBLE right now. I wanted Hanser Alberto too… he’s playing meh bad.
Correa, Story, Semien, Seager or whoever the “commit to me, I mean winning, by spending a ton on a SS” crew wanted…. even the best of those guys is making ten times as much as Velasquez for a very long time and not killing it. The extended fantasy complaint is “trade for me Bogarts now!” but given how fast the coaching junior woodchucks on this team blast a player who isn’t strong defensively I can’t wait to see how they like ol’ Xander…
So I’m not sure, even with hindsite cheating, what the much better option was to this point….
All of those expensive options, except Semien. Small sample size will normalize the great value of the other three.
So…. to this point, who was the option to go with instead of Velasquez? Sure, some of the big free agents (that we were not going to sign anyway) will probably break that 120 OPS+ barrier, but it’s also true that Velazquez, after seeing many MLB at bats, will also get his OPS+ up toward semi-MLB.
I mean, if you rank them all now, out of all those guys only Seager has a higher WAR than Velazquez, who is tied with Correa
Well, in my mind it isn’t who we could have gotten. It is – are there opportunities to improve the team now (as hot as they are) and the bat at SS/2B is one such place.
Could we trade Adell and prospects for Jazz Chisholm, if Miami is out at the deadline? Would we want to?
(OF seems blocked now for a while, with Marsh, Ward, Trout, and Ohtani at DH – and Adell had a tough time in the part-time role).
I doubt the Marlins would part with him So I’m not sure the Trail to Chisholm is Obtainable.
But you see how this is all Wonderbread? Chisholm is a lifetime 101 OPS+ guy with bad defensive stats at SS. He’s also what? A pre-arb 2 player? So he’s had a few good weeks, great. But he’s as likely to maintain a 160 OPS+ as Velasquez is to up his OPS+ to 80 or 90. Plus you have the defensive difference.
On top of that, why would Miami trade him even if they are some years away from contention?
It just seems like someone looked at an ESPN leader board and repeated “We should Chisholm” on this site a bunch so now we should Chisholm. At the same time, we have repeated the idea that Velasquez is only good enough for a bench, when he was actually our best option available next to Seager whose signing would certainly mean we don’t ever get pitchers.
People are complaining based on NOW, but don’t actually want to look at NOW. Instead they turn around and want some vague option that will be “much better” down the line when there just aren’t any options that are MUCH better available.
I still say that if we’re gonna trade, trade for pitching. Moar pitching.
Those are a lot of words to say that you don’t know….
I tend to agree with you, he won’t get into the 0.250 range. While Simba and Ozzie Smith were bad with the bat, they were not as anemic as Velasquez. Nick Ahmed was another SS struggling in the firtst 3-years but become serviceable.
However, if the line-up around him can produce, his glove get’s him in the line-up for me. Is it better to have a Tyler Wade play SS and hit 0.240? Give me the leather and the guy who can cover wider range and scoop up baseballs.
Yes, Simba was not a black hole at the plate. In 2017 he put up OPS of 102 and 108, and even garnered votes for MVP (8th and 15th)
2017 and 2018. (need an edit button)
there is an edit button. after you post, at the bottom right of your comment, the gear icon…
Now if we only had a 2002 Ban Button…
He would probably stop posting if we all agreed with him and made positive comments on his post….add to his long random list of player we should have signed….that’s if he’s even real, still not ruling out he’s some kind of Troll Bot from Seattle, one of Jerry’s henchmen.
I thought it was Gitcho’s alter ego?
Wasn’t there a nutcase one time that seriously declared that I was like 3 different accounts on here? That would be awesome, I should actually do that.
Depends… Can I put a gritch on your pettis?
Well…. it is Friday
The Gitch finally provides a factual statement.
Isn’t vote-garnering illegal in seven states?
[DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT A POLITICS JOKE, JUST A BAD PUN]
Squid needs to watch film on Simba and learn how to catch and tag the runner. Simba is IMHO the best catch and tag infielder in my lifetime. Velazquez, not so much.
You are too kind, Grandpa. First test of a shortstop is making the routine play every time, including a good throw. Velasquez falls short here IMO. Wastes time on the transfer on routine plays and then hurries the throw in an effort to make up for it. His throws are all over the place. He is nowhere near good enough with the glove to make up for his lack of ability to hit.