Best bullpen in the Show

The first month of the season the Angel relievers were known as the "blow-pen" of baseball. Ernesto Frieri was a rocky one-pitch closer, Joe Smith was an unknown name to Halo fans, Salas never got comfortable and home product Kevin Jepsen has had had one good season in six big league seasons. No lead was safe.

However since June 25th, the Angels bullpen has an ERA of 1.64. Frieri was traded for Pirates' Jason Grilli, who would take on the non-pressure 6th inning role. 1.50 ERA in 12 innings. Kevin Jepsen has a sub-2 ERA in 46 innings and has not given up a run in his last 13 innings while hitters are batting .073. He's got the 7th inning. Joe Smith has given up just five hits and no runs in his last 16 innings. While I like him as the closer, I love him in the 8th inning. The caboose of the reliever train is the newest Angel, Houston Street, who.. (go ahead and guess) has not given up a run in his 6 innings in red. Wow what a surprise! A closer with a .093 ERA is worth three top minor leaguers when your in the race. This is especially true when Roth, Rasmus, and Morin all have sub-3 ERA's while Santiago continues to improve as an inning eater (especially during all these extra inning extravaganzas).

Grili 6, Jepsen 7, Smith 8, Street 9...game over.

Halo role players continue to play well. David Freese's bat has seem to come alive and Skaggs, Richards, and Shoemaker have continued to impress. The "stars" of the team need to become reliable as we get closer to October. Whether its competing with Oakland in the division, or facing Detroit or Baltimore in the playoffs, guys like Weaver, Wilson, Pujols (currently hitting alright), Trout, and Hamilton have to be guys who step up in the spotlight. This being the best record in team history to this point, its starting to have the feeling of a memorable year. These names can complete the best all around team in baseball.

Let's go get those A's!

Go Halos.

Why every Angel fan should love Erick Aybar

If I told you that your team would be given a shortstop for the next decade that was going to be a switch hitter, bat .280, have gap power, steal bases, never strike out more than 80 times a season, can bunt for hits, has extended range defensively, stellar glove, and a strong arm... you would be pretty satisfied right?

Here's Erick Aybar for ya. Nine solid years so far with the Angels and no one seems to give him the recognition he deserves or gives him the credit for his baseball IQ. Let's also not forget, he's hit practically everywhere in Scioscia's lineups one time or another. Versatility, reliability, magnificent defense, feisty hitter, career long Angel. This is how I view Erick Aybar.

Today he was very deserving to be named to the All-Star team replacing the talented Alex Gordon, although Aybar had better stats than him and shortstop Alexi Ramirez. I was on the Garret Richards train too, but Sale is a phenomenal pitcher with a fantastic first half. The fact is before today, Aybar should've gotten the same publicity and recognition from the fans and organization to be pushed into Minnesota.

Aybar was basically Vladimir Guerrero's little nephew for the years they played together. Still to this day, its hard to find another player who has more fun day in and day out than Erick Aybar, and it is a pleasure to watch him in an Angels uniform everyday making spectacular plays.

One story I have about Aybar was my old roommate and fellow Angel fan Mike Belcher was a middle infielder at LaVerne University and at this time graduated and got a job in the city of Orange right next to Angel Stadium. It was during a lunch break at an outdoor mall called "The Block" that Mike saw Aybar walking through with two hoochie mamas around his arms. Mike saw him and yelled "Hey Aybar! You're one of my favorite players man!" Aybar looked at him with a big smile and yelled "Thanks man!" and kept walking. It just makes you smile, laugh, and shake your head...gotta love Erick Aybar.

Some Aybar stats:

2011 Gold Glove winner
Top 5 Fielding % among shortstops over last 5 years
Top 10 in AL sacrifice hits in last 7 years
Career 74% Stolen Base success rate (121/43)

He also competes with Swisher's lippers.

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!

2nd Oldest?

Did you know, having opened in 1966, Angel Stadium is the second oldest park in the American League after Fenway Park.  Here is the nine oldest ballparks in major league baseball. Tampa Bay Rays' Trop comes in at #8 showing how many stadiums have been built in the last quarter century.


Fenway Park            1912
Wrigley Field           1914
Dodger Stadium       1962
Angel Stadium         1966 (April)
McAfee Coliseum    1966 (September)
Kauffman Stadium   1973
Rogers Centre          1989
Tropicana Field        1990
US Cellular Field     1991

Erstad's new millennium hit parade

In 2000, Darin Erstad set the Angels single season batting average record, hitting .355. Behind him is Rod Carew's .339 average in 1983. Erstad's 240 hits that year is also a franchise mark, one that is distant from the rest. Garrett Anderson has flirted with 200 hits multiple times in his career, only surpassing it once in 2003 with 201 hits. Other than that, no one even comes close. Angels current center fielder Mike Trout might have a say during his next six years with the Halos. During that 2000 campaign, Erstad led the American League in hits, singles, at-bats, he was second in total bases and third in runs scored. With a major league-leading 100 hits in 61 games, he became the fastest to reach the 100-hit mark since 1934. He reached 200 hits faster than any player in 65 years. Erstad was just 26 years old at the end of the season. He became the first player in Major League history to record 100 RBIs as a lead-off hitter as he won the AL Silver Slugger Award. Erstad's .355 average was still second best to Nomar Garciaparra who hit .372 that season.

This Nolan Express or "Nuke"

Angels' Nolan Ryan awlays threw a lot of pitches. In 1972, 73, 74, 76, 77, and 78, Ryan led or tied for the lead of the American League in both strikeouts and base on balls. In 1975, it was the Angels own Frank Tanana who replaced Ryan as the strikeout leader of the American League. You could say he had a little "Nuke" in him. Thank goodness Bull Durhams Crash Davis wasn't the catcher. He would demand for more ground balls because strikeouts are fascist and ground balls are more democratic.

1962 All-Star pairs

The first members of the Los Angeles Angels to start in an All-Star Game were outfielder Leon Wagner and second baseman Billy Moran in 1962. What some may not know was that there were two All-Star games in 1962, one in Washington DC and one in Chicago at Wrigley Field. Both Leon and Billy started both games. In game one, President John F. Kennedy threw out the first pitch and would share some words with an older but still All-Star caliber Stan Musial.

 

 "A couple years ago they told me I was too young to be president and you (Stan Musial) were too old to be playing baseball. But we fooled them." - President John F. Kennedy

The first game the National League won 3-1 on the pitching of Don Drysdale and Juan Marichal while Maury Wills picked up the MVP. It was the first All-Star Game MVP given out, and Wills entered the game in the 6th inning.

Game 2 at Wrigley was a whole different ball game with the American League winning 9-4. Four home runs were hit in the game including one by Leon Wagner in the 4th inning off Art Mahaffey in the 4th inning landing Wagner the MVP in Chicago. This would be the last win in the All-Star battle for the AL for the next decade.

Ryne Duren and Ken McBride were named to the All-Star team in 1961, but neither appeared in the game that year.