ettin

Nicely done sir.

Although losing Jered is a loss for sure, I'm okay with seeing Richards or Williams pitch 4-6 games in his absence (hopefully it is only 4-6 weeks). I think Richards arm is as live as any young pitcher out there and Williams has the capability to hold down the fort so to speak.

Yes but your statement from your first post stated quite clearly "he completely quit on this team last season." Those words have no shades of grey in them. You made it quite clear that Hamilton didn't put in any effort in 2012 and I disagreed with you and used simple stats to prove it. Oh and by the way that slash line was through July 8th (pre-All Star Break). Josh may have slumped after that but the numbers he put up before that would be the wet dreams of a majority of MLB players. To say that he quit on the Rangers is pure garbage coming from some butt-hurt fans. Hamilton was an instrumental piece in your lineup since 2008 and he deserves at least a modicum of respect from the Texas fanbase. He proved himself there and hopefully he will continue to prove himself in Anaheim. Players can't always be at peak performance and your "what has he done for me lately?" attitude is enormously ungrateful for the two near-pennants he helped take you too.

Trout 3-4, Double

First half of 2012: .308/.380/.635 with 27 HR's.... if that is Josh quitting and mailing it in, he can quit and throw a postage stamp on it any day of the week for my Angels, thanks.

I mentioned this velocity loss in the "More From Angelswin.com" series about 2013 Projections. The velocity loss is concerning and the possibility of too much wear and injury is real. However if there is any pitcher that could work in a reduced-velocity type of environment I believe Jered can, as he has an excellent mix of pitches and speeds combined with pin-point control. It will probably effect him negatively in terms of regular ratio/counting stats like ERA but unless he goes on an extended DL stint (read: serious injury) I'm not horribly worried (read: concerned with some negative impact to his overall performance).

wRAA (Weighted Runs Above Average) measures a players total offensive runs that they contribute over a normal replacement type player. It is sort of a catch-all stat for offense. Also if you go into FanGraphs and select any player you can select 'Splits' then click 'Career' and scroll down to the sections that list 'Bases Empty', 'Men on Base', and 'Men in Scoring' to get an idea of each individuals career stats in those situations.

Actually it's horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons but point made and taken.

Did they talk about his super hot Brazilian girlfriend (she is a supermodel)?

So he got two hits?

Everyone needs to act out their wildest fantasies once in a while.

Trout 4-5, 2 HR's

In Scott Downs defense, he has a .209 BA Against vs. LHH over his career and a 64.3% Ground Ball rate on top of that against LHH (and that did happen in this case). However, Joey Votto is one, if not the, best hitters in the League right now. It just found the right spot and it didn't work out. I don't think this was a colossal fail on S-C-I-O-S-C-I-A's part. The numbers pointed to a coin flip and the numbers also pointed to a majority of the hits turning into ground balls. I don't think this decision was as bad on the surface as it appeared, to be honest. I missed who was up next behind Votto (Phillips?) but the ball managed to find that one hole.....

I'm ap-paul-ed by that picture.

Trout 3-5, 1 Double

Awesome!

Trout 3-5, Single

Playboy?

And this really is where the OC Register might fail in its endeavor. I would rather pay the LA Times $2, and get Angels coverage, than pay an extra $2 to get the more "localized" Orange County reports (which, to be honest, are not that different or substantial to be worth the, albeit, small investment). Pay sites need to have content that drives people to shell out the money. Sam Miller at Baseball Prospectus makes me want to subscribe to Baseball Prospectus. Good coverage, writing and content is what drives subscription, in my opinion.

This is incredibly good juju for my one fantasy team that has both Trout and Harper on it.

Notably these moves preserve positional depth since most of the players involved performed pretty well during Spring Training.

Yay for Avatars making the team! Woot!

Trout 3-4, 2 Doubles

Big-boo-tay! Tay! Tay!

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