disarcina

Agree with comments that Jered gets signed to a one day contract and some game in September here, steps on the mound at Angels Stadium to deliver the ceremonial first pitch in a Halos jersey and gets the Standing O salute he deserves from the crowd in Anaheim. As for the prior comment implying that Weaver did NOT leave MONEY ON THE TABLE when he signed the 'hometown' discount extension with the Angels -- I completely disagree. Did he get a fair contract extension? SURE -- but could he have demanded more as a F/A on the open market? -- NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT. Would his career have been as successful from that point forward? HARD TO SAY. Jered Weaver and his brother Jeff Weaver are studies in contrast on that issue -- I think Jered may have learned a thing or two from Jeff's experiences. Jeff signed several huge (at the time) F/A contracts and seemed to flop every time he signed one. As a young pitcher with a fairly lousy team at the time (Detroit Tigers) - Jeff Weaver was a very good pitcher for a lousy team and had decent stats (lot of K's and decent ERA and even W-L wasn't too bad for a bad team)...cannot remember all his travels (he signed with Seattle M's for a big contract and never did well there) but, at one point, he signed with the Yankees for a big contract and never fit in well there or pitched well there -- got traded to the Dodgers (I think they dumped bad contracts on each other -- Kevin Brown?) and did OK there and wound up with the Angels when he got sent out/ released (to make roster space for a pitcher named Jered Weaver, if I remember right).........Jeff resurrected himself in St. Louis at some point (after his career was deemed over -- earlier that year (after the Angels cut him) he pitched somewhere ? Cleveland? and did poorly in several outings and got moved/ released and signed in St. Louis where his first outings were terrible but he rebounded to win a game or two down the stretch and then really help the Cards in the post-season winning a W/S game or two on the way to a ring............Jeff was pitching well in St. Louis and seemed at home there under LaRussa, Dave Duncan and Yadier Molina (or was Matheny still the catcher back then?) So what does he do? Signs that big contract with the M's and is just awful for them -- had he stayed with the Cards? Not as a big of a pay day but perhaps a longer/ better career and MLB contract money for a longer time.........who knows? So Jered stayed in Anaheim, So. Cal where he was comfortable -- good move overall. I was hoping he could have a decent final season in Petco Park, a pitcher's park - but it was not to be. One Day Halo in September -- Arte -- make it happen - he saved you a lot of money.........

Howie, actually, was pretty solid for the Halos - his entire career here -- and he hit well for the Dodgers as well. Sort of was upset when he was 'banned' to Philadelphia -- nice to see him back with a contender and contributing. At this point in his career, if Howie can stay healthy, he can really help some teams...........always liked Howie. Always root for him Not too upset he hit two dingers vs. the Halos tonight.

no harper, no scherzer this time around and then our pal HOWIE beats us

dim the Halo..........lights out.

is the pitcher named doolitle or is that the Halos line up here in the ninth..... although I like my guy Simmons even if he just made the last out of the game,

you've heard about fast runners turning ground balls into infield hits. Pujols just turned that lead off base hit into a ground out.

final day of the AL season might be really wild and with so many teams in the hunt for one or both of the Wild Card spots -- I think you have to think about all the "extend the season another day or two" playoff scenarios with all the bunched up teams........perhaps they should have a mini- March Madness for the teams bunched up.........

Nolasco has given up perhaps more HRs than any other AL (or perhaps MLB) pitcher this year. but, I think he gets a bad rap here -- we didn't spend much to acquire Nolasco. We got him to be our fourth/ fifth starter and to eat some innings. He's done that for us this and with most of the expected rotation on the DL for parts of the season, Nolasco has stepped in an filled a key spot in the rotation. It can be frustrating to watch him give up dingers........but lately, if he can pitch 5/6 innings, keep the Halos within striking distance and turn the game over to the pen - well, that's OK. And that's pretty much what we can expect. Would you rather have Santiago still with the team /in the rotation? That's who we sent to Minnesota for Nolasco.

nice shot !! looks like a somewhat muggy evening at the ballyard tonight. Philly weather !

well - let's see if we can sweep the .360 level of play Phillies this week and then take the A's series 2-1 (at home here) to go 5-1 this week. I see us going 14-13 in August which pretty much leaves us pretty much right where we are heading into the final month (we would be 66-68) August Series: Philly 3-0; A's 2-1; O's 1-2; Sea 2-2; Nats 0-2; O's 1-2 Rangers 3-1; Astros 1-2; A;s 1-1.

Angels vs. Phillies 9-1 - 9th inning. am sure Baseball Tonight is just waiting to show the highlights of this one.........

tonight's game -- Pujols big game but the highlight once again -- watching Andrelton Simmons on defense, at the plate and on the base paths. he's a complete player.

I think they route the calls from the late West Coast games to Toronto............'we're not reversing the call, you HOCKEY PUCK !"

hey, why are folks ragging on Pujols? Yes, he has looked just awful at the plate at times this year -- so I'm liking what I'm seeing lately......... multiple HR game and then tonight's game with Pujols responsible for most of the offense........ Yeah, yeah. it is the Phillies who, when I last checked, had the worst record in MLB. But we'll take it.

DocHalo sums up much of the thinking of signing Beltre as a free agent when he was available.......and most folks here not only would have been against signing Beltre on those terms but were and said so......it was that fifth/ sixth year option stuff that caused teams to back off........ and yes, ten ocho recon scout -- you're right -- it's easy to look back now at a guy's stats and say GEEZ he hit 48 HRs but back then the big HR guys were all over the place and you have players putting up 50 HR seasons in back to back years when it hadn't been done hardly at all before.......different time, different place these days. Also -- not to knock Beltre at all, but does he put up the kind of numbers you see in Texas playing 81 games a year (not Coors Field) in some other ballpark? Hard to say -- he's a lock for the HOF and well deserved. Goes in as a Texas Ranger......... Heck, from how he has played this year, he may have 2 to 3 more seasons in him....I'm sure he won't retire until he hits HR No. 500. 3,000 hits, 500 HR and 120 SBs puts him in elite company in MLB history books.

Beltre has 120 stolen bases in his career -- I thought he had more than that - not likely to get close to even 150 as he has averaged exactly one SB a year for the past decade.....oh well. and with the Dodgers he had 48 HRs.......and he had better stats than I realized in his 4 years in Seattle -- but his awful start there seems to over-shadow that. sort of like Pujols with the Halos -- he got off to that real slow start that first half season with the Halos -- and ever since, folks thought 'Pujols hasn't done much in Anaheim" when in reality his average season stats have been pretty good -- not like the St. Louis years - but pretty good nonetheless --- of course, right now he's on the backside of that very long term contract and his ABs and stats are reflecting that these days........

never understood why the Dodgers didn't lock him up back when he was with them and had that 45 HR season. signed with Seattle for a huge contract and his start there (I think he finally got to .200 BA at the All Star Break) made the Dodgers look real smart. Another Seattle F/A bust -- one of many. Left there for where? Boston -- and now he's on the back side of 3,000 hits with 500 HR in sight and I think he has something like 300 SBs -- with those numbers he is in elite company in MLB history......oh, he's got a great glove at 3B as well........WOW !

the observation by Fletcher noted in the post above sums it up pretty well and highlights the missed opportunity Arte and the Angels had to win a greater market share of the Greater Los Angeles area during the years the Dodgers franchise was floundering under McCourt's ownership...........instead the Halos entered into that terrible contract with Josh Hamilton which ate up the Halos payroll capacity and made signing quality players impossible........... Today the Dodgers (even if they're not on over the air TV for most fans -- it's the revenue from that deal that made today's player acquisitions possible -- although with Darvish being a rental it does not appear that the Dodgers gave up too much for any of the players they got today -- I mean Van Slyke a 4-A player who spent most of the year at AAA going the other way in one of the deals -- that's not much -- the Dogs managed to keep that one prospect the Rangers really were after) are primed to make a playoff run with a quality rotation and a deep bullpen that can shorten games to five or six innings if need be............... I still think the Halos did the right thing pretty much sitting tight --- it's better than making a Hamilton, Gary Matthews Jr, Vernon Wells, even Kevin Appier type deal.........

deadline time huge success for Halos !! Congrats !! why? we took on no new bad long term contracts. we didn't give up any young prospects. we didn't help ourselves for the future but also didn't do anything to hurt us either (which is probably the bigger deal, Halos deal history being what it's been) -- having said that -- last year's deadline deal sending Hector Santiago (who was just sent out on rehab assignment by Minnesota) was a pretty good deal for us -- Nolasco and Meyer for Santiago and a player I don't think has done much (don't even know who it was).........not a major deal but a positive one for us -- we got the most out of Santiago a starter/ reliever swing man when we got him who was our number 4/5 guy for about a season and a half -- he tanked almost as soon as he got to Minnesota and most of his stat lines for his starts this year that I saw box scores for - were bad...........Nolasco ate innings, made starts and gave up HRs (most in the AL?) and Meyer had some decent starts for us he past month or so.......... so the past two trade deadlines ('16 and '17) have been positive for Halos (perhaps it was because we really weren't going anywhere as of Aug. 1 each of those years).

HOF biggest slight/ missed opportunity IMO was when the Veteran's Committee passed on the chance to vote BUCK O'NEILL into the HOF as a "UNIVERSAL AMBASSADOR of the GAME and GOOD WILL" -- whatever label they wanted to provide -- and do so at a time when BUCK O'NEILL would have been alive and present at the ceremony. what a celebration of baseball that would have been - what a speech that would have been. O'NEILL could have spoken of Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Satchel Paige etc. It would have been just great. Instead, the stuffed shirts who ran the vets committee at the time said NO on a split vote because Buck O'Neill didn't have the 'stats' -- how ridiculous.

Geez.......Rose's stats -- greatest of all time...... folks argue that it's what he did on the field that counts. and then he says and does stuff over the years that make even the folks that support him being in the HOF cringe. I mean his being on the Fox Sports baseball panel for the playoffs was painful to watch whenever he was on......... and now this stuff -- yeah, he's never getting into the HOF.

although Pujols had a good game at the plate today -- I think that's strike three for me today.......

0-2 count........I feel like Pujols at the plate -- next pitch will be a GIDP. I knew Bedrosian was on the DL for a bit -- did not watch today's game obviously......and , yeah, Maybin isn't going anywhere - on DL. seems like some of the folks of some value (mainly rotation guys) are all on the DL.

if the Halos make any deals, it would probably involve some of pen guys -- Hernandez, Pettit. I don't see Norris getting much interest -- unless it's a non-contender who wants a less expensive option at closer next year and would extend him a year -- but that team would probably just wait until the off-season..........don't see a mad rush of teams knocking down Norris door to sign him as a closer........heck, until the Angels gave hm another shot, I think he was close to being out of baseball. Maybin could go and I think the Angels could demand a prospect of some value in return -- if the other team deems the price 'too high' - well, that's OK - no harm, no foul, no deal.

Sell high? GM of other teams might have to be 'high' to acquire some of the folks listed there for anything much of value. As for our front office, I, right now -- 5 games out of the second W/C spot and the team as it is -- I would deem THREE players 'off limits' not subject to a trade: Trout, A. Simmons and Maldonado (who I think has really done well this year and probably cant find a better Defensive catcher at a decent cost than him). Pitchers -- even the rotation guys -- most on the DL and not available for trade. NORRIS -- had done fairly well in closer role until giving up walk off Grand Slam dingers within the past week or so. Sell 'high' well - it's relative. I think his value reduces to near ZERO after the trade deadline. Escobar -- would deal him NOW. Cam Bedrosian -- someone might be interested but that's an off-season deal and he's still on the DL isn't he? Maybin? Now -- there's a player who a play off bound team might want for OF depth, some late inning D and to pinch run in late inning situations.....he could help a playoff team in that specialized role......