Old highland had 2 possibly brilliant ideas yesterday while walking past one of London's innumerable betting parlours. 1) was to complete my butt-kicking of Ladbrokes with a clean sweep of NCAA Tournament specials; and 2) why not place a couple of quid on the Angels home opener?

I did both, aptly cleaned up on the NCAA tourney (made £65 overall, which ain't bad, about $130 in old money), and won my little bet on the Halos as Weav and Zilla carried the men in red to victory.

Which got me to thinking ... what if I put £2 on the Angels to win every game, consistently every single game this season? Well, surely they will be a winning team. Surely I can't lose? ... A mate of mine said I could lose, depending on whether the Angels win all the games in which they are favoured and lose the ones in which they are underdogs. I could see his point, but I am not good enough at math to know whether or not to carry on this experiment.

Any math wiz's care to enlighten me as to whether my Bet on the Angels Every Day scheme is a good one? Let's kick some Twinkie butt. xx

Listen. I suck at Fantasy Baseball -- But since it's draft time again, you want me in your league. Why? Because I suck. No excuses, but ...1) I care very little for stats and am very poor at math; 2) I have very little free time, and like to spend what there is with wife/son; 3) although I no longer drink, my attention span is as short as ever; 4) I don't really care if I win; and 5) I basically pick players by whether they have a cool name or not, are fat, nice, or exotic, which is the equivalent of throwing darts blindfolded. ...  All of which makes for a very bad fantasy team.

And let's face it, we'd all love to have Joe Mauer, but YOU drafted him right before me. Sigh.

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Suddenly Godzilla stompts into our yard, highlighting the global nature of today's baseball biz, and Hideki Matsui will hopefully hit a ton of ropes into the RF bleachers and make us forget about tears for Vlad, GA, The Kingfish, the Ryan Express, and all the other dear departed.  On a pure baseball footing, Hideki Matsui looks to be a superb signing for us.

Big Hideki not only adds countless fans to our "fan base" from the Land of the Rising Luminous Power,  but he is also a Damn Good Baseball Player.  Happy to have him ... and so should be Halos fans from everywhere. (btw ... Mr Matsui, please help get us the services of Mr Yu Darvish, from your native land.)

But we all come from somewhere called home ... This is what makes up the the Angels'  "fan base".

Where does this so-called fan base of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim actually exist?  OK, I am biased towards areas near the Stadium, and my own belief is that the Angels' fan base emanates from St. Joseph Hospital of Orange (circa 1964), but what do I know?  For all I know, the Angels' fan base may have actually started circa 1888 when Vladimir Guerrero was born on a whaling ship in the Caribbean Sea.

So where is YOUR Angels fan base?  Express your bad-ass self and represent YOUR hood in the poll below and  comment with the explosive speed of a moon shot off the bat of Mr Matsui ...

I had to wait for my heartbeat to slow down before I could even think about posting anything, but here we go with highland's fearless and completely unbiased biased player ratings for Game 5.

Bring it on, Spanks ... and we''ll see you all on Saturday .... ~ highland

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Our Halos are still struggling at the plate but managed to gut this one out. Abreu, Rivera, Kowbell and Desmond were all swinging limp sticks. Fortunately, we had enough to carry this to Game 4 ...

Sorry I'm so late with these player rankings but a) I broke my ankle b) lost my laptop and c) these last 2 games have taken nearly 10 hours to complete. That, said, here are my completely biased unbiased player rankings from Game 3 ... As usual please feel free to flame me and post your own player rating below. .... Ratings will be quicker after tonight's game against the Devil Rays :)

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Well, let's start off these player rankings with this non-sequitur: 46 degrees fahrenheit is not cold. That's 8 degrees celcius, which is warm in Inverness, Scotland, where I lived for two years. So all you wimpy millionaire players wearing your balaclavas ... Man up! It was only 3 hours, 18 minutes of baseball in a teeny-weeny bit of cold ... Now go hit the jacuzzis and the ho's.

Overall game rating 5: Not very good. Had it rained, it would have washed out CC's brilliant start. But no HRs fell in the launching pad that is Yankee Stadium (v 2.0). Spahn and Sain and pray for rain? I pray for no rain and Hokie Joe v. Burnett on Saturday.

That said, here are highland's completely unbiased biased player reviews for the series in which the Angels will eliminate the Yankees:

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Only three moments in my life match the way I feel right now 1) the birth of my son Ethan 2) my marriage to Elizabeth and 3) Game 7 of 2002.

Old highland is going to to give his unbiased biased player ratings on Game 3 at Fenway on Sunday. I want to finish this off so that I can get drunk, so it might be a quickie. Keep in mind that big-game heroics carry a lot of weight, these ratings are for this game only, not the series ... so feel free to disagree. BTW, I said I was not going to hand out any 10s in this series, but .... tonight changed my mind. ~ highland

Ratings below the jump ...

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Well here is old highland celebrating a 2-0 lead going to Fenway for Game 3 on Sunday. I'm back on the job to give my completely biased unbiased player reviews for Game 2 in the old-school sports journalism style.

Please have a crack at me if you want to, that's what this is all about, would love to see your comments/corrections. After all, these are only my player ratings and until Scottnak devises some evil genius method of doing post-game player reviews, I'm afraid you're stuck with this ancient form of journalistic review.

Let's finish this on Sunday! Ratings below the jump ...

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My player rankings for Game 1 of the ALDS. In the grand tradition of British soccer writing, I am going to assign a rating of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, based on the individual players' performance in the game.

Feel free to argue ... but these are my damn player ratings. Of course I am elated that we've got a 5-0 victory over the Red Sox but I tried to be very unbiased on these player rankings, journalist-style (non ESPN) ... Keep in mind these are my own ratings alone, and please feel free to disagree or agree with me, or give your adjustments or own ratings in the comments below. ~ highland

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OK, it's time for my one stat-head post of the season, and on the last day! ... Chone Figgins is currently sitting on a .298 batting average, and it's really splitting hairs, but let's face it -- a .300 average looks way better than a .299 average on the back of a baseball card.

So with my rudimentary mathematical skills (I can use a calculator), I have figured out what our Desmond needs to do today in the regular season finale to finish at .300 or over.

2-for-2 gets him over .300. So does almost any combination of three hits (3-for-3, 3-for-4, and 3-for-5 do it, and 3-for-6 just barely gets it done, leaving him him at .299837, which rounded up would technically make him a .300 hitter).

So let's say you're Mike Scioscia and Figgins gets hits in his first two at-bats. Do you pull him out of the game to preserve the .300 average? Or, what if Figgins goes 2-for-3 do you leave him in so that maybe he could go 3-for-4?

Do you pull a Napoleon Lajoie and have him try to bunt for a base-hit his first two at-bats ....? (In 1910, the St Louis Browns manager so hated Ty Cobb that he played his third baseman on the cut of the outfield grass, allowing Lajoie to bunt for six straight singles. He still lost the batting title to Cobb ...)

An interesting subplot to an otherwise inconsequential game before the nailbiting and ulcer medication kicks in ...

Now you may have noticed that MLB.com have an army of photographers with digital cams at each and every game. Hence, while flipping through our roster and our stats, I noticed that each player's page comes up with an "action" photo". Flipping through these is kinda like flipping through a mini baseball card collection. So I've corralled them all on photobucket to flip through at your leisure.

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Since there was no Tuesday Halo Links today, I thought I would point HH's attention to the fact that Sports Illustrated's Ted Keith has been paying attention to the Angels. Two Halos make his list of the most underrated players in the major leagues: Our 1B Kendry Morales and our speedy 3B Chone Figgins. ....

Nice to see that some of the national media are keeping an eye on our boys in red. Sorry if this has already been posted elsewhere.

(Explicit content alert): The evil AJ Pierzynski also makes the list at catcher. Cheers, highland

Well, I have to say this season has been a season of surprises for me. We have gotten the predictable production out of Vlad Guerrero and Torii Hunter (despite injuries), Juan Rivera, Chone Figgins and the catchers. But 3 things have really opened my eyes this seaason.

1) Erick Aybar: I was never a believer until I saw this kid play SS for a full season. Not only does he make all the routine plays, he makes the spectacular ones too, and plays Angels baseball the way the Soth wants him to. Revelation. This guy plays such a beautiful shortstop I hope we never have another one.

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Here's a random pitching trivia question as we await tonight's massive tilt on the mound between the Angels' John Lackey and the Kansas City Royals' Zack Greinke ...

Which set of brothers holds the all-time record for pitching wins with the same team? ...

Winner wins a beer with highlandhalo in olde Londontown! and you know you want to win that ....! So the correct winner wins approximately £3.40 (about 5 bucks!) It's worth a shot, plus a nice cold beer!

Just for shits and giggles, I thought I post this poll to see who y'all this is our Team MVP so far. Vote below and explain your reasons in the comments. And to quote Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and to make sure that I've got enough words to make this post work, here are the opening words to Coleridge's "Kubla Khan":

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Acuda, mi amigo,

I have in the past, in game threads and other fanposts, particularly when we were trying to re-sign Mark Teixeira, made some perhaps snarky but well-intended remarks about your much-publicised mancrush on Kendry Morales. For this, I must now say I am profoundly, profoundly sorry.

In fact, one evening whilst drinking, I remember even making a comment with only the remotest sense of humour that perhaps you had a life-size blow-up doll of Kendry Morales in your bedroom. Again, for this, I must offer my most sincere apology.

I had very firm doubts that Kendry Morales could possibly be as good as you said he would be. I admit it now, I was wrong. You were right.

Your hero is now on pace for a season of 173 hits, 45 doubles, 37 home runs, and 111 runs batted in. A slugging pct. of .581 and an OPS of .931. These are numbers that Mark Teixeira would be proud of.

Add in the fact that Kendry Morales is a valuable switch-hitter, carries the load in the middle of the order, and is playing more than adequate defence at 1B only adds further credibilty to your rightness, and my wrongness.

I hope you accept this apology. And with the best warm wishes, I hope you keep the blow-up doll.

~Cheers, highlandhalo

WiHaloFan posted a link to the CBS story on this, but Chone's amazing journey to St Louis is interesting enough I thought it deserved it's own fan post. Here's what happened:

• Chone is snoozing peacefully in his pad in Newport on Tuesday morning.
• Angels VP and comm manager Tim Mead gets an early morning phone call from the American League office: "Get Chone Figgins' ass out to St Louis, Joe Maddon wants him in the All-Star game. Evan Longoria's got a messed-up finger."
  
• So Mead, who has everybody's phone number in the world, calls Figgy. No luck. Desmond is sawing logs and has his mobile switched off, doesn't hear the house phone.
• What does Mead do next? Can't he drive around to Figgy's place? Can he send an intern around there? Nope, they don't start work till 9am, that's too late.
• Mead looks into his contact list on his mobile and calls early-riser Garret Anderson, Figgy's buddy, who lives in Irvine. Can you get hold of Desmond please?

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Almost lost in the maelstrom of last night's wacky 10-6 win over the pinstripes was the fact that our little All-Star snub-ee, Chone Figgins, tripled in the go-ahead run in the 6th.

What an electric moment. I love slick double-plays, highlight-reel grabs, dramatic homeruns, etc. ... but for my buck, there's not much more exciting than a triple with a runner on base. Partially because the triple is a slowly dying art form.

When Desmond scorches one down the OF line, you know he's thinking three bags when he sprints out of the box. It's great watching two fleet guys like Figgins and Erick Aybar running like hell for 270 feet, Dino Ebel pinwheeling his arm, the defense trying to cope. Aybar was already sliding into home by the time the Skankees got the ball back to cut-off man Robinson Cano. (Curiously, why didn't on-deck hitter Maicer Izturis signal Aybar not to slide?).

But I digress. Most of us know that Figgins is the club all-time leader in stolen bases, but the point here is that our oft-underappreciated Desmond DeChone is closing in on another all-time club record: triples.

The great '60s and '70s shortstop Jim Fregosi (my favourite player as a kid, and the reason I always wore No. 11 when I played baseball) is the club leader in triples with 70 over 11 seasons under the Halo. Despite his somewhat stocky frame, Fregosi was a fast and very aggressive player.

Figgins, with 6 three-baggers under his belt in 2009, now has 52 career triples in roughly 6 full seasons as an Angel.

A little bit of math tells us that Figgins is already the most tripling SOB in club history on average. Fregosi in 5,244 ABs had a .0133 triple average as an Angel; whilst Figgy, in 3,294 ABs, is a .0157 tripler. Triples being so rare, that's fairly significant.

Some more math tells us that with an average of 8.67 triples per season (guesswork really, because Figgy has two anomaly years - 17 triples in 2004 and only 1 in 2008), Figgins could surpass Fregosi's triples record in little more than two full seasons.

So after all this BS, what does this mean? Well, for one I hope the Angels are wise and re-sign Desmond to a 2- or 3-year deal after this season. We all know his value for his OBP and base-running prowess at the top of the order, great arm and flashy glove.

But another reason why? Triples mean excitement. And Chone Figgins is an exciting player.

(For some stat-geek information about the triple, read this interesting piece from John Walsh of the Hardball Times).