Good morning Angels fans. Have some links!
Angels News
The brawl last night was epic. Sure, it was bad that Soler got ejected, but it was still fun to watch, and hey, Reylo got ejected as well, so…
Oh yeah, the Angels still lost. Bummer.
At least Jo Adell’s glove is going to the HOF. Nice. Those robberies have made quite a few heads turn, and plenty of Youtube videos.
Around Baseball
Who is good at ABS challenges? Not the Angels, well, outside of Logan that is.
The Giants are not doing well. It is so bad, that there have been 3 clubhouse incidents so far.
Who else is not having a good time? the Blue Jays. They lost again to the Dodgers in a humiliating fashion, the manager gets ejected, Kirk has a broken thumb and had surgery, Scherzer is hurt, and they are 4th in the AL East. At least the fans bought a LOT of hot dogs.
Wait 4th? Who is last in the AL East? The Red Sox. And their fans are chanting “Sell the Team“. Man, if only Angels fans could be that organized.
Anything I missed? Post below for upvotes!
Some video of Talon Haley last night. Would love to get some velo readings. All of the traffic was in the second inning – first and third innings were solid, good command. Big kid for a guy in high school less than a year ago.
https://twitter.com/Polar_Bear_Ball/status/2041741071281959149
Taylor Ward had 3 more doubles today. Up to 9 on the season already.
Taylor two-bags
Went to opening day at Lake Elsinore, Storm v Quakes. RC kept on adding on throughout the game. We left in the 8th- game ended up 16-3 Quakes- they shredded the Storm bullpen. Good fielding, at least compared to LE. They had four errors in the game. Saw Gabriel Davalillo- looks a lot like Vic.
We are going to the Quakes game on April 30
Offense finally broke out last night for the Quakes. Was more of a pitching showcase in the first series. Good to see Alvarez land some after a slow start. On four times, two steals.
17 hits, 15 singles! Feels more like a Brewers club than an Angels team.
Trout, 2 for last 29.
Soler and Lopez each suspended 7 games. Both are appealing https://x.com/jeffpassan/status/2041968261525287305?s=46
Fight wasn’t worth it at all. Lost Soler for entire roadie against the Reds and Yankees, both teams are scorching hot
Moncada will pick-up the offensive slack. Not to worry.
And he adds lock down defense too. Arenado is almost at his level.
Respectfully, I disagree. Totally worth it. The Angels have been beaten down so long, other teams take advantage. As stated, they know Trout won’t do anything when he gets hit. Someone has to say enough. Just because we might be a bad team, doesn’t mean we won’t stand up for ourselves when necessary. Maybe then the up and in stuff will go away.
To quote the late, great country philosopher Kenny Rogers:
Please don’t think I’m weak I didn’t turn the other cheek
Papa I sure hope you understand
Some times you gotta fight when you’re a man.
I understand your pov. Soler decided to take his personal grudge against Lopez into his own hands and hurt the team. Selfish decision.
We can’t fight every pitcher that throws too far inside lol
You don’t need to fight everyone, but you DO need to be willing to fight. And I would add actually fight some to prove it !
Doesn’t this seem unfair? Soler misses 7 games and Lopez, a pitcher, basically only misses 1 game.
This was really excessive in my view. Should have been 5 games max for Soler. Trent Rush mentioned on the radio prior to today’s game that it is unfair in the sense that Lopez as a SP will only miss one single start, while Jorge misses an entire week of games. Especially considering the context that their guy hit our guy with a pitch prior, AND buzzed his tower, the League really screwed us yet again…
He can appeal and maybe get a few games knocked off….
Let’s hope so….
Trent Rush – hahahahaa… good one
This hardly qualifies as news but Stephenson is officially out for the season. We have a 2.5 million option on him for next year but I can’t imagine a universe where we pick that up
🤦 I’m shocked!! Okay, not really shocked at all. 33 million for 100 innings of broken goods. Yeeeesh.
Typo. 10 innings with the Halos.
$3.3 million per inning pitched. Sounds about right.
100 innings you say? On Playstation?
If Griffin’s 9/140 contract sets the baseline for a Neto extension, he will enter free agency. I hope I’m wrong, but my sense is Arte will expect a discount – which is funny since the Pittsburgh Pirates are the definition of small market cheapness.
Arte missed the window
Arte is limiting the long term liabilities of the team as he positions it to be sold to some super-duper rich guy that loves baseball and doesn’t care about losing money so long as he can hoist a WS trophy asap (please oh please let it be so)
May be early in the season but it sure looks like Trout is still a 2025 struggle at the plate. Can’t hit a hard fastball in the strike zone. Pitchers seem to have same approach: first pitch strike (always takes) fast balls for strikes (fouls them) then slider or high fastball for punch out. If they get behind, fast ball in and away, then walk him. Yesterday at the game I cheered when he swung at a first pitch ! Can’t believe his avg dipped to .194 before that last single. The teams the Angels have played so far have had good pitching staffs so I’m hoping Trout can get on track. At this point, I’d celebrate a full healthy season with .250 avg with 25+ home runs.
Numbers tell a slightly different story…
Trout vs. pitch type = 75% FB, 20% breaking balls, 5% offspeed
vs. FB (168 pitches faced)
.286 BA
.536 SLG
7 Ks
16.2% whiff
vs. Breaking Balls (44 pitches faced)
0.0 BA
0.0 SLG
6 Ks
50% whiff
vs. Offspeed (11 pitches faced)
0.0 BA
0.0 SLG
1 K
33% whiff
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/mike-trout-545361?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb
I do agree with you on his approach setting him up for failure. He hasn’t made the proper adjustment to swing earlier more, and doubt he ever will.
His numbers against non-fastballs are brutal
It looks like they guess wrong most of the time. Not sure if that falls on the analytics team or just pure bad luck, but with the amount of k’s the angels accumulate, something is off.
Last one … Trout swinging at the 1st pitch vs taking the 1st pitch
Swung at 1st Pitch
8 PA
.500 / .625 / .500
1 K
Took 1st Pitch
43 PA
.156 / .372 / .375
13 Ks
This is pretty dramatic, though not surprising to me. Everybody knows by now that Mike almost always takes the first pitch. It would be the job of Brady Anderson, the other bench staff or even Suzuki to point these numbers out to him. Hard to believe if they did that he would not adjust…
Hard to believe that he isn’t aware already. Its been like this his entire career.
That is quite opposite of past years. Maybe there is some regression in his future.
Good stuff. Don’t know why I keep happening to watch him foul off fastballs and then strike out on the breaking stuff like an old song on repeat.
My hunch is that Trout is “cheating” a bit to catch up to the FB, which makes him more susceptible to miss on change & breaking pitches.
Swinging at more first pitches seems obvious at this juncture. I’d happily take a few more hits over a few less walks.
The MMA analogy is that when strikers face wrestlers, they have to focus so much on avoiding the takedown, their striking defense (and striking offense) suffer greatly.
As I stated last night, I suspect that the impending Soler suspension will be relatively light. He can cite extenuating circumstances (Angels batters getting plunked numerous times this season).
Soler is a big dude. Lopez wanted none of that action. Haha
Happy Birthday to Jo Adell!!!
When the Braves manager took it upon himself to enter the fray, if he got Don Zimmered (Google this with Pedro Martinez) I’d have no problem with that.
Ultimatly, why did we wait until the Atlanta series for this? It would’ve made more sense against Seattle. I guess better late than never. Somebody should meme to Seattle they’re next.
Soler and reynaldo have a history
Nice debut by Shores in Tri-City last night. Fun box score all around. 4th-rounder Munroe is off to a fine start. https://www.milb.com/gameday/dust-devils-vs-aquasox/2026/04/07/819381/final/box
Strong start for Shores — imagine we hit on him as a starter.
Talon Haley made his professional debut in Low A too!
3 IP, 2 ER, 4 hits, 2 walks, 5 strikeouts
Love that they’re fast-tracking Haley. Speaks to his make-up.
Prospect or Not?
Nick Rodriguez
23-year-old 10th-round 4Y senior-sign from the 2025 draft. Too GA to confirm, but I’m pretty sure he was one of those $1K-$10K super-saver guys that helped us get all the overslot prep arms. Clubbed 32 HRs over two seasons at Miss State but there were enough doubts about his power conducting to wood bats as a pro that he slid out of the top 300 picks. All he’s done as a pro: slashed .314/.419./.838 over 30 games, including a .500 average so far in AA this season (4 games). Dare we dream? Hasn’t shown much power so far (1 HR, 6 2Bs as a pro) but looked commanding in Tempe at the prospects game and obviously org is high on him.
Just putting it out there ’cause it’s fun: Same age/position as Travis Bazzana (career average as a minor leaguer: .242).
I don’t care about the power, or lack thereof. I just want some dudes who can hit at all!
Good thing that one throw didn’t land or Soler would be on a long suspension. That could have done damage.That’s a big strong dude putting everything he had into it.
Jorge just went out to talk out their differences like the peaceful man he is. Reynaldo threw the first punch and used a weapon (the baseball) throughout the melee. Walt Weiss then viciously attacked Jorge! Jorge will probably get a short suspension, but Reynaldo should get 5x that to account for the everyday player/pitcher discrepancy. Weiss will get several days for conduct unbecoming a grown manager. That’s my verdict!
More awesome Angels PR. Sam Blum reports Angels stopped paying Eric Kay’s lawyer fees mid last year and now Kay’s lawyer has withdrawn from Kay and is owed $130K.
Despite promising to pay for Eric Kay’s legal expenses, the Los Angeles Angels have allegedly left their imprisoned ex-communications director’s attorney with a $130,000 bill.
Kay’s attorney, David Gerger, wrote in a legal filing that he was withdrawing from the case, after months of unpaid fees and expenses by the Angels.
The Angels declined to comment.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7178007/2026/04/07/angels-eric-kay-legal-fees-tyler-skaggs-case/?source=athletic_pulsenewsletter&campaign=17553235&userId=27252571
The price of parking just went up.
Tears for Kay.
No lie. Alex: I’ll take “stuff I don’t care about” for a thousand.
Bad people behaving badly. No sympathy to any of them.
Including Mr. Skaggs.
It’s nice to see someone who gets tired of getting drilled up and in and is willing to do something about it! Yeah, I’m looking at you #27.
I don’t mind if Mike doesn’t fight… it’s not his personality. It’s not who he is. He leads in other ways. The key is that somebody needs to be the guy who will throw down and who the other team thinks might actually hurt someone when doing it. In hockey they call this guy “The Enforcer.” When Gretzky was on the Kings that guy was Marty McSorley.
Of course Wayne was not a fighter, but anybody who messed with him would have to face McSorley, who was indeed a tough customer and could knock you out. So, ultimately it is not necessary that every player on the team be ready and willing to fight, but rather it is essential that at least one or two guys are capable and willing to do it.
For this reason I was glad to see Soler do what he did last night, even at the cost of a suspension.
I thought it was funny, after Soler gets tackled, Trout approaches Lopez who begins to puts his hands up but immediately lowers them when he realizes it’s Trout. Like I know I’m not getting past this guy.
They should just add somebody to the 26 man to act as Trout’s enforcer. We’ve got fat 1Bs in the minors who could serve this purpose.
Some fireballer from the minors that won’t hurt the team much if he gets suspended.
“Oops! I guess the wild kid could use a little more polishing.”
I would have reacted like Soler did. Lopez has been completely owned by Soler and then follows it up in the next two at bats with a HBP and a tower buzz.
Props to Walt Weiss on the TFL
Wait.
The Mike Trout who is lifting his arms to avoid being hit on inside strikes because he crowds the plate?
Yeah. See what Gibson, or Drysdale would have done with that stance.
Don Baylor never whined about being hit. Mike doesn’t whine much because he knows.
4/8/26 to-do list
— Win the series
— DFA Moncada and D’Arnaud
— try not to start a fight
Not Travis. He is a veteran with valuable experience. I know he is cold offensively but I think he has earned at least a few weeks to turn it around. Last season he had some truly clutch hits for us…. Let’s see where he is at near the end of April to first week of May.
With Moncada I am fully onboard with the DFA. He’s a selfish prima donna who damages us with his piss poor defense at the worst possible times.
Agree 100% on Travis. I think he was ice cold to start the year last year too. It’s hard to be consistent when your playing time is inconsistent.
Plus who else would we call up to replace him anyway?
1) Win the series ✔
2) DFA dead weight ✔
3) Try not to fight ❌
We need more toughness from the Angels! I say let ’em FIGHT!
Costanza would make this team a contender! Cotton uniforms were only the tip of his genius
I’ve never watched one episode of Seinfeld or friends
dude …
If you’re seeking a comedy to binge watch, I’d suggest ‘Silicon Valley’ (HBO).
Need a solid back up before he gets dropped, but I think they value his veteran grit 🤮
Agreed. He has been sorry with the bat and glove in his entire time here (aka washed). He’s not the team’s biggest issue, but I’m tired of watching him
I wonder who gets hit today.
Hopefully, the Halos hit the ball.