Don Baylor is the All-Star

It seemed like a bad omen when Don Baylor was idiotically thrown behind the plate to catch the first pitch on opening day from Vladimir Guerrero. Baylor, who has had bone marrow cancer was asked to squat for the outlandish Vladdy Daddy. Baylor broke his right femur trying to catch the pitch. The entire stadium and every fan watching had the air sucked out of them. Whoever set this combo up in the Angels organization did not think this through.  The Angels ended up getting blown out by Seattle 10-3 in that ballgame. Right or wrong, I heavily blame this omen for the Angels rocky start to the season. Knowing Vladdy's arm and that he's still not that old, it would've been smart to put an active player back there...or Dino Ebel.

For the first month, the Angels relief pitchers were known as the "blowpen" for obvious reasons. Then when the pitching started coming around in May, the hitters went quiet. It seemed as though every hitter was trying to pull every pitch that was thrown to them. Approaches at the plate were abysmal, and every ball in play was predictable.  It was hard to watch as broadcasters would say "The Angels AGAIN are 1-14 with runners on base." Then Hamilton and Calhoun went down with injuries. It was all coming back to the bad omen.

Unexpectedly, the bench players started to come through and there was a different hero every night. Pujols and Trout were slumping, but Cowgill, Cron, and company were picking up the slack. The Angels would finally break .500. Slowly Calhoun and Hamilton came back, but the Angels still couldn't put it together with their stars and role players. Pujols especially was struggling as he dropped below a .150 average with RISP.

Then on June 25th, it was annoucned that Don Baylor would be back in the dugout as the full time hitting coach. Since that day, six Angels have hit well over .300, some like Trout, Freese and Kendrick are even over .350 including Albert Pujols who is hitting .370 with 16 RBI's since that Tuesday. From watching every game on TV, you could tell the complete turnaround in the hitter's approaches. Right-handed hitters are peppering right center and left-handed hitters are using left center. Three times this past week Pujols came up with multiple runners in scoring position and all three times he got hits, two of them being dumps into right center rather than being roll overs to short.

One of those at-bats followed with a Hamilton sac fly to center, an Aybar line drive over short (from the left side) and a base hit up the middle by Kendrick. All of the sudden its a whole different team in the lineup, and I personally believe it is all due to the 1979 AL MVP and 3x Silver Slugger winner Don Baylor being back on the bench with the guys. Even though Baylor was a .260 lifetime hitter, do you remember how good the offense was in Tempe during his first spring training with the Angels? Coincidence...I don't think so.

The team chemistry and clubhouse seems to be doing great thanks to the personality of Mike Trout and some of the team vets such as Aybar and Kendrick (who are the currently the longest tenured middle infield combination in baseball). They look like they are having fun, but now with their refined hitting approaches they will be winning more ball games. The offense is stacked on paper, but sometimes it takes that extra guy to get everyone thinking the right way at the plate. Dare we call it the Tony Gwynn approach? For now I'm calling it the "Thank God Don Baylor is back approach."

Even though the Angels are only sending Trout to Minnesota, everyone is playing well and playing together like all-stars including the last 11 game home win streak that was recently snapped. Hard to catch the A's but right now is a great time to be an Angels fan. As I speak, Pujols just hit a go-ahead home run to center field against Toronto in the 7th. GO HALOS!