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ANAHEIM – C.J. Wilson now has two career shutouts, and oddly enough, both have come against the Tampa Bay Rays.The Angels left-hander shut down the Rays in a 6-0 victory Saturday at Angel Stadium, returning the favor one night after Tampa Bay had... View the full article

Rookie right-hander Mike Morin, 23, has begun his Angels career with eight scoreless appearances, allowing only six baserunners (five hits, one walk) in 8 2/3 innings while striking out seven. View the full article

On Sunday against the Rays, Matt Shoemaker (1-1, 3.86) will make his second start in place of left-hander Hector Santiago in the Angels rotation, and the third of his Major League career. View the full article

C.J. Wilson couldn't control the movement of his pitches in his last start against Toronto, but the left-hander still struck out eight Blue Jays and finished six innings while throwing his customary 116 pitches.He'll try to keep the strikeouts high... View the full article

By Glen McKee and Natan Trop, AngelsWin.com Columnist & Satirist Shelf life and service life are funny things. Milk has a low shelf and service life: it can’t sit in the grocery store for too long, and once you open it you have a week at most (or longer, if you’re brave). Twinkies have an indefinite shelf life but once you open them, they’re good for about a day. Mayo also has a long shelf life but can marinate in your fridge for months while you eat enough sandwiches and chicken salad to go through it. The Rally Monkey is different, though – it had no shelf life at all but has perhaps way outlived its service life. On Thursday night a potential replacement for the Rally Monkey was introduced – the Rally Pussy, or Cat if you will. The debate is already in full swing so let’s get our PCP guys to break down the arguments to the finer points and settle the debate, once and for all. Bring on the Rally Pus Cat – by Glen McKee I have many roles in life – government money sponge, Angels fan, occasional writer, partner and lover, just to name a few. I attack all of them with the same level of post-mediocrity but none of them are more important to me (at least for the sake of this article) than the role of half-assed father. Nobody half-asses it quite as half-assed as I do, and I take this job somewhat seriously. Part of this job is entertaining my daughter and forcing my beliefs on her. I know, that sounds horrible on the surface but I need to make sure she doesn’t end up rooting for the Dodgers. That’s a father’s second prime directive, right after keeping her off the pole. So, I take her to Angels games to expose her to the post-mediocrity that is Angels baseball. She’s gonna be eleven in a few weeks, so her attention wanders when she’s at the game, or doing any damn thing. Let’s take a break here to admit something we all know: baseball is a boring game. When you have to repeatedly refer to the “tension” of a sporting event you’re talking about a lack of action, and no other sport (besides golf) has more standing around doing nothing than baseball. I love baseball, it’s my favorite sport by far, but my god does it drag sometimes. Back on point: baseball is a tough sell to a hyperactive tweener with a cell phone and a sugar high. That’s why beach balls and the wave are so popular – it gives the less-attentive something to do in between the in –between innings, when they’re not looking at the kiss cam or singing along to Buttercup. Yes, I don’t like all of those things but my daughter does like them, so I actually like them a little bit. You don’t enjoy Buttercup? Fine, stay seated and shut up, and let everybody else have fun. Go ahead and be the “get off my lawn!” guy or gal at the stadium, forcing a frown when everybody around you is having fun. Enter the Rally Cat. I actually got a bit excited when I heard about it because I knew it would be an easy sell for my daughter. It’s like cotton candy on the video screen. It gives her something else to be excited about because the game just isn’t enough for her. When I’m at the game, I want to watch the game and if there’s something else that keeps my daughter distracted, I’m all for it. Let me be a half-assed dad and enjoy my thing without worrying about entertaining my rugrat. Bring on the Rally Cat. Keep that murderous cat away from the Angels! By Nathan Trop Glen … you ignorant slut!!! Sure baseball games can be boring and recent Angels teams did a lot more of building us up just to let us down than entertain us, so some form of alternative entertainment for the fans was necessary. A murderous cat is not the answer. As a father myself I have to protect my family and I could never risk bringing them to a stadium that employed such a heinous breed of mammal. The biggest problem with the Rally Monkey was that it never developed any new skills to keep entertaining the fans; all it did was jump up and down or edit itself into popular movie scenes. It never learned how to ride a dog like a human rides a horse, or throw barrels at plumbers or climb the Empire State Building. The Angels need to be more creative with their next rally figurehead, more innovative. Here are a few of my ideas. Rally Concession Dude(tte): Imagine the Jumbotron video camera zooming in on an ice cream concession person who goes all Oprah and starts handing out free ice cream “you get ice cream! You get ice cream! You get ice cream!!!” Rally Dog: Dogs are man’s best friend. They are loyal, friendly and smart. They are great pets. They know how to defecate outside and not in a box. They also would cheer everyone up looking adorable wearing an Angels hat. Most importantly they aren’t plotting our murder. The Brewers have a dog and they have the second best record in MLB. Rally Aybar: Just throw his goofy mug up on the screen. It is that simple. I love me some Aybar. Rally Bikini Model: Ok so this might not be very family friendly but nothing would rally the guys in the crowd more than a bikini model. We could always have a couple frames of Rally Hugh Jackman for the ladies in the crowd. Rally Rex Hudler: Whether or not he knows the difference between the moon and planet, Rex was always good at pumping up the fans on the broadcast. He is probably the only man involved with the Angels that could still get excited with the team down by eight runs with two outs in the ninth. Rally Kid: I am going to get serious here for a minute but how awesome would it be for the Angels to invite a different RBI League kid to each game and have the kid belt out a cheer for the Angels on the Jumbotron in a rally situation? How could that not inspire the fans and the Angels players? Frankly, the opposing team would be assholes if they didn’t let the Angels win. Rally nuke, rally Ebola virus, rally escaped con, rally Kim Jong Un… anything would be safer than a Rally Cat.

By Nate Trop, AngelsWin.com Columnist - There is currently a thread on the main board titled “Best I’ve felt about the team in years.” After reading through it and giving it some thought, I realized that the last few years have left me very jaded and skeptical but also, it really is hard not to be excited by the recent success of the team. In the last month, the best hitter on the team hasn’t been Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, or Josh Hamilton; in fact they haven’t even been the second best. The best hitter has been Howie Kendrick, and the second best has been, brace yourselves, Collin Cowgill. Now if you hadn’t been following the team very closely you would probably think “but Nate, you must be furious that the best players aren’t performing!” and I would be if not for the fact that the Angels are having their best season since Mike Trout was in High School and Pujols was still in his mid-30s. Sure I could complain about some of Scioscia’s moves lately, but even he seems to have changed his ways. He is playing Conger more, he gave up on classic bullpen roles, and he even benched underperforming veterans, albeit briefly. I really think this roster, as it is right now is almost the perfect Mike Scioscia team. He has a good set of players who legitimately benefit from being platooned and moved around in the lineup depending on matchups, as well as surprisingly good starting pitching and, well, we won’t talk about the bullpen. The players sound like they are having fun again, even Scioscia sounds like he is having fun again. If I can’t complain about Scioscia then there is always Butcher, this pitching staff is… pitching above their expectations. Sure Santiago has struggled but it is nothing new for him. Skaggs has shown improvement over last season and Richards, wow, he has matured a ton as a pitcher. You won’t get me to give Butcher credit, I still am skeptical about his abilities as a pitching coach, but I certainly don’t have anything to bash right now, unless it was his choice to keep ole Jeppy around. Then there is um, err, does anyone have any idea who the heck the hitting coach is? Anyway the Angels have one of the best offenses in the game right now, despite Trout and Pujols slumping lately. Aybar, Kendrick, Cowgill, Cron, Navarro, John “all glove no bat” McDonald have all come through. Howie has an .815 OPS and amazingly a .383 OBP. Sure it is still a nail biter whenever he comes up to bat with runners in double play position, but even there he has improved. Amazingly, even though the team is scoring lots of runs, they are still struggling with RISP, something that will always frustrate us fans, but so many runs are scoring that it is neutralized a bit. Sure there is something to be said about $25 million players sliding head first into first base, something you are taught in little league not to do. I mean, you have the skill to crush a baseball, run down a line drive in the gap, but not the brains to stay on your feet and run through the first base bag? Hamilton was finally hitting like the Hamilton we all wanted when he signed and then he does an idiotic thing like tear a thumb ligament sliding head first into a base. There are the injuries that were supposed to be cleared up by the end of spring that are still lingering with no end in sight, cortisone injections and endless setbacks. These are the kinds of things that normally we can be up in arms about, frustrated, angry, and defeated, but no, the Angels have kept winning. I could strike up an argument with Glen about which hair is worse, CJ’s flowing fluffy Head and Shoulders™ locks or Weavers awful mullet. Maybe something about how dreamy Mike Trout is because he doesn’t show up late to games, drive 90mph on surface streets, or show up his teammates. But we aren’t gossip columnists; we are above that… at least until July when we still don’t have anything to write about. I expected to be collaborating with Glen on our Baylor vs Disar as the next Angels head coach PCP at this point in the season, not complaining about how I can’t complain. If Glen and I write a PCP about who made the best dish at the annual Angels cook off, you will know that the Angels are really going well. There is a murderous new Rally Cat that we have to contend with, and of course Buttercup. If anything could kill Buttercup though, it would have to be a cat. I mean have you ever seen a cat that didn’t look like it was plotting the earth’s destruction? That hero cat just attacked that dog because the dog was disrupting his plans of world domination, right? There is no other legitimate explanation. Kind of like how there is no legitimate explanation of how Josh Wall still has a spot on the 40 man. If the Angels are going to keep winning, at least our catcher could throw to first on a steal of second or Aybar could swing and miss, comically, at a pitch that was so inside it hit him in the groin. Ibanez could throw a ground ball from the outfield or take a hilariously bad angle at a fly ball. Butcher could try and fail to jump over the railing on a walk off hit, for my sake… There you have it; this skeptical, jaded satire columnist doesn’t have anything to complain about. Things are going really well for the Angels. They are winning, the managers and coaches, even the ones we can’t name seem to be performing well, the much maligned farm system has provided excellent replacements for injured players, and nobody has been hit in the junk by a breaking ball. As a fan, I love it; it has been so long it feels a little bit weird. As a satire columnist, it is brutal, but I can’t complain. View the full article

Rays 3 - Angels 0 The Angels were shutout for the first time this season, managing just four hits and stranding 10 runners against Rays starter Chris Archer and an efficient Tampa Bay bullpen. Jered Weaver absorbed the loss despite a strong outing, surrendering two runs on three hits while striking out five over seven complete innings. Click here to download the scorecard. If your new to scoring baseball or just need help interpreting some of the markup, download the key here. View the full article

ANAHEIM – Jered Weaver felt good Friday night in holding the Tampa Bay Rays to two runs over seven innings in what ultimately proved to be a losing effort.How good? As good as he’s felt, overall, since “probably 2009,” Weaver said.Never... View the full article

Cesar Ramos and C.J. Wilson both struggled in their last trips to the mound, so each will be trying to regain his command Saturday night when the Rays and Angels play the third of a four-game series in Anaheim. View the full article

ANAHEIM – Albert Pujols was back at first base for Friday’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays, finely fielding balls hit by the first two hitters Jered Weaver faced.Pujols had served as the Angels’ designated hitter for three of the past six... View the full article

ANAHEIM – Chris Archer and his old-school striped socks mystified the Angels, who wasted a solid effort from ace Jered Weaver in a 3-0 loss Friday night at Angel Stadium.Archer, the Tampa Bay Rays’ lanky, hard-throwing right-hander, limited the... View the full article

Jered Weaver was outstanding opposite Chris Archer and the Rays on Friday night at Angel Stadium, but the right-hander took a difficult 3-0 loss with no support from his offense. Albert Pujols went 1-for-4 and left six men on base. View the full article

Rays manager Joe Maddon challenged a safe call at first base on Howie Kendrick's infield single in the eighth inning, but the original ruling stood. View the full article

With guys like C.J. Cron, Grant Green, Luis Jimenez and Efran Navarro, the Angels have already received important contributions from their farm system. View the full article

Albert Pujols has yet to miss a game, and he's no longer hindered by the plantar fasciitis that crippled his 2013 season, but there are days when he doesn't run very well, or the stiffness creeps in, and it's something Angels manager Mike Scioscia is constantly monitoring. View the full article

Angels third baseman David Freese will be with the Triple-A Salt Lake Bees on Saturday, serving as the designated hitter for what he hopes is the first of only a couple of rehab games. View the full article

David Freese is going to join Kole Calhoun in Nevada.The Angels third baseman, out since May 2 with a fractured middle finger on his right hand, will tomorrow begin a rehab assignment for the Triple-A Salt Lake Bees in Reno.He completed an intense... View the full article

By Rob Goldman, AngelsWin.com Historical Writer - Ryan’s 54 strikeouts in April put him well on pace to eclipse Koufax’s 382. He was 3–1 for the month, but following a victory over Detroit in extra innings on May 2, he dropped his next two starts. It wasn’t until May 11, in a rare relief appearance against Chicago, that he got back on track. When the Angels trooped into Kansas City’s brand-new Royals Stadium for a two-game set on May 14, he was feeling good. Not scheduled to start until the following day, Ryan hunkered down in his hotel room with a pile of cattle magazines and rested. By holing up in his room, he unknowingly dodged a bullet. The day before the game, center fielder Ken Berry, who lived in the Kansas City area, invited his teammates out to his farm for an afternoon of fishing in a private stock pond. The pond was infested with chiggers, a miniscule insect whose bite resulted in a breakout of hives. Several Angels were bitten, some bad enough to require medical attention and miss the opening game of the series the next day. Before Ryan’s start, his bullpen throwing session was especially strong, recalls catcher Jeff Torborg. “Nolan was really crisp, throwing hard right from the beginning. His fastball was working well, and like in Sandy Koufax’s perfect game, he had a big rolling curveball.” Ryan’s teammates staked him to an early 2–0 lead, and the Royals, overwhelmed by fastballs and knee-buckling curves, got nowhere through the first six innings. Recalls Angels shortstop Rudy Meoli, “I remember thinking to myself, You know what, they haven’t even gotten a hit yet. So I started looking at who was coming up and made sure I put myself in the proper position.” Meoli’s extra effort paid off in the eighth, when journeyman lefty Gail Hopkins thumped an inside fastball that appeared likely to soar over Meoli’s head. “I turned around and started running,” says Meoli. “When I looked up again, I figured I could catch the ball. It was almost like a Willie Mays–type catch. On a 1-to-10 degree of difficulty, I figure it was about a nine.” Meoli’s fantastic catch turned out to be the play of the game. “I didn’t realize the magnitude of it,” Meoli recalls, “because at the time I was just so into the whole thing of winning the game and that he’s got a no-hitter going and thinking, This is cool, this is good.” Squinting at the game on the tiny TV in the Ryans’ living room in Anaheim, Ruth’s excitement built until finally she grabbed Reid and went next door to their neighbors’ house to watch on their larger set. Soon another family joined them and everyone huddled silently around the tube as Ryan got through the seventh and eighth innings unscathed. The Halos were held scoreless in their half of the ninth. When Ryan marched out to the mound in the bottom of the frame, he was still ahead 3–0 and hadn’t allowed a hit. He glanced at the scoreboard. Due up were Freddie Patek, Steve Hovly, and Amos Otis. Ryan made quick work of Patek and Hovly, and now all that remained between him and his first no-hitter was Otis, a former teammate from the Mets and a perennial .300 hitter. Swinging from his heels, Otis missed badly on Ryan’s first offering. When the next fastball came down the pike, Otis was ready, and his bat met the ball with a resounding crack. “Oh, no! Not now, not now!” yelled Torborg from behind the dish. The ball sailed toward deep right-center field. Both Ryan and Torborg thought it had enough on it to reach the fence and maybe go over it. But two innings before, Bobby Winkles had put Gold Glover Ken Berry—who’d somehow avoided the chiggers infestation the day before—into right field in place of Bob Oliver. Berry had started running back the moment Otis made contact with the ball. Just a few feet from the wall he turned, brought up his glove, and made the catch. “I didn’t really give the no-hitter any thought until the eighth inning,” Ryan told the press afterward. “But after Meoli made that catch, in my own mind I decided I was going to throw a no-hitter, and if they did hit me, it was going to be off my best stuff. I only threw two curves in the last inning.” “Oh, god, it was beautiful, absolutely beautiful,” exalted Torborg, who’d now caught no-hitters by both Ryan and Koufax. “Nolie had good stuff early, and when I saw nothing up there on the board in the fourth I started counting the outs myself.” So, who threw harder—Koufax or Ryan? No one would know better than the man who caught them both. “It’s very difficult to say,” says Torborg. “Both threw over the top and had explosive fastballs. Sandy eventually achieved a much more rhythmic delivery, but I’ve never seen anybody throw as hard down in the strike zone as Nolan did. He could drive the ball at knee-high level…unbelievable! “When Sandy got two strikes he would be throwing the ball right by you, letter-high. But when Nolan had two strikes, I had to be careful. If we were trying to get a ball down and away, I really was very careful to protect down, which is what you do with a curveball. But then there were times he just shocked you with a fastball up, and would blow it right by the batter—and me if I wasn’t careful. It was one of those things where a ball would come out of nowhere and just explode. “Nolan had another thing: he could throw a ball that years ago they would call a dry spitter. He would choke the ball so tightly in his palm and throw it so hard that he overpowered the ball, and it would come in and dive like a spit ball. Invariably it would be with two strikes on the hitter and when you least expected it, and the bottom would fall out of the darn thing. So whenever he had two strikes I’d look for anything. “Both Koufax and Ryan were very sincere. There was no phoniness about them. You really knew where you stood with both these guys.” Royals manager Jack McKeon insisted that Ryan had cheated during the early innings of his no-hitter and filed a protest. “He was breaking contact with the rubber and pitching two inches in front of it, which is illegal,” McKeon barked until a few of his own players who knew better told him to zip it and withdraw his protest. “If they had a higher league than the majors, Ryan would be in it,” outfielder Hal McRae told reporters. “As a matter of fact, he could be it.” “Is this his first [no-hitter]?” asked Royals shortstop Freddie Patek. “Well, I don’t believe it will be his last.” When Ruth answered her phone later that night, she couldn’t contain her excitement. “We all watched the game at the Smiths’ because their TV is bigger!” she shouted before Nolan even said hello. “We were all screaming for you. Do I sound hoarse?” There was a pause as she fought to calm herself down. “You pitched a great game, Nolan,” she resumed, almost in a whisper. “Yeah, I guess I pitched a pretty good game,” Nolan responded as matter-of-factly as if he’d started an intersquad game at Holtville. “I’m just glad it’s over.” The next day, Ryan’s hotel phone rang off the hook. The calls were mostly from family and friends, but there was also one from Cooperstown, New York. The Baseball Hall of Fame wanted the cap he’d worn the night before. © Nolan Ryan, The Making of a Pitcher- 2014 Visit- www.makingofapitcher.com Book Signing-Saturday, May 24th, Costa Mesa, South Coast Plaza-1:00 PM View the full article

Rays 5 - Angels 6 The Angels rallied for four runs in the ninth, capped off by Mike Trout’s first walk-off home run, a three-run shot off Tampa Bay reliever Brad Boxberger. Angels starting pitcher Tyler Skaggs struggled, surrendering five runs on eight hits over six innings. But the Halo bullpen held the Rays to just two walks over the final frames, setting the stage for a dramatic finish. Click here to download the scorecard. If your new to scoring baseball or just need help interpreting some of the markup, download the key here. View the full article

ANAHEIM – Mike Trout came to the plate at about 10:45 p.m. Thursday mired in a sizable slump – for any hitter, but especially for him.And yet he did the same thing he always does. With the tying runs on base in the ninth inning against the Tampa... View the full article

ANAHEIM – Mike Trout broke out of his slump in the biggest possible way Thursday at Angel Stadium.The Angels center fielder, struggling for nearly two weeks, slammed a walk-off three-run homer against Rays right-hander Brad Boxberger in the ninth... View the full article

Mike Trout clubbed a three-run home run in the ninth inning to lift the Angels to a dramatic 6-5 victory over the visiting Rays in Anaheim on Thursday night. View the full article

ANAHEIM – His teammates were arriving at Angel Stadium’s home clubhouse Thursday after a successful six-game trip, but Kole Calhoun was zipping up his bags and departing.The Angels right fielder, out since April 15 because of a severe right... View the full article

Angels manager Mike Scioscia got two calls at second base overturned by replay Thursday night against the Rays. View the full article

Where: Angel StadiumTV: Fox Sports West, 7 p.m.Did you know: The Rays arrived in Orange County after a three-game trip to Seattle dressed in Woodstock-themed clothing. Manager Joe Maddon, a longtime Angels coach, has regularly held themed trips the... View the full article