SB Nation User Blog: BoulderBrian

Excuse me while I puke

BoulderBrian — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:29:16 -0000

Dustin Pedroia won the AL MVP thanks to the many "chowd shiteating" loving media members, and ESPN couldn't be happier. One word to describe this, sickening.

e x t r a w o r d s a r e n e e d e d f o r t h i s f a n p o s t. a r t i e p l e a s e s i g n t e x n o w

Tim Welke blows it again

BoulderBrian — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:45:40 -0000

The same umpire who arguably blew the tag call by Veriteck on Willits in our Red Sox series blew a tag call tonight. This time, being on such a big stage with much of the media backing the Rays, he got called out on it. Dave Campbell said that had the call in our Red Sox series been against the Red Sox that the Boston Globe would have thrown fits and had the front page in massive caps calling for his head. Well, thats what is happening now on ESPN after tonights call. I didn't see tonights blown call first hand, but it does sound more obviously missed than ours. However, it still irks me that MLB let Tim Welke umpire the world series after he failed to even consult another umpire while blowing the call in our game, a simple prodcedure he should have taken to make sure he did everything to make the correct call (since replay shows he didn't even see the end of the play).

Dave Campbell Outraged!

BoulderBrian — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:46:34 -0000

I know this has already kind of been discussed in the "Was Willits Safe?" thread but I just wanted to emphasis exactly what Dave Campbell said and put all of the links regarding this in one easy to find location. This morning on Mike and Mike Dave Campbell explained exactly why a) Willits should have been called safe and how b) because this occurred to the angels the media is not making a big deal about it. I wanted to start a new thread so everyone can see exactly what he said, since he has no affiliation with the Angels (you can click on his name above to see his wikipedia page to learn more about him) and is one of the top baseball guys at ESPN Radio.

You can listen to it for yourself using the following link:

For ESPN insiders (I think its free so you might not have to be an insider)

For Non-Insiders you can listen to it through todays Mike and Mike Podcast (8:46 through 15:35): http://sports.espn.go.com/espnradio/player?context=podcast&id=3630374

You can see the play at this link: http://losangeles.angels.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?mid=200810073600013

Mike Scioscia's reaction: http://losangeles.angels.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?mid=200810073600375

Some highlights from this 9 minute radio piece:

If the same situation occurs with a collision at home plate-- Willits is safe. "You have to give up the ball voluntarily."
If an outfielder catches a ball on the warning track, continues to run, hits the wall, falls to the ground, and then drops the ball: the batter is safe.
Tim Welke did not see the entire play. The LF umpire (Bill Miller) was right on top of the play. "At the absolute worst the umpires should have gotten together and conferred on it, and talked about it... "
"Ed Hocculi could have gotten off last night." [Refering to the Chargers blown call]
"If this had happened to the Red Sox, the Boston Globe would have had a 9 foot headline how the Red Sox got screwed on this."
"If this had happened in NY or to the Red Sox this would be watergate 3"

Neither of the first two bullets are what happened last night, but the MLB rule book is very ambiguous about what the call should be. Instead of being clear, the rule book says it is a judgment call. To make a judgment call, you use similar situations and react accordingly. The point Campbell makes is that Tim Welke (the umpire involved) did not keep his eye on Varitek, as you can see in the video of the play, and therefore should have at the very least conferred with the LF umpire or other infield umpires. He did neither.

I give huge props to Dave Campbell for standing up for the angels. Most of ESPN wouldn't have the balls to since many people there are either Red Sox fanatics or just don't want the backlash that would be accompanied by this type of statement. He is exactly right about how this would have been a huge outrage if the situation had occured to a NY team or the Red Sox. What a great way to have our season end (sarcasm) and not even give us a chance to steal this back in a game 5. Unbelievable ****ing believable.

Fangraphs Analysis of the Teixeira Trade

BoulderBrian — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:55:11 -0000

I always read the Fangraph articles, especially when they are in reguards to angels players. They bring a whitty stat geek analysis to many of the major and under the radar stories going on in baseball. Today Eric Seidman, a regular writer for this website, wrote an analysis of the Tex trade and there isn't really anything new in it that we as angels fans didn't already know. However, I love when I find non-biased writers, unlike myself, criticizing media members (especially ones from espn) about their anti-angels bias. I know many of us on this website strongly dislike Steve Philips so I thought I would share this quote.

"When the Braves traded Mark Teixeira to the Angels for, among other assets, Casey Kotchman, the analytic world of the baseball media went into a frenzy.... and, I’m sure Steve Phillips dug out five at-bats of Teixeira’s playoff performance in college to say that he wouldn’t help the Angels due to poor post-season play."

The link to the full article is below.

And the Angels most clutch hitter is...

BoulderBrian — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:53:10 -0000

Maicer Izturis!

There is a great article on FanGraphs.com about how clutch Maicer has been the last two years for the Halos. According to the article, Maicer has ammased a clutch rating of 1.22, fourth highest in baseball, in only 198 at bats. Last season he was 19th best in all of baseball which is outstanding for someone who only filled in for injured players. Considering these statistics, as well as his terrific defense (better than Erick Aybar statistically), does this change your opinion of who should be the every day shortstop for the angels right now (or at least get the majority of starts)?

My opinion is that Aybar is a great short stop, has huge potential, but the angels are not rebuilding-- We want to win now! With our style of baseball, agressive baserunning with timely hitting, we need players out there who we can count on with 2 outs and RISP. Aybar surely has the brighter future, but if we want to win now (and I am referring to October not another AL West title) we need "clutchness", and Maicer is Mr. Clutch.

Poll

Who should get the majority of starts at SS?

Maicer Izturis

36 votes

Erick Aybar

10 votes

David Eckstein (for Jon Miller who thinks he is on our team)

4 votes

50 votes | Poll has closed

Figgins Injury Update

BoulderBrian — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:33:49 -0000

Today the LA times reported that Figgins will not need to go on the DL. His MRI showed just a mild strain to his right hamstring. According to Chone, the injury was caused by a collision he had with the umpire on his amazing slide at home plate. "If I didn't hit the umpire, we wouldn't be talking about this," Figgins said. "This has happened before. Every time I do that slide, I seem to hit the umpire. It's a freak thing."

Mike Scioscia expects the league to review the play to rule on whether or not the home plate umpire was to close to the play and caused the collision that led to this hamstring injury.

Poll

Which injury has hurt the angels the most?

Kelvim Escobar

24 votes

John Lackey

61 votes

Howie Kendrick

16 votes

101 votes | Poll has closed

HOWIE IS BACK!!!! [Updated]

BoulderBrian — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:19:59 -0000

[UPDATE] :HK47's return has been delayed a few days by Mike Scioscia. MLB.com article link below. According to the article he didn't reinjure anything, he just isn't feeling 100% and they don't want to cause this potentially lingering injury to become a chronic problem.

[Original Post]

Starting tomorrow! He is headed to Kansas City to join up with the angels and might even start tomorrows game. Great news, Howie is quickly becomming my favorite Angel and our offense could surely use his .500 ba lol. Too bad I have 2 finals tomorrow and 1 on Tuesday; I won't be able to watch most of the game. However, the mlb article about Lackey returning soon and Howie returning tomorrow is below.

Some of the HK47 highlights from this article...

"Kendrick, the Angels starting second baseman who has been on the disabled list since April 14 with a strained left hamstring, started at second for the Quakes. He looked sharp, hitting two hard singles to left after grounding out to short in the first. More importantly, he showed no pain while playing defense and running the bases.

Kendrick showed he was ready in the third inning when he slid into second to break up a double play. When the throw from JetHawks second baseman Chih-Hsien Chaing sailed into left field, Kendrick got right up and raced to third."

Also ,Kendrick left the game early because he had to catch a flight to Kansas City.

22 Inning Game - Rockies win

BoulderBrian — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:31:05 -0000

WOW! This was definitely the longest game I've ever seen and it is the longest game in 15 years according to the AP. It just ended, the Rockies won in the 22nd inning lol. The game lasted 6 hours and 16 minutes with 73 at bats for the rockies and 74 for the padres. The padres threw 20 strikeouts in the game with 337 pitches total.

word count word count word count word count word count word count

M's Sign Carlos Silva

BoulderBrian — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 03:23:40 -0000

When angels fans think we have had a bad off season just remember that the mariners are our main competition for the AL West next year (doesn't that cheer you up? lol).

The mariners, a team that has lost Jose Guillen (one of their best players last year) and had not picked up any one till now, has just signed Carlos Silva to a 4 year contract at 11mil per year.

While the angels were out shopping for the top players in baseball, the Mariners were trying to sign pitchers. They missed out on Dan Haren, they missed out on Erik Bedard (not over yet though), they missed out on Hiroki Kuroda, and now they have to settle with Plan D in over paying Carlos Silva.

When you feel bad about the Angels "only" getting Jon Garland and Torii Hunter and missing out on M-cab, just remember our biggest competition is paying 11mil a year for a 4th starter at best who's 162 career avg has him striking out 69 players per season lol.

L I N K -to- S T O R Y

Oh and just to note, the Twins wouldn't even pay 4 mil for this guy (that was their contractual option cost).

Is Detroit really going to be that good now?

BoulderBrian — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:01:59 -0000

I am really disappointed that we could not get M-cab. Ever since hearing that he was doing a strong workout regiment with Naps I was really excited that we were going to get him. But now he has been traded to Detroit and at first glance I was really worried about how strong they could be. However after looking at their situation more closely they will definitely be a strong team but not an elite team.

Their pitching situation is really BAD.

Zumaya, a really strong up and coming reliever, is already going to miss most of next season and had to have major shoulder surgery. Their bullpen was bad to enough last year, but now their bullpen is even weaker.

Todd Jones, their closer (39 years old, going to be 40 in April) was mediocre last year with:

an ERA of 4.28 (2.81 for Krod), a whip of 1.418 (1.248 for Krod), an ERA+ 107 (162 for Krod), a K/BB of 1.44 (2.65 for Krod), and a BAA of .267 (.204 for Krod).

These are clearly very mediocre numbers for a closer and if anything they will be worse next year as he turns 40. The Tigers have 2 avg relief pitchers (ERA between 4 and 5) in Fernando Rodney (30) and Jason Grilli (31), 1 good reliever (ERA between 2-3) in Bobby Seay (29), and 1 horrible relief pitcher (ERA > 7) in Francisco Cruceta (28).

Their starting pitching is better, but not much better. They have one of the leagues best young pitchers in Jason Verlander (not enough good things could be said about him) but after that their pitching is avg at best. They have Jeremy Bonderman who had a horrible second half with a 2007 ERA of over 5, whip of 1.38, and a BAA of .279. He is only 25 but in 5 full seasons in the majors he has had a low era of 4.08. After that they have:

Dontrelle Willis (ERA over 5),
Nate Robertson (ERA 4.76 WHIP 1.47 BAA .283)
and Kenny Rodgers (43 years old, K/BB 1.44, 2007 ERA 4.43).

Their pitching is weak to begin with and they just traded away some of their best pitching prospects with their MLB-ready, potential star pitcher Andrew Miller (22 years old)

Now their offense is very good but several players (Magglio Ordonez, Placido Polanco) are coming off career years and at their age (32,33) you would have to expect their numbers to decline.

If you you look head to head at their positional players with the angels positional players the angels should be better next year at first base (if Kotchman can stay healthy), Second Base (Kendrick should have a better year and Polanco is not going to those numbers again), Left Field (GA/Rivera/GMJ are all better than Marcus Thames and his .242 BA with 54 RBI and 18 HR), and Right Field (Vlad is better than Magglio).

They have a better center fielder, shortstop, third baseman, DH, and catcher (although I think naps can be better than 36 year old Rodriguez). However the problem is that their center fielder, shortstop, and DH are much better than our players at those positions and thats why their offense is 1 through 9 much better than ours.

Considering how bad their pitching is and how good our pitching is I don't see why we couldn't beat them in a post season series, especially since we should have a better record and thus home field advantage (because we play in a much weaker division).

I'm still upset about M-cab but they just threw away their future (all their offensive players are in their 30s except M-cab and Granderson) and our team is very young and should continue to be great for a long time