ScruffytheJanitor

Chris Rodriguez is the guy I am looking forward too next year. I think he has an outside chance to be a top-100 prospect (with Jones and Thaiss).

This quote from that article is 100 per cent true: I remember flipping on a baseball game once when I only had about 5 minutes to kill before I left for work. I saw exactly two pitches. Vlad took the first pitch (it was outside) and I said, "Man, I bet he wishes he had that pitch again." The second pitch was a change up- clearly a ball-- that almost looked like a sinker. It was straight down the middle. He absolutely crushed it. I just laughed and turned off the TV. Nothing in that game was going to beat Vladdy smashing a homerun. He's the modern Rube Wadell (without the drinking problem... or at least, without succumbing to a drinking problem). He was just such a damn natural ball player. Not that he didn't work, but watch him hit a home run-- knowing he didn't study the pitcher, didn't care about the situation, just played with talent, intuition-- and its amazing to see how much damn conviction (almost righteous anger) there was in his swing.

One little b other : For some reason, when I open an article from the main page in Chrome, the text spacing is all wrong, with most of it contained in the side bar. When I open it in IE, all the spacing is correct. Taking a gander at the coding, it seems like Chrome isn't reading the Faux Column spacing or the margin for the body and/or the right column is way off.

Post of the year. That was hilarious.

In addition to the fatigue thing, the Astros tried the "tandem" starter approach in the minors, and most of the pitchers hated it.

Lou Boudreaux? I may be off on the spelling...

Dear God, I haven't thought of Robb Quinlan in forever.

Gotta think this is the plan. Lange would be a great pick here. Tanner Houck would be ideal. There seems to be a decent amount of "toolsy" HS players here, too-- enough that we could match our Marsh pick in the 2nd round with someone like De La Torre or Garrett Mitchell.

As many others have noted, with the 2nd base hole filled, it appears that the Angels list of "Absolutely have to Fill needs" is down to one: Bullpen arm. As far as I am concerned, we have four options for filling this need: 1. Neftali Feliz Pros: Young (28 Years Old), Decent track record, blessed with the "Randy Searage" juice, High Velocity (96 MPH), coming off a good year Con: Results aren't SUPER SPECTACULAR, only good; had some injury and consistency problems in his past 2. Greg Holland Pros: Was a top-tier reliever before injury, Tommy John Surgery slightly less concerning for a reliever, Looked good in his major workout; Could be relatively cheap Cons: Coming off a TJ; Recent workout was good... except his Velo was pretty low; may not be as cheap as though because of dearth of options on the market. 3. Brad Ziegler Pros: Ground ball machine would be in front of the best MIF defense in baseball; could serve in a number of roles; veteran leadership (if you are into that sort of thing), long track record of success, Not a Velocity pitcher, so age isn't *that* much of a concern. Cons: OOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDD 4. Trade Pros: Surprising Number of decent trade options; might be the best way to get a cheap and/or long-term answer; Cons: Angels don't have much depth to trade from; definitely a sellers market; not sure who is willing to deal late-inning options My vote: I kind of like any of these free agent options. Holland makes the least sense, probably, since it might take a while for him to find his sea legs, and the Angels are desperate for a quality pitcher. Any trade for a reliever would almost have to be part of a larger deal, since we just don't have much to work with. If the value for Feliz and Ziegler is similar, Feliz runs away with it. However, Ziegler is an interesting option because his skill set fits so well with what should be an excellent fielding club. Since his commitment in terms or years and dollars should be much less than Feliz, I am going to say Ziegler is the way the Angels go. Now if we could only get another starter and another bench piece or two....

I'd do it for a starting pitcher or a high-level reliever. I've always thought the shortest path to filling the hole in the rotation is a Calhoun trade. Would you do this trade for Alex Colome and Alex Cobb? How about for David Robertson and Miguel Gonzales? There are a few trades out there that would make me think about it.

I agree with this. I don't mind the closer being the 2nd best reliever on the team-- or even third if the 'pen is really good.

Man, I want Neftali Feliz. Not because I want him to close, but because I think Cam and Neftali could be a pretty good set-up combo. Of course, we could also use Kenley.

Just watch the Angels go ham this offseason and sign Kenley Jansen, Mark Melancon, Justin Turner, Ivan Nova, Wilson Ramos-- with a trade for Jose Quintana. It would be fun just to see the 55 Million "OH MY GOD" and "I'm Speechless" posts... then the "EPPLER SUX NO FARM SYSTEM" posts we'd see immediately afterwards. But yeah, Eppler appears to be following the "Let's Have OPTIONS" appreach to the pitching staff. I am positive we make a "bigger" move at 2nd base. For some reason, I keep thinking "Logan Forsythe," but I am not sure why.

I vote for "The LA Casting Couch."

Unlike the Rams, which have been so successful lately.

True, true... but if I had, it might prove my point!

Nope. I just do a ton of reading on this stuff. I got a crash course in funding when I was an intern working at a field office for a US Rep. My main duty was to take industry publications, important news sources, and spending proposals and make them easier for the Rep and his policy advisor to digest. He was on the Appropriations Committee, so I got to see a bunch of stuff about funding. And just to give you some idea: depending upon how you define "Infrastructure," something like 70%-80% is privately managed. And with a few glaring exceptions, these are fairly well maintained. California is mainly impacted by the Water Management, which has been struggling with lowering water levels and Las Vegas (which also demands a lot of power). The Power grid especially is something that is super complicated, because on some level most of North America is interconnected. It needs some serious work (mainly because it was sort of slapped together in the 1/2 half of the 20th century). The current administration has started this already, but it needs a lot more work.

I am not opposed to infrastructure spending in general. I just don't think most of what people mean when they say "infrastructure" is a federal responsibility. The interstate system is working pretty well (not that improvements aren't needed, but they should be grandfathered in); state and local roads should be paid for by state and local governments. Bridges are generally well maintained (the recent collapses were a design defect and not a maintainence issue) I would add schools, drinking water (for many places; more below), public transportation, and most parks to the "State/Local" basket. In fact, most infrastructure privately maintained. Railroads are falling apart because the companies that run them haven't done a good enough job; otherwise, these are really well managed-- honestly. Now, there are many areas where I am all for Federal infrastructure investment: Water management (Drinking Water, Levies, and locks) and the power grid. However, I have doubts that an omnibus bill is good enough for these issues. The power grid needs to be re-thought from scratch, and isn't something a single spending bill will solve. This is going to take DECADES to work through. Levies and locks needs to be planned carefully because they can take so damn long to complete. Drinking water is something I don't know enough about, but too many areas (Atlanta, SoCal, many places in the west) where states aren't playing nice.

Honestly, it depends on what you mean by "news". Most news sites will (eventually) be right about the specifics of an event-- the "who," "what," and "where" of a particular event. If you are talking about interpretation ("why" and "how,") it's almost impossible to find a consistent source, since those things are definitionally biased. I usually just try the smorgasbord approach: A little from the left (MSNBC, Daily Kos, Slate, Salon, Huff Post), a little from right leaning sources (Daily Wire, Fox, Daily Caller, Town Hall, Red State). While it leans left, LOVE 538. I should mention here that I am not a fan of "watching" news, so I stay away from CNN, Fox News, and the like. I also am a huge podcast fan too, so I listen to Ben Shapiro, 538 Politics, and the Escape Velocity podcasts. I have heard good things about Ace of Spades and Ricochet (on the right) and the Majority Report and the Professional Left (on the left) but I haven't listened enough to have my own opinion.

Religion is not the same thing as morality. Religions prescribe a specific code of morality, but that doesn't make all morality religious. Remember: Morality is simply a judgment of "right' or "wrong." It is impossible for a government to pass an amoral law. In our system of government, laws can either prohibit or encourage any activity. In both cases, that is the government deciding that a particular act is a "good" or "bad" thing to do. Even something like a highway spending bill is a moral statement; it is saying that the interstate system is a better use of the land, money, labor, and time than another activity than people might spend elsewhere.

I know you are joking, but this is really a shame. If this causes the 1 Trillion dollar spending bill to be passed, then I will be against it. It is impossible to spend 1 Trillion dollars with out a good measure of corruption involved.

So as someone who has to clock in IN SPITE of the fact that I am a salary employee, let me just say: screw that. I may work about 10 hours of overtime a year. The extra $400 bucks (more like 250 after taxes) is probably not worth it. I can see why it would be useful, but the fact that I have to get to work EARLY so I can start my computer and clock in just isn't worth it to me.

Funny enough, they actually asked for Robles last year when the Nats were sniffing around Cutch.

I sincerely hope he can hit better than GMJr.

Yeah, but with these things, sometimes it's about planting a seed. I'd imagine that expanding rosters to 26, the international draft, and completely eliminating comp picks will come sooner or later. I think the reason why more change didn't happen now is that everyone (just about) is making $. No need to rock the boat when the boat is a yacht and everyone is rich and happy.