2 Angels players are missing games post-deadline for incredibly abnormal reasons

Despite what the majority of the team's followers believed Perry Minasian should do at the trade deadline, the Angels' general manager was forced by his owner to buy pieces to ramp up for August. Minasian stated that the reasoning behind holding onto his trade pieces and buying Andrew Chafin, Luis García and Oswald Peraza for virtually nothing was to getting his young core group of Angels experience in playing games that actually matter. Well, in order to play in games that matter you need to win games. In order to win games, you need to have your players available.

In the days right after the deadline, both Mike Trout and Yoán Moncada were forced out of the lineup. Trout and Moncada are both battling knee injuries and have an extensive history of missing games...but the reasons the team's starting DH and 3B are missing games thankfully (but oddly) have nothing to do with their knees.

2 Angels players are missing games post-deadline for incredibly abnormal reasons

In typical Angels fashion, a bug was going around the Angels' clubhouse the week of the trade deadline. As a result, Mike Trout was forced out of the first game post-deadline and the first game of August -- a month that historically is unkind to the franchise. As a result of that result, the Angels lost back-to-back games to the Chicago White Sox (who somehow possess a better run differential than the Angels). Trout came back and the Angels did win their next two.

The Angels posted their lineup for the second game of three against the Tampa Bay Rays, a team the Angels need to distance themselves from in the playoff picture, and Yoán Moncada was off the lineup card. Fans would not have been faulted if they thought the oft-injured Moncada finally succumbed to the knee injury that has forced him to not be able to hit right-handed.

Well, turns out Moncada is out the next two games against Tampa Bay because he is in Miami taking his United States citizen test (MLB.com's Rhett Bollinger was first on the report). Between the timing of this test and the injury bug, one would not fault Angels fans for freaking out. This team needs to be fully operational if they are to actually make a playoff push, and it stinks that the Angels' lineup is disadvantaged even though it's awesome that Moncada will be able to become a US citizen.

Niko Kavadas is back with the Los Angeles Angels to temporarily fill Moncada's spot on the active roster while he's on the Restricted List. Fans would have thought that a lineup without Moncada would slot Luis Rengifo in at third base and Christian Moore at second base, but Ray Montgomery is going with Peraza at third and Rengifo is starting on the bench.

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