Big news in Los Angeles of Anaheim these past couple days: Albert Pujols has hit home runs in back-to-back games. Just as after Pujols hit his first homer of the season back on May 6th, one question rules Angels-related discourse: is Albert back? Pujols did hit in six of his next eight games following that first home run, but the result was just a .265/.285/.265 line. Is anything different this time around? Can Angels fans finally start to believe? A quick look at where these home runs fell suggests yes, a rebound should be here soon for Pujols.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Peter Bourjos trade rumors have started to circulate again. The primary discussant in the linked article is the Nationals, but the Royals, Diamondbacks, and Blue Jays are also mentioned. With super-prospect Mike Trout in the majors, the Angels already having something of an outfield crunch and Bourjos flat-lining on offense so far this season, there is a surface rationality to the idea of trading him. Let’s briefly look at how Bourjos might fit into the plans of the teams allegedly interested in Bourjos before turning to the question of how this makes sense (or nonsense) for the Angels.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels haven’t had a glorious start to the season. The team’s starting pitching has sparkled, and the defense has been solid, but the hitting and bullpen work have left much to be desired. The former will be tested over the next two months, as starting catcher Chris Iannetta will be out with an fractured right wrist.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Walden has a jump step in his delivery. Jordan Walden has control problems. Does one cause the other?

He’s not the only one who has this tendency. Ask around and you might hear about Javy Guerra and Trevor Cahill. With the sample so small, does it mean much? What about other unrepeatable deliveries, like the ones from Chicago relievers Rafael Dolis and Carlos Marmol? Is there something different about the jump-step that sets it apart from other difficult deliveries?

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the Padres traded reliever Ernesto Frieri to the Angels, in exchange for Minor Leaguers Alexi Amarista and Donn Roach. Frieri has pitched very well thus far this season, with walk and strikeout rates significantly better than he had in 2011, albeit in a much smaller sample. But will the Angels be getting that pitcher? Petco Park seemingly has a way of elevating mediocre pitchers into above-average, or even elite ones. That has never seemed as prevalent as it has this year, as we have watched Heath Bell struggle to put away the likes of Joaquin Arias and Travis Buck.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, it took Los Angeles Dodgers manager Clint Hurdle Don Mattingly* approximately 40 seconds — depending on where you start and stop your timer — to argue The Worst Call of the Season. Meanwhile, in St. Louis, it took the umpiring crew about 2 minutes and 50 seconds to gather in the infield, discuss Carlos Beltran’s hit, reconvene in their underground video review chamber, and then return to announce a home run.

* All white guys look the same to me.

Getting the calls wrong in baseball takes time. Managers — depending on their personality, the game situation, and the offense — take different amounts of time arguing both bad and good calls. The arguing, for the most part, exists because of uncertainty. My lip-reading skills inform me most arguments follow this general pattern:

Manager: “Did you really see X event?”

Umpire: “Most certainly did I see X event.”

Manager: “That statement you just made right there is tantamount to the excrement of bovines.”

Umpire: “You are ejected.”

Recent evidence suggests, however, that despite these conflicts resulting from close calls, instant replays still take more time than good ol’ fashioned shout-spittin’ matches.

Evidence furthermore suggests that in the time it takes to get in a healthy workout, a normal person could empty approximately ten Squeeze Cheese cans directly into his or her porcine gullet.

Which is to say: Quicker is not always better.

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday against Minnesota, the Angels broke the two run barrier for the first time in eight games, hanging four runs on Nick Blackburn and the Twins. With C.J. Wilson and Scott Downs on their respective games, four was enough, and the Angels won just their second game in their last eight tries. The hero was Torii Hunter, who plated the Angels first three runs behind an RBI single in the first and a two-run home run in the fourth inning. The home run marked his third of the season and his third in the past four days. Blackburn’s offering was right over the middle of the plate, just as those from Jeanmar Gomez on Saturday and Justin Masterson on Friday. The four-day run ends what has been an uncharacteristic struggle for Hunter with pitches over the middle of the plate in 2012.

Read the rest of this entry »

At 6-14, the Angels enter play today tied with the Royals for the second-worst record in baseball, and at -12 runs, they have the eighth-worst run differential as well. They have lost eight of 10, including five straight, with the last two being of the walk-off variety. As such, the team is in desperate search of a spark, and on Friday night they hope they found it by calling up the one player who should have been with the team all along in Mike Trout. Unfortunately, the Angels roster is now misshapen, thanks to the fact that Anaheim cut the wrong player in order to get Trout to the Majors.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s April 26th, so it’s just too early to jump to any conclusions based on what has happened thus far in 2012. There are 140+ games still to go in the season, and as we’ve seen before, the standings at the end of April often don’t look like the standings at the end of September. Three weeks of baseball shouldn’t have changed our minds too much about what we believed to be true before the season began. That the Angels are 6-12, and that Albert Pujols has yet to hit a home run, should not lead us to believe that the Angels are a bad team or that Pujols run as an elite hitter has come to an end.

However, April counts too, and it couldn’t have gone much worse for Anaheim than it did. Not only have they struggled out of the gates, but Texas has blitzed through the American League, and currently hold an 8 1/2 game lead over the Angels in the American League West. Even if we still believe that the Angels are capable of outplaying the Rangers over the rest of the season – and we should – the hole they have to dig out of has become so large that winning their division has become significantly less likely.

For instance, here’s a few examples of what it would take for the Angels to win the AL West by a margin of one game, with all of these scenarios needing to begin immediately:

Read the rest of this entry »

Forgoing free agency is the new hotness. After already locking up his double play partner Howie Kendrick back in January, the Angels gave Erick Aybar a reported four year, $35 million contract extension today. Aybar is under contract for 2012 at just over $5 million, so this represents a pretty nice raise in annual average value, and assuming that the contract covers 2013-2016, it will keep Aybar in Anaheim through his age 32 season.

This also represents a pretty significant commitment from the Angels towards a player whose skills aren’t generally valued all that highly on the open market. While Aybar has averaged +3.2 WAR per season over the last three years, most of that value has come from his defense and baserunning abilities, as he’s hit just .280/.327/.391. Those aren’t terrible offensive numbers from a shortstop, but they came during his expected peak years and put him in the same category as guys like Jimmy Rollins, Stephen Drew, Jhonny Peralta, J.J. Hardy, and Cliff Pennington. There’s nothing wrong with any of these guys, but this class of ballplayer has traditionally not struck it rich in free agency.

Read the rest of this entry »