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The Angels won 89 games last year despite starting Mike Trout in the minors. After they promoted at the end of April, they played .580 baseball the rest of the way. Over the winter, they added Josh Hamilton, but more importantly, they added the Houston Astros to the AL West. 19 games against the Astros was supposed to give the western contenders a significant advantage, as they could pencil in 12 or 13 easy wins against a team that wasn’t even trying to compete.

Whoops. The Astros just swept the Angels — in Anaheim — and have now beaten LA’s other expensive disappointment in seven of their first 10 match-ups. In fact, the Astros may end up being the primary reason that the Angels miss the playoffs.

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Chris Davis has had power for as long as he’s been a professional, and probably longer. His first year, in Low-A, he slugged .534. The next year he slugged .598. In Triple-A he slugged over .600. The power is what got Davis to the majors. But Davis now is taking things to new levels. It wouldn’t be right to say Davis has been hitting everything, because he’s missed quite a lot. But he’s hit more things than he used to, and that’s why he’s currently leading the majors in home runs, with 20. His isolated slugging percentage is more than double Adrian Beltre‘s career number. It’s more than double Robinson Cano‘s. It’s got 50 points on Babe Ruth’s. If baseballs had snot in them, there would be a lot of snot on Chris Davis’ uniform.

Davis possesses what you might call “easy power.” Several people have characterized it as “effortless.” According to FanGraphs commenter farrpar, “He has the most effortless power in baseball, no doubt about it.” According to this guy, “Wow! Chris Davis! Effortless Grand-slam!!! Go O’s.” According to David Miller, “The thing about Davis is that his swing looks so effortless on homerun balls like the one he hit on Sunday.” According to OsLuvrInKy, “Gotta love it. His swings just look so effortless.” Last season, in fact, Davis hit a home run on a broken bat. Because Davis is all the some of the rage right now, I’ve decided to prepare a top-five list of his most effortless home-run swings of the 2013 season so far. One way to measure effortlessness would be biomechanical examination. Another way would be guessing.

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Sunday afternoon, Domonic Brown did something he’s been doing a lot of lately. Brown faced Mike Fiers in the bottom of the first, with two on and two out. After a first-pitch curveball found the zone, Fiers missed three straight times, with a heater and a couple changeups. Brown scooted up in the box, and Fiers came inside with a cutter, or a slider, as if that detail’s important. Brown saw it, swung at it, and blasted it, way out to right field for a three-run dinger. It was Brown’s 14th home run in 32 starts. It was his 16th home run of the season. Brown is the National League leader in that category, after a spring in which people were concerned he might not find enough playing time.

Sunday afternoon, Domonic Brown did something he hadn’t done for a while. Brown faced Tom Gorzelanny in the bottom of the seventh, with one on and two out. After a first-pitch slider found the zone, Gorzelanny missed three straight times, with a slider and a couple heaters. The 3-and-1 pitch was a fastball that Brown went after and tipped for a strike. The next and final pitch was a slider that just missed, a little low and a little away. Brown watched it, and Brown walked — unintentionally — for the first time since April 30. Brown had just walked the day before, too, but that one was done on purpose.

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The Major League Baseball Rule 4 Draft begins this week. The modern draft was instituted in 1987, but a filtration system for entry-level talent existed before World War II. Today, the draft exists for two purposes — competitive balance and wage suppression, with the former being publicly cited as the reason for its existence but the latter being more of the actual motivation for the league. Let’s put aside the wage suppression issue for a minute, though — noting that nearly every corporation in America is essentially in the business of minimizing their labor costs — and focus on the competitive balance aspect of the draft.

To many, competitive balance is essential to their enjoyment of Major League Baseball. The satisfaction of these observers — fans — is directly related to the profitability of Major League Baseball. In other words, so long as fans are emotionally and economically invested in the sport, Major League Baseball will continue to profit.

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Hey there everybody, and welcome to this week’s edition of The World’s Most Zaniest Desks, wherein we discuss outlandish desks of all shapes and sizes. You “wood” “knot” believe what we have in store! I’m just kidding, this is the first part of the eighth edition of The Worst Of The Best. For the first part of the seventh edition, from last Friday afternoon, go right here. And then keep on following links until you get all the way back to the first part of the first edition, which is important somehow. If you’d like to read about desks and desk types, here’s this link. I apologize for misleading you before. That was dastardly.

Here we talk about pitches that were far away from the center of the strike zone. You’re going to see five of them, and I eliminate intentional balls, because otherwise you’d just see five intentional balls, and I wouldn’t have anything interesting to say about them. “The pitcher wants to walk this batter intentionally, or ‘on purpose’.” It’s a PITCHf/x-based top five, and I think this time around I have 18 images. So get ready for all of those, if that requires preparation on your part. We’re covering May 24 – May 30. Some pitches that just missed: Cody Allen to Joey Votto on May 28, Gio Gonzalez to Adam Jones on May 27, and Rick Porcello to Clint Barmes on May 28. In Porcello’s defense, you don’t want to pitch Barmes anywhere in the strike zone. The list is coming; won’t you join me?

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The Detroit Tigers starters currently have a 2.54 FIP, which translates into a FIP- of 62, easily the best in baseball. In fact, it’s easily the best FIP- in baseball history, and as I wrote a month ago, Detroit’s starters have a chance to write themselves into the history books with their 2013 performance. But, instead of just writing a post updating their pace — they’d basically need to post a FIP- of 83 the rest of the way to break the record for best FIP relative to league average — I thought it might be interesting to look at how the best rotations in baseball history dominated.

For instance, the narrative around the Tigers current rotation mostly has to do with their strikeouts. They are on pace to shatter the all time record for strikeouts by a rotation, and the swing-and-miss stuff possessed by guys like Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer makes it easy to credit the strikeout rate as the primary driver of their success. However, once you compare the individual components to the league average, their strikeout rate becomes just a part of the story, and maybe not even the biggest part.

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Entering May, Minnesota Twins Byron Buxton was my favorite to seize the label of number one prospect in baseball entering 2014. Diamondbacks pitcher Archie Bradley ranked second as he pushed through High-A and finished April in the Southern League. Shortstop Francisco Lindor of the Cleveland Indians debuted in the third spot after a dominant month offensively. Twins’ Miguel Sano, claimed the fourth spot, as well as the label of best power hitting prospect in the game. Rounding out the top five was Boston Red Sox prospect Xander Bogaerts, who received a partial mulligan for a weak April due to his being the highest rated prospect in baseball entering 2013 not expected to surpass rookie at bats/innings pitched limits.

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There’s a reason catchers often make great managers and coaches. The mindset that you get from watching every play unfold from behind the plate can inform practically every play. And so, when you find out that John Jaso is an asset with the bat and on the basepaths, it’s no surprise that you can trace these things back to his training behind the plate.

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As I write this, the Pittsburgh Pirates are tied for the second best record in baseball. They also happen to be tied for second place in their own division, because the Cardinals are the only team with a better record while the Reds have matched Pittsburgh’s 33-20 start, making the NL Central the most competitive and most interesting division in the sport right now. The Cardinals are Reds are both excellent teams, and we should expect both to continue to win at a good clip over the rest of the year, but what about the Pirates? Is this another first half mirage that will lead to a second half collapse, or do Pittsburgh fans finally have a contender to root for?

I think the answer to both of those questions is probably yes; the Pirates are playing over their heds and will likely regress over the next four months, but their strong start and their overall talent level should keep them in the race to the very end.

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BeerGraphs — a website devoted to the analytics of beer — is now alive. Very soon it will have sortable leaderboards and everything. And it’s been too long since we had a FanGraphs meetup anyway, so let’s do another one. Where better to have a top-flight beer and watch some good baseball than the Public House attached to AT&T Park in San Francisco? Please come and talk baseball (or beer) with our merry band:

June 7, four until ?, Public House at AT&T Park, San Francisco

Eno Sarris (FanGraphs, BeerGraphs)
Howard Bender (FanGraphs)
Wendy Thurm (FanGraphs)
Steve Berman (Bay Area Sports Guy)
Grant Brisbee (SBN)
King Kaufman (Bleacher Report)
Patrick Newman (NPBTracker)
Ian Miller (Productive Outs)
Adam Cacioppo (BeerGraphs)
Aram Cretan (Freewheel Brewing)
Rob Conticello (Clandestine Brewing)
Adrian Kalaveshi (Clandestine Brewing)