Angels Stadium is apparently on the high side when it comes to the hot dog prices although the beer price is still kind of middle of the pack. OK. It looks like we’ll have to do without Austin Warren for a while. Paging Dr. Neil ElAttrache.
Astros starter Luis Garcia will also have Tommy John surgery. Kyle Isbel will miss six weeks with a hamstring strain. Eloy Jimenez will miss 4 to 6 weeks after having an appendectomy. The Mariners placed right hander Penn Murfee on the 15 day IL with elbow inflammation.
Three time world champion Vida Blue died at the age of 73.
Something seems to have gone wrong with Willson Contreras as a catcher.
The Red Sox acquired Zack Littell from the Rangers for cash. The Astros acquired Nick Allgeyer from the Phillies, also for cash considerations. The Nationals just released veteran utility player Chad Pinder. The Dodgers just selected the contract of reliever Wander Suero. The Twins selected Dereck Rodriguez and recalled Alex Kirilloff. The Astros called up right hander J.P. France.
Names We Know
Happy belated birthday to Willie Mays.
Matt Harvey announced his retirement from baseball. Who will be next, Syndergaard or deGrom? The Athletics just released Kevin Cron, brother of CJ Cron. The Padres re-signed Julio Teheran. Jose Iglesias is the shortstop for the El Paso Chihuahuas these days. The Braves reinstated Raisel Iglesias from the injured list.
Bad Behavior
Athletics broadcaster Glen Kuiper used a racial slur during a pregame segment where he was discussing a visit to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. He says it didn’t come out the way he meant it to and he’s sorry. Predictably, he’s been suspended. A parent punched a 63 year old umpire at a high school baseball game in Florida. In California, a high school sophomore softball player was secretly videotaped performing a consensual sex act with a fellow student athlete (football) who then proceeded to distribute the video on social media.
Finally, Because Of Course He Did
Kevin Quackenbush signed with the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League.
Go Halos!!
Kick some Asstros!
How would you sort out the Silseth, Barria, Davidson pile while Suarez is out?
Personally I like Silseth in the bullpen. Kid can be flat nasty for an inning or two. Davidson is too hittable for my tastes. I like him as the mop up guy.
So I’d move Barria to being a starter. Maybe piggyback the soft tossing lefty Davidson behind him. And I’d keep Silseth in the bullpen.
Agree on all points. I know it would be nice to see Silseth as a starter, but he has borderline closer level stuff.
I wish C-Rod could get healthy 😭
I like Silseth in the bullpen too even though it looks like they already have him pegged for the next Suarez spot.
I’d give one of the AA guys a shot and see what happens. The fact they don’t appear to be in consideration though is not a good sign. Maybe the experimental ball has them all out of sorts.
I would trade all Suarez, Barria and Davidson for Sonny Gray. Am I right?
We should have traded for Sonny Gray so many times.
We would have. The problem became obvious when we’d discuss it on here and fools would suggest that the Reds would take a bunch of scruff from the bottom half of out Top 30 prospect list PLUS! which ever MLB guy they didn’t want, like Rengifo.
I’m sure we were interested in trading for him. Were the Reds interested in what we could offer?
Well whoever had Juan Valdez in the Suarez’ replacement Barista pool wins the caramel macchiato.
https://twitter.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1655683500572561408
I hope he knows this means he’s going to be released soon.
Angels record with Ward batting leadoff 13-13
Angels record with Neto batting leadoff 6-3
Coinkydink? I think not.
He’s young, and he is on the resting list in an important game. This past Texas Rangers series was for first place, and we rested our best players. “Well we want them rested for to play the whole season”, what if we are out of it by August 15th? And when they do rest guys, it would seem to be two or three on the same day?
When your team is down by 8 runs in the 7th or 8th inning you are not at that point “resting” your player/s. Trout was taken out yesterday to avoid injury. Plain and simple.
If they want to “rest” him then they’ll give him the day off and he doesn’t start.
So he’s a 38 year old pitcher. Ok so I can get over that. Maybe he is good.
I think I would rather bring in Brett Phillips to pitch an inning than this guy. Why is he even on the AAA roster?!
Oh, the coffee bean grower.
The best Columbian coffee
Wasn’t he the guy in the coffee commercial with a donkey?
DONKEY!
I have always suffered from WAR confusion. Can anyone help?
Shouldn’t a replacement player have 0.00 WAR? Guys like Silseth and Wallach came up to replace regular players, so shouldn’t these two guys always have 0.00 WAR? Last year, the Angels had Jonathan Villar replace their regular 3rd baseman, Anthony Rendon. But instead of a 0.00 WAR, Villar had a -0.5 WAR for the Angels.
This year, as a team, the Angels have 7.8 WAR. Does that mean that if they had played the whole year with only replacement players, the Angels right now would have an 11-24 record instead of a 19-16 record?
The Oakland A’s this year have a negative 3.6 team WAR. So if they had played with an all replacement team all year long, would they have a better record than what they have right now?
Suffering and confusion. Is at the core of being an Angel fan. WAR? What is good for?
Why do we subject ourselves to such horrific savagery?
Shell shock, now PTSD…all attributed an un-winnable WAR when the Angels are involved.
It’s a scorched-earth policy, a WAR of attrition. Done in the dugouts across MLB or “trench WARfare”.
Only hope (help) we have is to find a George Washing type to lead us into battle, or we’ll all be done in by Dysentery, Trench Foot, Tommy John and Sleep Disorders.
Well technically the answer is they should. however theres not always a correlation since no equation can predict the element of luck in the team’s results.
Coleman Crow looks like a solid replacement for Suarez, at least for two weeks.
On the year, 4 starts, 24 innings, 31 K’s, 0.63 WHIP in AA. Last year he went 128 innings over 24 games with solid production.
I love the fandom Jeff. Six feet, 170 pounds though? A limited number of AA starts. ERAs over 4 in prior years. I don’t see it unfortunately.
Silseth should get first chances. Maybe call up a reliever to take his role in the bullpen.
He was much better over the second half of last year IIRC and he’s started off well this year.
Unfortunately He hasn’t pitched since April 26. So something is going on with him.
Since we dont need a 6th starter until May 17th I suspect the Angels will add a bullpen arm when/if Suarez goes on the IL. We have also have the potential for 2 40 man roster spots opening with the family discount the Angels got last week for the Warren & Queso TJS
Instead, let’s talk to the “Dark Knight” about coming out of retirement…… 😝
I just drew a beautiful sketch of you….. and barfed on it.
Vida Blue was so cool. He was part of a group of older players who would sign autographs at A’s games in Spring Training. I spent a good 20 minutes or so listening to him and Bert Campaneris talk. It was mostly Vida talking.
We’re losing that era of ballplayer and it is sad.
RIP.
Vida Blue was always a favorite for my friends and I as kids. Great pitcher, even better name!
Great name
Dick
Groat
Lars Nootbaar
With Blue Moon Odom on the team I always thought the A’s had the market cornered on Blues.
His 1971 season is still one off the greatest as he was one of the few pitchers in ML history to win the Cy Young and the MVP that wasn’t a 2 way player
I had his baseball card and his Slurpee Cup. He was awesome.
Blue Moon Odom lived in Santa Ana for a long time after he retired. I met him at a party and it turned out he played gold with a customer of mine.
I have a display with a picture of us together and a ball he signed for me. He was one of the players who would be out in Phoenix signing autographs each year.
Vida Blue’s 1971 season is vastly under appreciated by history, and I think Odom’s unique career deserves more mention.
I remember my little league team would watch Vida pitch, he was one of the very few pitchers who ran off the field between innings. Most pitchers of that time walked off the field as if they had the weight of the world on their shoulders, always with that deep in thought look.
The high leg kick was a thing of beauty. RIP Vida.
My first MLB game, in Oakland, Vida Blue on the mound.
Saw him at the Big A when he was a Royal…Rest in Peace
The team is 19-16. But, the team has yet to win a series against a team with a winning record. Watching Bochy manage was a treat, kinda nice to see a competent manager at Angel stadium. On another note, Im enjoying the frequency of the City Connect jerseys. One of the best alternative unis in the league.
On the encouraging side, the Angel offense has not been shutout once this year.
The 90 Reds were the only team I can think of that went a year without getting shut out.
Good lord. That was some true collapse action. My hero Tucky D…. what happened man!?!? I’m bummed, I had hoped that Suarez’s problem was the tipping, but no, he’s just really hittable. I wonder if Shohei pointed out that fact that Suarez is very hittable to the stupid Angels coaching staff so I can be low key outraged about it.
It’s May 8. Suarez and Loup have both caught amazing injuries while flaming out yet again on the mound. Like communist generals under Stalin, taking the honorable way out once the gun’s laid on their desk. This is just about the right time to do it. Gave em long enough to figure stuff out. Season’s not “lost” by any stretch. You guys do realize we are still over .500 and in contention as we sit here right? MiLB arms are in shape if not killing it. Yup, first month of the season ends, the biggest problems seem to mysteriously fall off the list. Now we just need Silseth to not suck. We’ll probably see Crow soonish too.
So yeah. It’s the second week of May. The team is hit and miss, as apposed to constantly a miss. That’s nice. They tend to score an acceptable number of runs on average. Fine. Now they prune the roster. Next we see if they can get some of the professional baseball men to improve. Detmers, can he be good for more than 3 innings? Can other arms step up and improve on the horrible innings from Loup and Suarez? Tucky D? Are you telling me you are NOT a future ace? Come on Tucky. Defense. Seemingly half the team needs to lock it down. How’s Fletcher and Squid doing at SLC? Yeeaaaah! We’re not bleached dog poop! Now get better team. We’ve seen the Rangers. We’ll see the Astros next. We’ll have seen “the elephant” and know the level we gotta play at regularly. Get to it boys. I’d rather they do it today, but please do it before July.
A giant shoutout to St.Louis who signed Willson Contreras as the catcher to replace Yadier and then turn him into a DH weeks later. A very Angels move.
And thanks to Minasian for letting the Rangers have Eovaldi. Although I expect they would’ve ruined him too, like Tyler Anderson.
So true. How could PTP fail to sign the guy who had said in the past he was either signing with the Red Sox or a Texas team. Especially when it’s THEE Nathan Eovaldi. This org is a joke.
I didn’t know that. I could do without the snark.
We do know that once again we’ve got a problem with the rotation, like Suarez. We need better options.
And how do you like how we performed Saturday and Sunday after our best win of the year against the team we need to beat. You good with that?
Are you asking your better half?
And ah nuthur thing!
So good with it. I was like, “man, we sucked”. Then I went out and had a social life and it didn’t even come up again. Then i woke up this morning and eventually thought, “man, it would be cool if we beat the Astros. I would enjoy that.” Then left a small offering booze and cookies before my Anthony Rendon shrine, went out, and had a great day.
Why no snark for you? You all stocked up there ML?
He’s always got to have someone Angels to shit on. You better like it. Donkey Powah Forevah.
Some of these guys, I’m not even sure they are capable of enjoying baseball or if they just have a team they “love” that they can’t let go of cause they need something safe and legal to beat on.
The Angels scored 14 runs in the series against the Texas Rangers. Here is the list of how many of those runs our individual Angels were responsible for:
3.00 Rendon
1.75 Wallach
1.50 Ward
1.50 Drury
1.50 Ohtani
1.25 Renfroe
1.00 Trout
0.75 Rengifo
0.50 Ghost Runner
0.50 Thaiss
0.50 Urshela
0.25 Neto
This is the first time Rendon has been the leader in run creation in a series this year. Trout has been the leader the most often, leading the team in run creation in three of the Angels’ 11 series-es so far.
Here is the year-to-date Actual Runs Allowed per Batters Faced for our Angel pitching staff:
0.00 Lamb (4)
0.03 Estevez (76)
0.04 Moore (65)
0.07 Ohtani (153)
0.08 Wantz (52)
0.09 Sandoval (134)
0.11 Barria (81)
0.11 Silseth (35)
0.12 Canning (86)
0.13 Anderson (147)
0.14 Detmers (136)
0.16 Davidson (68)
0.16 Tepera (31)
0.18 Herget (35)
0.19 Suarez (123)
0.19 Devenski (23)
0.22 Loup (50)
0.25 Phillips (3)
Based on Barria, Silseth, and Davidson’s performance so far, I’d say Barria has earned the privilege of replacing Suarez in the rotation.
Tepera has lowered his ARA/BF on the year from 0.29 before his injury down to where it is now, at 0.16. Good work, Ryan.
ERA says that Lamb and Phillips both have a 0.00 ERA, but ARA/BF tells the true story of the effectiveness of these two position-player pitchers.
Lamb pitched to four batters and none of those batters scored, batted in a runner, or moved a runner who would later score up any bases.
Phillips, on the other hand, pitched to three batters and gave up a single that scored an inherited runner and also walked a batter when the bases were already loaded. Those two runs were entirely credited to Tucker Davidson’s ERA even though Phillips was responsible for allowing 0.75 of those runs, which ARA/BF accounts for.
this is always interesting. It feels like 0.12 is the cutoff for pitchers.
The Astros’ starting pitcher tonight is Hunter Brown. I looked up the six games he has been in this year, and his ARA/BF is 0.08 (140), just a tick better than Sandoval’s, who is pitching for the Halos tonight.
More Lamb.
Gyro!
(yes, it is lunch time)
You like the juice, huh? The juice is good?
No Coke, Pepsi!
Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger!
I hope they nail that idiot parent who sucker punched the umpire. I hope he goes to jail for at least 10 months so both he and his kid learn a lesson. There should always be ZERO tolerance for that kind of behavior in kid’s sports, and sports period.
Sucker punching = No bueno. Sucker punching an old man at a little league game…. sheesh man.
That’s Texas level stuff.
That’s Dodger Stadium parking lot stuff right there; sucker punch and run.
Thankfully this isn’t LA so the guy will actually go to jail.
I’m willing to bet the kid was a disruptive brat because the dad didn’t discipline him at home. The dad couldn’t take it when a real man tried to teach his kid how to be a good person.
Hey Mr. Sutton, great write up today. 😃
Thanks.
The Foundation Building Materials’ keystone of the game for the Angels today against the Houston Astros is “Your Cheatin’ Heart” by Hank Williams.
Baseball fans love to hate cheaters, but for how much longer can we use the Houston Trashstros to coax that emotion out of us? How many of the cheaters are even still on that team anymore?
It’s weird that we hate the Houston Asterisks so much, but we Angel fans are fine with having Max Stassi and Chris Devenski on the Angels’ roster. Similarly, Dodger fans are perfectly fine with having Mookie Betts, a guy who helped the Red Sox cheat a World Series away from the Dodgers in 2018, on their team.
https://youtu.be/6z2t-KfoPjg
While Altuve is not currently playing, he was the ringleader, so yes, I don’t like him, or Bergman and by extension I don’t like the Asstros. I don’t care for the SS on the Twins or the CF’er on the Jays, not at all fond of the manager in Boston, and the list goes on to include any current or former Asstro. I don’t just stop with just the Asstros either. Anyone ever associated with steroids. Including and not limited to the Fox Sports Baseball crew. I have a problem liking anyone who cheated in any form of gambling.
I believe Bud Selig did more harm to MLB than anyone else except for Barry Bonds and ARod. He was a flaud man in too many ways and I never trusted him. Donald Fehr was not for cleaning up the steroid mess and stain left on the game. The writers and their look upon the game is seriously in question.
I do not condone cheating organizations that promote or put up with cheating, and that is not limited to just MLB.
BTW, I have never been a Stassi fan. The reason the Dodgers organization likes Mookie is because they cheated too with sign stealing. Manfraud knew who cheated and who did not. He has no more back bone than Selig. Notice there was no waiting period for Bud to make sure he got his ass in the Hall of Fame.
My rant is thus over with as I say F the cheaters.
The guy who they still don’t have any actual proof was cheating is now The Ring Leader? OK.
Don’t call him the ring leader and don’t rip his jersey off after a walk-off.
Actual proof?
MLB investigators have other Astro player interviews who claimed Altuve was banging on trash cans.
I know these players were given immunity but what the hell else do you need?
CHEATERS FOREVER and EVER and EVER and EVER…and EVER!!!!!
Let the record show that this Cowboy26 comment is directed at gitcho and not at GhostGuest.
Every player on that team knew what was going on, yet none of them did anything to stop it. They’re all cheaters and should forever be branded as such and reminded of it.
Ring leader?
I don’t really care. If the Angels banged on trash cans they woulda still sucked. Since the Astros stopped they’ve been to back to back WS. Bonds was 3 time mvp best player before the roids and after during that 01-05 stretch it was was magnificent to watch, especially when we beat him in the WS. Didn’t ruin anything for me. I think the dodgers like betts bc he’s really good.
The old saying in baseball was if you are not cheating you are not really trying. Trying to steal signs has a long history in baseball going back to at least Babe Ruth’s day the Giants fine tuned it with some in the score board at the old Polo Grounds, loading up the ball with foreign substances was common in the 40’s 50’s 60’s and 70’s, shit, they used to strip search Gaylord Perry on the mound. Hell my little league mangers taught our pitchers how to scuff up the ball, I was a catcher and I was taught to use my shin guard’s to cut the ball, the best pitcher on my high school baseball team loaded up the ball with Vaseline he had a wicked curve and a nice fastball that dived at the last second.
The cheating I draw the line at is steroids and point shaving. However, you don’t think some of the players on the Angels World Serious Team were not using roids, pretty sure Glaus, Fullmer and Spezio were not sure of the pitchers, but Donnelly was pretty big for a pitcher. Also I love Brian Downing he was my favorite player at the time because he got the most out of the least talent, but he sure beefed up in a hurry.
hmmm. I thought the old saying was:
Never heard that one from any little league or high school coach I ever had. 😀 My dad was always telling me if I play hard and never give up that was all that mattered, he also told me to always run on and off the field, you never walk on a baseball diamond. His favorite saying was “always play the game like you have played it before, no matter what happens, keep your head down, work hard, play as hard as you can, never disrespect the uniform, team, coaches, umpires, fans or myself and always remember it is a game to be enjoyed.”
It’s just an old Mota to live by.
Stealing signs from second base and relaying to the batter or telling the guys on the bench that the pitcher is tipping his pitches is one thing; finding an advantage in the margins of the game. Using a purpose mounted camera in CF and then banging on a trashcan is something completely different and cheating IMHO. If it wasn’t cheating, they wouldn’t have needed the BS immunity that the dipsh!t commissioner gave them, right?
The immunity was just so the Asstros wouldn’t out the 20 other teams and their secret cheating methods.
Or do you honestly believe all these teams had live TV feeds showing from CF and were like “nah, that won’t help us.”?
All I can believe is what I have read about which is what was reported in the media as I’ve got no ‘in’ with any team. Any other teams engaged in the same stuff, even if it were the Angels, then they are cheaters as well.
I’m sorry that is using technology that was not available earlier. If it was around in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s even the 80’s I’m sure some teams would have used it.
What you are forgetting is that you still have to hit the fricking ball, which is damn hard even if you know what is coming. I know that there are many hitters that don’t want to know what the pitch is going to be, they would rather trust their own identification of what the pitch is going to be, by the spin of the ball.
I think people are over estimating the impact of sign stealing on the hitters ability to execute. I would even say if a hitter is listening to a trash can being banged on, that he is not concentrating on the actual pitch 100%. But that’s just me. I think corking a bat, or using roids leads to a unfair competitive advantage, I am not sure sign stealing as the same impact.
Rendon has surprisingly been hitting the ball well and driving in runs while one of the other Ren’s had bases loaded twice and came away zip followed by a HR with the bases empty. Such are the frustrations of a Baseball fan.
Just my opinion, but I do not care for having 3 different Television announcers and finding one superior to the other two and wondering why he is not doing all the games. Why do we have to put up with Apple TV stealing games from us? Just observations is all.
Patrick O. is improving his game calling, but I am finding him to be harder to listen to. I do like our New York import more and more even if a double is a “base hit” 🙂
Terry and Langer are trying to the extreme to sound professional, I am not saying they are not anything but, the other day someone pointed out that they were not at all aware of who was warming up in the bullpen. While individually not really a deal breaker in itself, a radio announcer is inherently different than a TV announcer in that they, the radio guys, paint the pictures in our minds about what is going on the field and in the dugouts and in the stands, and yes in the bullpens as this is apart of the total picture. I do believe that it is an injustice not having such an important piece of the game not attending live.
Many decades ago, radio announcers recreated the games by reading off the ticker tape because radio transmissions were not possible those announcers did very well to make the fans seem that they were at the game live. When it became possible to call games on the road as it were, the games on radio took on a whole different dimension of sounding must more professional. The radio teams were part of the game and players lives by sharing hotels and even meals and drinks together and picking up tidbits to share with the fans listening.
Again just my opinion that Radio announcers belong with the team on the road.
RE: Why do we have to put up with Apple TV stealing games from us? Just observations is all.
Yes, damn those employment contracts. Why did Wayne sign it?
LOL. I hear ya gramps. Everybody LOVES Patty O soooooo much. He’s a local treasure. LOLLLLZZZZZ
Gotta love Patrick’s enthusiasm, but he’s not a PxP guy – definitely painful at times. Only worse PxP I’ve heard has been Jose Mota and I love that guy a lot. Just don’t do PxP guys. Please!
You never heard those games when Roger Lodge did PxP?
Now I’m triggered.
Well then You guys are going to love this Sundays telecast then
Sweet Lord no. They’ve invited JackFrost to do PxP?
Worse. Tooty.
I want PattyO and Frost on the same broadcast. Patty freaks out over a normal home run in the 4th inning. Frost starts in with “Let me tell you all the things that were wrong with that HR…. Problem 1C….”
Two men enter. One man leaves.
Having a real announcer for a while has illustrated just how horrible Patrick O’neal is at play by play.
Last year Patty O followed a smorgasbord of announcing, plenty of it bad. So he just kind of fit in with the suck.
What do you think about position players pitching? In games similar to yesterday why not? But I did enjoy watching the wide-eyed Rangers swinging away like kids in the candy store and making outs.
The game of Baseball never has the same outcome, nobody liking receiving an ass kicking, especially at home, but we will return to winning ways soon, as we knew that the month of May would be brutal.
The month of May is separating the contenders from the pretenders. The Rangers didn’t win, they kicked our asses and pissed on the logo. If we can’t take a series from the Rangers in our house, we don’t deserve any playoff games.
Shohei and Patrick, and the rest are highly problematic.
Position players pitching is something exciting to watch especially when a game has gone completely sideways like yesterdays. Love it.
Remember Friday’s win against the Rangers? Good times.
Ha ha. That seems like a decade ago…
That gray hair idea is one good way to make Neto look more like a “seasoned vet’run” … he should go with that hair color.
Fake news
Good Morning my friends, hey wasn’t playing the Rangers just a lot of fun, kinda like having teeth pulled for sure. What was supposed to be a strength has turned into a weakness exposed, Starting Pitching. Scary really, if we intend to make the playoffs.
We already knew that the Bullpen was an Achilles Heel, but did you watch yesterday’s game until the bitter end? You are like me if you did, in that somehow deep down we were hoping for a comeback. Optimism has no limits and is over the top rewarding when comeback wins are successful.
We are winless when Rendon hits a HR.
😄
We’ve won zero playoff games since we signed Rendon.
*since we signed Pujols
*Since we signed Carpino.
Since Trout!!
Ouch, that hurts. How about:
****since we signed Fernando Rodney in Dec. of 2010
How Long Ago?
Last playoff win, 13 years, 6 months and 17 days
The iPhone had been around for only 2 + years.
#1 Song was by Britney Spears
Zach Neto was still in his 8th year of life
“swine flu” was the global pandemic
Trout was fast and thin
Sam Blum was 3 (birthday party at Charles E Cheese)
Do you think the Blummer still goes there for his special day?
Gold. Golden Donkey.