Lou E Ville

Thank you. These same people who aren't grasping this would bitch if Scioscia started a AAA pitcher in the final series instead of Richards. "He cost us a playoff spot!"

I don't understand the backlash here. * The Angels have to face the Dodgers six times a year. Every year. Everything else on their schedule is rotated as fairly as possible to make the schedules even. Normally, this isn't THAT big of a deal. Except when the Dodgers throw two of the best five starters in the game at you twice each. We split the other two games. * Minnesota plays Milwaukee six times every year. Houston and Texas trade off between Colorado and Arizona every year. We get the Dodgers and the A's get the Giants. How is that fair? We're talking eight figure payrolls here (seven for some). You would think with the money these teams are worth that MLB would fix this. I guarantee you if the Yankees lost six games to the Mets this year (or vice versa) and missed the playoffs by one game this would get fixed. Look at the NFL schedule. You play your division (six games), you rotate a division in your conference (four games), a division from the other conference (four games), and then you play the two other teams in your conference that finished the same place you did. All 32 teams have the same formula. You don't have the Steelers facing the Eagles every year and then you piecemeal the rest of the schedule from there. Yes, the Angels blew a lot of games this year to crappy teams. So what? So did the Twins. So did the Astros. So did the Rangers. None of those teams had to battle the off the field issues we faced this year.

That us having to face Kershaw and Greinke twice when the other Wild Card contenders didn't could keep this team out of the playoffs. Jus sayin'....

I thought we traded Frieri

You guys are all missing the point. Trout's slump, Pujols' second half, Dipoto, Hamilton, CJ....these are all in house reasons why we might not make the playoffs. Guess what? The Rangers and Twins also have these. Every team is flawed. Every team, no matter how good they are, will lose at least 65 games this season, and those flaws will show up in every one of those losses. What the league is supposed to do is make the playing field as even as possible. Why do you think every team plays 81 games at home and 81 on the road? Why do you think they went from four divisions to six divisions with two wildcards to six divisions with four wildcards? To make it more fair than it was before. Interleague play makes it unfair. You used to play every team in your division 13 times and every team in the other division 12 times. At the end of the season, the team with the fewest flaws won, fair and square, because everyone played the same teams the same number of times. Now you've got Texas and Houston getting six games a year with Arizona and Colorado while we are stuck with Greinke and Kershaw, twice. You can say "we had 156 other games to overcome that" but the truth of the matter is we shouldn't have to. I would like to see us sneak into the playoffs with that last wild card spot because I have seen in my lifetime the 84-win Cardinals win the World Series in 2006 and the 88-win Dodgers win the World Series in 1988. I believe we are dangerous in any one-game, five-game or even seven-game series because we have the game's best player and enough talent around him (see last year). Baseball teams play 162 games, and playoff spots are still decided by one game every year. That makes strength of schedule crucial, and it should be made as even as possible.

Come on, you can't tell me there's not a difference between facing those two twice every year and facing whoever it is the Twins get every year (Milwaukee?) Reverse it, the Twins get Greinke and Kershaw twice each and we get Milwaukee six times. You gonna tell me we go 1-5 against Milwaukee? Or whoever the Twins get every year. The Angels, Dodgers, and Mets get screwed every year. Imagine getting Colorado six games every year while someone else gets the Giants. Interleague play needs to be cleaned up now that the divisions are even.

you can thank the fact that we had to face Kershaw and Greinke twice. Who is the Twins NL counterpart? How about the Rangers and Astros?

Hit him on the damn wrist. Not like he plunked him way inside.

STILL can't believe we didn't get the winning run home from 3rd with only one out in the bottom of the ninth. All the successful bunts we had that season, but I guess DeCinces didn't have too many of them. Wait, I just confused 82 with 86. Still, Mauch was manager.

Hate to say it but the Donnie Moore game was amazing, especially since we had done the same to them the night before. Red Sox led all game long, coughed up four runs to us late in the game, then we know the rest. I didn't see it, but the Rangers/Cardinals World Series game was supposed to be an all-timer. Best I ever saw (being biased) was Game 6 against the Giants.

Cron-sistency. Now we have it. Fear the Halo.

Let's hire someone who won the lottery. I'm tired of all this talk about people's managerial skills or chops. Let's bring luck back to the Angels.

We just lost the season series to Kansas City 6-1, Chicago 4-3, then Toronto 5-2, now we're about to blow the Cleveland season series. It's like watching an election and whoop, your candidate just lost Florida five minutes after losing Pennsylvania.

I don't want to hear Schilling's politics during a baseball broadcast, but twitter is his world as far as I'm concerned and he can do what he wants on it, unless it's an espn twitter account. I admit that I grew up in a much different world. I'm 50 years old. When I was young, All in the Family, Sanford & Son, and the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts routinely said things that would blow up the internet today. Hell I just watched the 70s version of Bad News Bears and the little kid said the n-word, as well as a Jewish slur. I always found that when guys can tease each other, it makes them closer. I remember working with a black guy who would say "What's wrong with your people? You bombed the yellow man and killed off all the red men, too." I just laughed and said "We tried to kill off the brown man, but the son of a bitch breeds too fast." He laughed his ass off and we were close from that point on. He knew I wouldn't freak out when he pushed my buttons and vice versa. Nowadays it's a gotcha society. We became a great country because we celebrated achievement instead of conformity. Now it's learn to be PC or be ostracized.

When it's August and you keep saying "welp, we lost the season series to that team, too".

ESPN is afraid that the 14 Muslim baseball fans out there might be offended. Why can't they just put out a memo or tweet saying "Mr. Schilling's opinions on Middle East politics are entirely his own and do not align with those of ESPN" and handle it that way? Why do you have to make it look like you have a bunch of robots working for you who dare not offend a soul? I prefer real people. Curt Schilling will tell you if something a player on the field did would upset him and how the teams he played for would have felt about it. A lot of those guys said they didn't like the way the Angels handled Josh Hamilton. I don't agree with them, but I respect their right to say so after X many years in the game.

Who cares? God this country is circling the drain. Just tell the announcers to preface anything political they say with "this is strictly my opinion, not that of (whatever network they work for)." As long as they don't say it on the air, who gives a flying schitt what they say? We have people who believe that 911 was an inside job. We have people who believe that the world started with Adam and Eve. We have people who believe that the government tried to kill off black people through AIDS. You know what? I don't feel threatened by any of those opinions, and I certianly don't feel threatened by Curt Schilling's opinions. Two thirds of the world people struggle to eat that day. We're all worried about who we offended with a tweet.

2015: That De-escalated Quickly....I Mean it Really Got Out of Hand

2015 Angels: Grief is Nature's Aphrodisiac

2015: At Least Albert Didn't Suck

2015 Angels....Thanks, Obama

It just shows you how much better fans have become. Booing at the right time. Cheering at the right time. Bronx cheering at the right time.

...we'd be unstoppable.

I feel like Ben Affleck's little brother when he realizes Matt Damon isn't riding with them any more. How can you guys give up on this team? I want to be the Royals of this season. Not the team that wins 98 games and scores three runs in three games.

What I was saying is that the August schedule looks tough. No way we cruise through it the way we did the early July schedule. So we'll enter September with a lot of work to do just to make the playoffs. I like that for a change. We seem to do our best in the postseason when no one expects us to.