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After the 2nd inning of last night’s game against the Red Sox, with starter Ervin Santana already at 52 pitches, I expected that it would be another long night of watching the bullpen flounder around, trying to get more outs than the amount of runs they’d give up, and probably failing. Over the night five innings, Santana surprised me and probably many others by rebounding and going 7 strong innings, giving up 1 run, while allowing 7 hits, 1 BB, and 7 K and throwing 115 pitches in route to a no-decision. After a game in which Saunders [...]

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I’m sure by now everyone has noticed, but in case you haven’t, Mike Napoli hasn’t been playing much lately. And apparently, he’s not very happy about it. I can’t really say I blame him. If I’m being honest here, I’m not terribly happy about it either.
In the Angels’ first 11 games, Napoli has played in 4 games, with Mathis handling the rest. To be fair to Mathis, he hasn’t hit like Jeff Mathis in those games, sporting a current line of .333/.346/.458, and there’s something to be said for going with the hot hand. Of course, there’s also [...]

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Before the 2009 season, Kendry Morales was the much-hyped prospect from Cuba that was stuck first behind Casey Kotchman, and then Mark Teixeira at first base. With Kotchman traded for Teixeira, and the Angels unable to resign Tex after the 2008 season, it was up to Morales to give the Angels a solid, power bat at first base. As everyone knows, he delivered better than most anyone would’ve realistically expected him to.
Morales had seen playing time with the major league club, registering over 400 Plate Appearances between 2006 and 2008, though he only compiled a .249/.302/.408 line, which [...]

There was a fascinating write up over on FanGraphs yesterday that took the predictions fan voters made on how teams would do for the season and, using a pretty complex simulation, calculated the chances of each team winning their division, winning the Wild Card, and winning the playoffs. As mentioned, the simulation is fairly complex, and instead of trying to explain it and just making myself look silly I’ll let FanGraphs handle that for me.
Sadly, the news for the AL West as a whole was pretty mixed, and for the Angels it was mostly bad. While the Yankees have literally [...]