When I ran some (mostly depressing!) comps for Mark Trumbo the other week, I fully expected to focus next on the most intriguing free agent on the market this winter, Prince Fielder. But popular demand in the comments, as well as my own curiosity, turned me toward arguably the Angels' best position player in 2011, Peter Bourjos. How do super-fast guys with gap power and bad K/BB rates develop? Is he also, like Trumbo, a prime candidate for regression? Read on and see!

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Every offseason I like to create my own lists of historical players who were statistically comparable to various Angels through to their current birthdays. My basic formula is: guys the same age who play the same position, within +/- 25% of the same number of career plate appearances, plus/minis 10 points of OPS+ (the "+" adjusts for offensive context), and then I eyeball Wins Above Replacement and other factors to find people who look truly similar. It's a shorthand way of narrowing down expectations for how our guys are going to perform in the immediate future.

Think about the current Angels team. Who is your biggest riddle in terms of how he's going to play next year, and develop over the near term of his career? Mine, by far, is Mark Trumbo. Can he really continue to exceed expectations? Does that terrible plate discipline portend a sophomore face-plant? Well, let's see what the comp exercise turns up.

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Let's close the numerical books on the first year of the Worst Trade Ever. First, a straight-up comparison of the two left fielders involved, which reveals that we paid 3.4 times the salary of Juan Rivera in 2011 for essentially the same production from Vernon Wells:

NM   G   PA  AB  R   H  2B 3B HR RBI SB/CS BB  SO  AVG  OBP  SLG OPS+ oWAR dWAR  WAR $mil
VW: 131 529 505  60 110 15  4 25  66  9/4  20  86 .218 .248 .412  83   0.2 -0.5 -0.3 $18.0	
JR: 132 521 466  46 120 23  1 11  74  5/3  43  76 .258 .319 .382  91   0.3 -0.8 -0.5  $5.3

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Final Score from the Skanky Old Dome: Angels 10, Blue Jays 6

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So, as someone was pointing out the other day, I used to do these "the Angels have been playing .600 baseball for X00 games!" posts, the last of which came on July 30, 2009 (perhaps tellingly, my last day as a 40-year-old), at which point the team had been winning 3 out of 5 for an astonishing 541 games, from May 17, 2006-onward. The exact starting point would differ according to the iron laws of mathematics, but the basic vibe was that either since May of that year, when Mike Napoli emerged as the starting catcher after the failed (ha!) Jeff Mathis experiment; or since July of that year, when Jered Weaver was finally ensconsed in the rotation for good, the Angels in 2006 stopped playing like ass, and started unleashing some serious WTF on the American League. The team went 72-45 after May 22, 54-29 after June 30, then followed that up with an average of 97 wins the next 3 seasons.

As I wrote in that July 30, 2009 post:

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All, a great reference, Baseball Prospectus, which is a paid site, has now freed its whole post-1996 archives older than one year. This is a pretty amazing document dump of original/received stathead wisdom from the Internet 1.0 and 2.0 days. It's also a tasty opportunity to double-check what a lot of us felt at the time was a pro-Beane, anti-Angels slant.

I've only now started looking, but one of my early faves was this blast from May 18, 1998:

the Angels have the most overrated leftfielder in baseball in Garret Anderson, and Darin Erstad's speed and defense are completely wasted at first base. If the Angels ship Anderson's butt to any team dumb enough to take him (Danger, Herk Robinson, danger!), they can move Erstad to left field, Hollins to first base, and bring up Troy Glaus, improving their defense at 2 positions and getting a huge lift to their offense at the same time.

How does Vernon Wells' puketastic April compare to other first-month bed-soilings by other high-profile veteran acquisitions in Angels history? It's right the hell down there, that's how. The only comparable face-plant I could find was Lyman Bostock's infamous 1978. That said, the following list does contain seeds of hope. In chronological order, here's the first Angel March/Aprils of the following big-splash newcomers: Joe Adcock (1964), Bostock, Reggie Jackson (1982), Dave Parker (1991), Steve Finley (2005), and Vernon:

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So there I was, minding my own business in the taxi line at the train station, flipping through the Twitter to catch up on some Angels news, when along I came upon this otherwise unremarkable piece by Mark Saxon wondering if the team should bench Bobby Abreu for significant stretches this year. I was skimming through to see if there was anything new there, when I did a double-take on this section:

From 1998 to 2009, only nine major-league regulars had a .400 on-base percentage, and only one did it with more than 100 steals (you guessed it).

But things began to unravel for Abreu last year. He batted .255 and his on-base slumped to .352. He had his lowest full-season OPS (.787) ever. He also showed signs of slowing down on the bases (we won't even talk about his outfield play, since he'll mostly DH now). He got caught on the bases nearly 30 percent of the times he tried to steal.

There was something overly familiar about this argument. Sure enough, when I got home and in front of a computer, I figured out what it was: MLB Trade Rumors' Mike Axisa had made the exact same points one week before:

From 1998 through 2009, just nine players in baseball posted an on-base percentage of at least .400 (min. 6,000 PA), and only one did it with more than 100 total steals. That would be Bobby Abreu. [...]

But in 2010, at age 36, the roof started to cave in. Abreu hit .255/.352/.435 overall, his lowest full season OPS ever. Although he still stole 24 bases, he was caught ten times for a 70.5% success rate, well below his 75.8% success rate from '98-'09.

Bold stuff there to indicate exact language matches.

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Most people if they think of the late Chuck Tanner at all it's as the see-no-evil caretaker of the We Are Fam-i-lee Pirates, the avuncular enabler of Dick Allen's Chicago second act, the hapless bystander of the late-'80s Braves, or even as the super-'70s basestealing psycho who coaxed 52 SBs out of Don Baylor of all people en route to a Major League record 341 with the 1976 A's.

But Chuck Tanner was on the original 1961 Angels -- one of six future managers on the squad (Jim Fregosi, Buck Rodgers, Del Rice, Ken Aspromonte, Eddie Yost). And more important than the backup outfielder's 16 at-bats in a Halo uniform, Tanner was the Los Angeles/California Angels minor league manager of the 1960s.

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Vernon Wells is a 32-year-old center fielder with a career OPS+ of 108 in 5963 plate appearances. Take all the center fielders since 1901 who racked up between 4472 and 7454 plate appearances through their age-31 seasons (+/- 25% of Wells) while putting up an OPS+ of between 98 and 118, and what do you get?

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So by now, out of desperation, some of us are talking our way into imagining a low-cost, high-speed, home-grown LF platoon of Reggie Willits and Chris Pettit. Or maybe let Juan Rivera out there for 80 games if for some reason we don't get rid of him, but give Reggie maybe half the starts, enjoy the improved outfield D, bat him leadoff. He has a higher lifetime OBP, after all, than Johnny Damon (it's true!), Juan Pierre, Scott Podsednik, and any number of lousy "solutions" to the LF/leadoff position, assuming we're serious about not having the lifetime .400 OBP guy do the job (which begins to make sense when he's the 4th most powerful guy in our punchless lineup).

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Some people are pooh-poohing Adrian Beltre as a possible solution to the Angels' urgent 3B problem by saying he's really not that good a ballplayer. This is, I believe, the opposite of accurate, for reasons we'll get to after the jump. As a taste of the counter-argument, here's something you probabaly did not know: Adrian Beltre is one of the only players in major league history to NEVER -- not once, not even close -- hit as well at home in a season as he did on the road. Playing in offensive mausoleums for 12 of 13 seasons can do that to a guy, severely distorting the numbers we all use to make snap judgments.

For more on Beltre's "walk-year" magic and other (IMO) myths, read on.

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This spring, as some my recall, I built customized lists of comparable hitters for all our main offensive players, basically looking at guys the same age, same position, within 25% of the same number of plate appearances, and plus/minis 10 points of OPS+. From there, through a mix of eye-balling and fatal optimism, I came up with a proposed historical analogue for each.

Now that the crappy season is over, I thought it'd be mildly instructive to see how our guys matched up with their avatars, and what that says about either them or me. First, a reminder of the comps I came up with (note: there's a helluva lot more at each link than the names listed):

Jeff Mathis = Eli Marrero
Mike Napoli = Tom Haller
Kendry Morales = Andres Galarraga
Howie Kendrick = Jose Vidro
Erick Aybar = Chico Carrasquel
Brandon Wood = Kelly Gruber
Maicer Izturis = Brendan Harris*
Juan Rivera = Brian Jordan
Torii Hunter = Mike Cameron
Bobby Abreu = Paul Waner
Hideki Matsui = Brian Downing
* Because Harris is exactly Maicer's age, for the purpose of the exercise below, Izturis' comp will be Vance Law.

One of the many beautiful things about Baseball Reference is that you can take any player, from any season on any team in any era, and re-translate his numbers to what they would correspond to a totally neutral run-scoring environment of 4.42 runs per game (which is dang close to the 2010 AL's lowest-since-1992 number of 4.45), over a 162-game season. So I'll list both the raw numbers, and the adjusted ones. It's gonna be a longish post (surprise!), so take a breath.

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Mike Trout isn't the first Angel to have fans salivating over the unlimited potential of a teenager. Once upon a time there was a dashing and fiercely competitive prep athlete from Glendora named Ed Kirkpatrick, who the Angels also signed at age 17, for the then-significant sum of $20,000, whereupon he immediately began tearing shit up at two levels:

EK, 1962
Lv   G   PA  AB  R   H  2B 3B HR RBI SB/CS  BB  SO  BA   OBP  SLG 
D    45 190 168  35  64 10  7  9  62  2/-   16  17 .381 .442 .685
C    19  53  48   8  17  3  0  3   7  1/0    5   4 .354 .415 .604 
MT, 2009
Rk   39 187 164  29  59  7  7  1  25 13/2   18  28 .360 .418 .506  
A     5  20  15   1   4  0  0  0   0  0/0    4   6 .267 .421 .267  

Kirkpatrick, the 2nd-youngest hitter in the Midwest League to receive significant at bats in 1962, led his league in batting average (by 40 points), OPS (116), and slugging (122), before graduating to the California League to scorch the older guys there, too.

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So there I was, minding my own business on Sunday morning, when the MLB Channel I had on as background noise informed me that Maury Wills was "the shortstop of the '60s." So I says to myself "Self, didn't we sponsor Jim Fregosi's Baseball Reference page with the claim that he was 'the best Major League shortstop from 1961-79'?" Since we have searchable Wins Above Replacement (WAR) on Baseball Reference now, I thought I'd quickly re-visit the topic. But first, let's compare the '60s production of Fregosi and Wills:

NM:  G    PA   AB   R   H   2B  3B HR RBI  SB/CS  BB  SO   BA   OBP  SLG OPS+ 
JF: 1164 4866 4296 565 1160 171 64 88 431  69/31  450 682 .270 .340 .401 117  
MW: 1507 6662 6091 874 1744 136 62 17 369 535/183 439 561 .286 .335 .337  92 

Despite playing 343 fewer games, Fregosi hit more doubles, triples, and (five times as many) more home runs, drove in more runs, drew more walks, had a higher OBP and (much) higher slugging percengage. Wills played more games, hit more singles, stole waaaaay more bases, and scored more runs. And remember, they played in the same stadium for half the decade, so there's not a whole bunch of park distortions in effect.

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Historically bad. Remember that exercise I was doing earlier this year, where I was taking Angel hitters, their performances to date (the end of the 2009 season), then comparing them to players of the same age within +/- 25% of plate appearances and +/- 10% of OPS+? (If not, here's the start of the series, and here's the entry for Brandon Wood.)

Anyway, this is how bad Wood has been: I updated the numbers to reflect his awful 2010, and came up with 42 comparable lousy hitters through age 25. An embarrassing 34 of them are pitchers. I'll let that sink in.

The remaining position players are a collective sucking sound of no-hit catchers and lesser-hit middle infielders: Luis Ordaz, Frank O'Rourke, Luis Gomez, Moe Berg, former Angel Terry Humphrey, Tony Giuliani, Del Young, and Ed Connolly.

Congratulations, Brandon, you've been a marginally better hitter through age 25 than forgotten Mad Men-era swingman Don Cardwell!

NM PA  AB  R  H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO  DP SB/CS  BA  OBP  SLG OPS+
BW 421 398 37 72 7  0 10  31 11 126  9  5/0 .181 .206 .274  26
DC 321 300 24 44 7  0 10  22  7 146  2  1/0 .147 .174 .270  17

I really don't enjoy beating up on a guy when he's down, but Jesus H. Christ. For his sake I really do hope we trade him, even at pennies on the dollar, because if there's any type of hitter Scioscia/Hatcher have proven they can't coach, it's the low-average, high-strikeout power types. And right now the only scenario of him playing involves two injuries in front of him.

Going into today's games, the Angels had the 5th best record in the American League. They also have just one player on the All-Star team. How common is it for a top-6 AL team to have only the minimum of All-Star representation? This common:

2010: Angels (5th)
2006: A's (4th), Angels (6th) 
2005: Indians (5th), A's (6th)
2004: Twins (3rd)
2003: Twins (5th)
2002: Angels (3rd)

Gee, what do THOSE teams have in common? To give you a hint, here's a comparison:
 
From 2002-2009, the Angels made the playoffs 6 times, won one World Series, and averaged 93 wins a season.
From 2002-2009, the Red Sox made the playoffs 6 times, won two World Series, and averaged 94 wins a season.
From 2002-2009, the Yankees made the playoffs 7 times, won one World Series, and averaged 98 wins a season.

Total number of All-Star selections in the 9 seasons since 2002?

Red Sox 47, Yankees 40, Angels 20.

Note, too, that during that period the only AL All-Star manager to refrain from gorging on the selection prerogative was ... Mike Scioscia.

2010: Yankees 6 players so far (team is in 1st place in the AL)
2009: Rays 5 (finished 9th)
2008: Red Sox 7 (3rd)
2007: Tigers 5 (5th)
2006: White Sox 7 (5th)
2005: Red Sox 5 (2nd)
2004: Yankees 8 (1st)
2003: Angels 3 (9th)
2002: Yankees 6 (1st)

The manager's team ended up with the most selections in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2010; and the second most selections (behind the Red Sox in each case) in 2002, 2007, and 2009. Only Scioscia's selections disprove that rule.

Bonus links from last year: Jered Got Jobbed, the Best Angel Non-All-Star Seasons, and Are Angels Disproportionately Snubbed in the All-Star Game? And I need not remind you of the best player in history to never get called to participate in the Midsummer Classic.

As Bruce Chen -- seriously, Bruce Chen -- walked off the mound in the middle of the 8th inning, a frame he hasn't tasted in any game he's started since April 13, 2006, Victor Rojas put it both best and worst: "Perhaps he has figured things out now with his 10th major league club."

The hell he has. What Bruce Chen figured out is the same thing countless pieces of left-handed pus-balling meat have been realizing during Mike Scioscia's otherwise dominant reign: You can beat the 21st century Angels by throwing sub-Moyeresqe portsidery slop, especially when the offense is in full swoon.

Chen, an arm so pointless he was schlepped from the Braves to the Phillies to the Mets to the Expos to the Reds to the Astros to the Red Sox to the Blue Jays to the Orioles in less than FOUR CALENDAR YEARS, was, inexcusably, perfect through 6 innings, though he did have some help in the form of two great David DeJesus (of Montreal) catches in CF. Erick Aybar finally recognized that 85-mph pitches aren't "fastballs" in the 7th, but after Bobby Abreu somehow swung and missed at a third strike, Mike Napoli popped up to end the 0-0 threat.

Ervin Santana was great, but confused Billy Butler for Bilibur Stargell or something, walking him twice and hitting him twice more, including to load the bases in the top of the 8th, setting up a revenge-minded Jose Guillen for a two-run single to left-center that sure did stay up in the air for a while. A Jeff Mathis homer in the bottom of the inning chased Chen and provided a brief impersonation of offensive respectability, but some lousy relief pitching and unclutch-enough hitting by our non-Vlad DH in an exciting 9th sealed our fate at 4.5 back.

Relive the shame in the Game Thread, or just get started on Independence Day, already!

Was just checking out team stats and noticed that the Oakland A's offense is:

* 1st in the AL in sacrifice bunts

* 5th in stolen bases

* 3rd to last in walks, and

* 2nd to last in home runs

I loved Moneyball as much as the next guy, but seeing as how the franchise keeps winning 75 games a year, while building an offense that's basically the opposite of the whole "Beane count" hullaballoo, maybe it's time for, I dunno, a new postscript or something.

So, I was at the Strasburg game last night, and it was one of my very favorite baseball memories. Dude pitches to contact, but people can't make any. Crowd was geeked out of their skulls. That curveball is just unhittable. Great drama, and as in every Nats game I see, Adam Dunn homered. Awesome.

Stephen Strasburg struck out 14 batters in his debut game. Made me wonder, which strikeout pitchers have never struck out that many in a game? So I made a short list:

CC Sabathia (1601 Ks, top 10 six times)
Andy Pettitte (2201, top 10 four times)
Carlos Zambrano (1363, top 10 four times)
Tim Hudson (1436, top 10 four times)
Scott Kazmir (931, top 10 three times, led the league once)
Josh Beckett (1370, top 10 thrice)
Justin Verlander (817, top 10 twice, led the league once)
Roy Oswalt (1546, top 10 twice)
Aaron Harang (1170, top 10 twice, led the league once)
Kevin Millwood (1877, top 10 twice)
John Lackey (1242, top 10 twice)

Obviously plenty more where that came from, considering that only 51 players have accomplished the feat in the past two decades.

Baseball is cool.

What do we want to know about Hideki Matsui that good comps can help us understand? Two things: 1) Considering that he played the first half of his career in Japan, can we still get an idea of how good he has been, historically? And 2) given that he's averaged 55 games missed the past four seasons, just what kind of production can we expect from him in an age-36 year in which not only is Mike Scioscia putting him in the lineup every damned day, but he's even forcing to play "defense" now and then?

I think the answer to 1) is "yes," especially considering Matsui led the AL in games played from 29-31 (hence, giving us an idea about what a healthy Godzilla looks like in his late prime). The answer to 2) could tell us a lot about whether we're going to turn this stinky season around.

For this version of the comps exercise (whose methodology is explained here), I dipped the % of games played at the chosen position (LF) to 50, since a lot of guys like Matsui end up as DHs, or (shudder) even in RF.

#comps: 32
topper: .307/.377/.521, 131 OPS+ Moises Alou 
middle: .267/.367/.444, 124 OPS+ Brian Downing 
ourboy: .292/.370/.482, 124 OPS+ Hideki Matsui 
bottom: .291/.351/.482, 116 OPS+ Raul Ibanez

Top-125 Rankings in Bill James' 2001 Historical Abstract? Of the 29 comps here who had played the bulk of their careers before James' deadline, only one didn't make a Top 125 list at his position, and that's mostly because Rube Bressler spent the first half of his career pitching (and not very well). How good is Hideki Matsui? Well, consider he's smack dab in the middle of this list: Al Simmons 7, Tim Raines 8, Minnie Minoso 10, Goose Goslin 16, Zack Wheat 23, Jim Rice 27, Jose Cruz 29, Heinie Manush 30, Bobby Veach 33, George Foster 34, Kirk Gibson 36, Brian Downing 38, Don Buford 41, Gary Matthews 46, Topsy Hartsel 47, Dusty Baker 54, Gene Woodling 57, Hank Sauer 60, Riggs Stephenson 61, Ben Oglive 64, Lonnie Smith 65, Greg Vaughn 68, Leon Wagner 78, Gus Zernial 96, Jim Lemon 97 (RF), Charlie Maxwell 99, Luis Gonzales 112, and Tilly Walker 114.

Simmons, Goslin, Wheat, Rice, and Manush are in the Hall of Fame. Raines and Minoso deserve to be. I think it's a safe bet that Hideki Matsui is one of the 75 best left fielders to ever play the game.

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So, is Bobby Abreu slowly but surely heading to the Hall of Fame, as Bill Dwyre suggested in today's L.A. Times? We can use our ongoing Angel-comps series (read intro/explainer here) to examine precisely that. First, consider this: There are 181 or so position players in the Hall, of which around 150 were not blocked by segregation (sorry for the lack of exact numbers; they are for some reason difficult for me to find). Here's how Abreu ranks in Major League history in various offensive categories:

BBs:  47
OBP:  52
2Bs:  57
OPS:  71
RCs:  79
XBH:  94
SBs: 106
TOB: 106
SFs: 112
SLG: 125
RUN: 127
RBI: 135
TBs: 146
OPS+ 154
HRs: 178
HIT: 197
AVG: 219

RCs = Runs Created, TOB = Times on Base. If you want to include more esoteric measures like Base-Out Runs Added and Adjusted Batting Wins, he's got quite a few more top-100 showings.

This year Bobby will almost certainly top 1300 runs, 2200 hits, 500 doubles, 1200 RBI, 260 HRs, and 1300 BBs, while keeping his career OBP over .400 and his Slugging close to .500. He's getting there.

Abreu for the last 12 seasons has put up an average season of this:

 G   AB  R   H  2B 3B HR RBI SB/C  BB  K    BA  OBP  SLG OPS+ WS
156 570 104 172 39  4 21  97 28/9 103 122 .301 .406 .497 133  26

That's some pretty boss sauce, with phenomenal durability. Though he's clearly slowing down, and has never been a great outfielder, it's worth pointing out that last year, at age 35, he put up his best MVP finish yet (12th place).

So a look at his comps should be interesting not only in telling us how likely it is that Bobby will fall off a cliff at some point during his current contract, but also in giving us a sense of where he fits in to the Hall of Fame discussion. Onward and upward with the old farts!

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Hard to believe it sometimes, but Torii Hunter is 34 years old. In fact, he'll be 35 July 18, but the league-age cutoff point is June 30, so for the purposes of our ongoing search for good Angel comps he's an old 34-year-old Major League baseball player. Who plays a young man's position.

Freddy Lynn never had more than 400 ABs after age 33; neither did Duke Snider. Bernie Williams hit .263 at 34, and went downhill from there. Dale Murphy hit .245 and played right field, Jimmy Wynn hit .207 and played left. None of the above were worth much from Torii's age on ... and all were better players than Torii Hunter.

So what will a roll on Torii's comp wheel turn up? First read the Mike Napoli/Jeff Mathis entry, to see how we calculate this stuff, then glance at the most recent entry (on Juan Rivera) to see how other Angels have fared thus far. Now let's lower the proverbial shoulder into the figurative catcher blocking the plate of human understanding....

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Let's see, where were we? Yes -- comparing current Angels to their historical positional counterparts who produced roughly the same value. Methods explained here; most recent exercise was for Maicer Izturis. On the infield, I've posited the following comps:

Mike Napoli: Tom Haller
Jeff Mathis: Eli Marrero
Kendry Morales: Andres Galarraga
Howie Kendrick: Jose Vidro
Erick Aybar: Chico Carrasquel
Brandon Wood: Kelly Gruber
Maicer Izturis: Brendan Harris

Since the infield is all guys entering their primes, these made for the most speculative fun (though we'll also have some giggles with the equally young rotation). The outfield, on the other hand, is filled with more settled guys. Well, except for the weirdly shaped career of Juan Rivera.

For Juancho, my search terms here required 40% of your games either in RF or LF, since there isn't an option on Baseball Reference's Play Index that produces "X% of your games in either of the corner outfield spots." From that list I weeded out those who hadn't played more than 50% of their games total in the corner outfield spots, since there's no reason for us to be talking about Al Bumbry or Elston Howard here. Finally, since searching in the usual band of +/- 10 percentage points of our subject brought forth 94 results, I tweaked it to +/- 7. This makes sense, if you think about it -- the more a player plays, the less likely he's going to deviate from his career path. Enough talk, more rawk!

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How do you find comps for a middle infielder who's good enough to start (with an OPS+ of 98 through ages 25-28), but lucky enough to play for a really good team in the process of developing Howie Kendrick, Erick Aybar, Alberto Callaspo, Alexi Casilla, Sean Rodriguez and Brandon Wood? Well, you can't, really -- it's vanishingly rare for a SS/2B who hits that well and doesn't suck defensively to remain stuck in a utility role during his prime years. Usually he gets traded.

So let's run the numbers on Maicer Izturis and see what we come up with. For the purposes of this exercise (whose methodology is explained in this post), I required the hitters to have played at least 10% of their games at each of 2B, SS, and 3B through their age-28 year. Bring on the utilities!

#comps: 16
topper: .254/.338/.355, 96 OPS+ Tony Phillips 
middle: .267/.324/.396, 91 OPS+ Brendan Harris
ourboy: .278/.343/.393, 93 OPS+ Maicer Izturis 
bottom: .259/.309/.326, 84 OPS+ Bobby Valentine 

Note: As I mentioned in my first post of this series, I take mild liberties in choosing people in the above categories. For instance, Pete Kilduff is truly the toppermost of the poppermost here, with an OPS+ of 98 through his age-28 year, but A) who the hell is that?, B) it's a dude whose career started during WWI, and C) there was a very recognizable guy in the number-three slot.

Top-125 Rankings in Bill James' 2001 Historical Abstract? Tony Phillips 67 (RF), Jerry Lumpe 76 (2B), Tommy Helms 99 (2B), Danny O'Connell 117 (2B), Vance Law 121 (3B).

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Number of times the Angels lost 4 out of 5 games in 2009: 9
Number of games the Angels won in 2009: 97

Number of times the Angels lost 4 out of 5 games in 2008: 7
Number of games the Angels won in 2009: 100

In April 2007 the Angels lost 6 straight games, and 8 out of 9. That team won 94 games.

On April 25, 2009, the Angels were 6-11, 5.5 games out of first place.

On April 18, 2007, the Angels were 6-9, 2.0 games out of first place.

And on April 22, 2002, the Angels were 6-14, 10.5 games out of first place.

Since July 1, 2006, a span of 574 regular season games, the Angels have been playing .602 baseball.

Seattle is 1-4. Boston is 1-3. Mark Teixeira is 0 for 16. Milton Bradley is 1-17, Josh Hamilton 1-11. It's early April.

So vilify the sloppy play, complain about the banishment of Mike Napoli, and if you're at the Big A this weekend please do me a favor and get on Torii Hunter's case good & loud about the lollygagging and fraternizing. But fer crying out loud, mix in a little perspective now and then. You don't really want to end up like L.A. Seitz and scareduck, do you?*

* For you newcomers, this is a good-natured dig at two of our longest-running and most-beloved pessimists.

There was a dark lining in the silver cloud of awesomeness that was last night's opener, and that was the palpably nervous performance by forever-touted fee-nom Brandon "Squint" Wood. Had quite a few faithful here wondering if he'd last long in the lineup (made it to Game Two, at least). I figured that looking for comps on a guy who A) hasn't been given much of any kind of shot, and B) has largely stunk up the joint, would be a pointless exercise that at most would produce a tiny bit of fun. But I was wrong!

To recap what we're doing here, read Part I (with explanation o' method), then Parts II, III, and IV. Onward.

#comps: 23
topper: .207/.259/.232, 50 OPS+ Wally Gerber
middle: .186/.207/.326, 41 OPS+ Kelly Gruber
ourboy: .192/.222/.213, 39 OPS+ Brandon Wood
bottom: .202/.228/.256, 28 OPS+ Moe Berg

Top-125 Rankings in Bill James' 2001 Historical Abstract? So help me, the answer to this question is yes -- Kelly Gruber 103, for 3rd base (my search parameters required 50% at either SS or 3B).

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