6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Josh Hamilton's ignominious ending of this game — walking away from first base, which allowed catcher Jason Castro to double him off — was certainly its most memorable moment, but the fact that the Angels were three-hit by Bud Norris should have been a much bigger concern. Norris owns a career 5.25 ERA on the road, nearly a full two runs higher than his 3.50 ERA at home. The Angels didn't get a man past first base all night — no batter had a chance with RISP — and so the vaunted offense, the thing Arte spent so much money allegedly fixing last year, failed to show up at all. Even Mike Trout, last year's wunderkind, went 0-for-4, and looked horrible doing it, including a three pitch strikeout to end the eighth. Anyone who doesn't believe Trout is in the midst of a powerful downturn hasn't been watching his at-bats.

Some years ago, when the A's were wretched and the Angels on what now appears to be the final season of their long post-2002 competence, Philip Michaels wrote that the A's are like Lourdes for other teams: they'll cure what ails ya. So the Angels now, afflicted by bad pitching, starting (as last night with Tommy Hanson) and relief, and offensive offense.

I'll be taking some days off from the park. Maybe they'll figure it out; maybe they won't. But this isn't their year, and the sooner they stop letting contracts like Hamilton's, the better.

Recap

The blithe details of the game belie the kind of team I believe the Angels now are, one directly reflected in the current standings. Only a half game ahead of the hapless Astros, they would be in last place in the 2012 AL West. As then, once more they find ways to lose. While the prior losses that mostly got us to this state were close, this one wasn't, embarrassingly handed to the team by last year's division winning A's. I haven't paid much attention to spring training, owing to an extended vacation in New Zealand virtually all of February that quenched any desire I had to leave home for any reason whatsoever, but what I did see of the Angels in Arizona was disheartening, the bullpen especially.

C.J. Wilson's annoying habit of exploding one inning of every single start continued, and right away with the first, in which he surrendered three runs in a horrid mess of walks and singles, as a drunk man might keep retching long after disgorging the contents of his stomach. But then — and only after surrendering a solo homer to Coco Crisp to start the second — he settled down, and actually managed to outpitch the A's starter, Jarrod Parker, the latter only lasting 3.1 innings.

Usually when you can chase the other team's starter, it's a pretty good sign you've got a shot at a win. But by this point, the Halos were still down 4-2. They eventually turned that around in the sixth to make it 5-4 in an inning that saw the dubiously hired Josh Hamilton make his lone contribution, a sac fly to tie the game.

So the end of hope. The Angels held the A's at bay through two outs of the seventh, with Scott Downs — who has been dreadful this year, mostly — posting a very respectable inning, to give way to Kevin Jepson, who had been doing fairly well. As it happened, that was a horrible mistake, for as the Register's Jeff Fletcher tweeted, pinch hitter John Jaso hits righties better over his career by about .250 points of OBP (.789 vs. .539). While it wasn't exactly predictable that Jaso would homer, he did, and so, later, did Brandon Moss, who uncharacteristically hit 21 last year. A lesson, perhaps made starker by the enthusiastic boos that accompanied Jepson when he slunk back into the dugout after finally retiring DH Nate Freiman, four batters after his entrance into the game.

The game featured a mess in the offense, too, as the Angels stranded thirteen base runners, and headliner Josh Hamilton went 0-for-4 with a sac fly as duly noted before. Not a propitious start for the homestand, or the season. It is the sort of thing that makes you wonder whether the owner can be fired.

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Various observations:

• The sudden Dodger Stadium-length concession lines at the park that I expected were a Freeway Series, early season anomaly continued unabated. People I know at certain concession stands who were competent and fast (the bartender Chet at the tequila stand in my section, 530 or thereabouts) are gone, replaced by someone I do not know who is vastly his inferior. And everywhere, long, long, slow lines.
• Verizon data is finally slow and awful during the game. My 4G LTE WiFi card is next to useless during the game, constantly downshifting to 3G, though AT&T is scarcely better.
• I haven't done a thorough look-see at the concessions, but the Chronic Taco in the Pavilion section is woefully understaffed and painfully (and to my eye, unnecessarily) slow. That's too bad, because it's probably the best food in the house at the moment. I recommend their same-branded stand in the third base entryway.
• In case you missed it: Jered Weaver will be out 4-6 weeks thanks to a comebacker in his last start that nailed his elbow. I wonder, given how badly he pitched Sunday in Texas, whether it wasn't a stress fracture worsened by impact. Update 4/11: Duh, injury was to his non-pitching elbow.

ESPN Box

Labels: angels, athletics, recaps

MLB Trade Rumors reports that Vernon Wells is on his way to the Bronx; return unknown. We shall see what the return is, but anything that results in his disappearance off the 25-man is a good deal, even it means they eat most of his salary. Deets to come.

Update: LOL.

Update 3/25: Via BTF (and who doesn't love them for the wonderful commenters, a fine exception to the usual proscription on reading comments on the Internet), USA Today's Bob Nightengale reports that the Angels will eat $28-29M of his deal. Still a net plus.

It has been a great long time since I read the wonderful Only Baseball Matters about anything, which is really my loss, because I missed this thoughtful post about steroids in the context of the Lance Armstrong revelations. Excerpt:

I have worked in construction for almost 35 years. I live in constant pain. I’ve already had surgery on my right elbow, I am going to have surgery on my left in a couple of months. I am getting HGH injections in my right shoulder, the left is next. I have just begun a topical cream regimen of steroids, oral DHEA, and a variety of supplements and vitamins, all in an effort to keep working. To provide for my family. In a way, I have done whatever it takes, I have lived a “win at all costs” life. There were times where I knew I was damaging my body in unfixable ways, all the days that I took pain killers, the multiple times I asked my doctors to give me corti-steroidal injections so I could finish the job. I’ll be paying the price for those choices for the rest of my life. I knew it at the time, and I know it now.

Were I a football player, baseball player, or a professional cyclist, my “job” would require me to win. To keep my “job” I would have to produce, I would have to be at least as good as the worst player in my field. And I can guarantee you that I would have been availing myself of every medical advance known at the time. It is absurd to me to suggest that I would have had to consider whether somebody else approved of my life-altering decisions.

Speaking as someone who strongly believes we each own ourselves — bodies, minds, and work — I find this highly compelling.

Labels: drugs

The Dodgers have announced a deal with cable TV company Time Warner that will give the team its own network. I scarcely need to add how this will affect Fox, who would then be shut out of one of the principle reasons for its existence, but what truly scares me is the prospect that we could have an extended blackout period in non-Time Warner cable operators as everyone negotiates carriage fees. It could easily go that Vin Scully's voice is not heard in a significant number of homes on the eve of his retirement.

Update 1/23: The deal supposedly could be worth $7 to $8 billion over 20 years, which would mean a minimum of $350M per annum, with as much as $2.7 billion subject to revenue sharing (which, huh?)

The addition of a new Dodgers network would bring the number of local sports channels in Los Angeles to six, the most in any major city in the United States. Besides Time Warner Cable's SportsNet and Deportes, and Fox's Prime Ticket and Fox Sports West, the Pac-12 Conference also has its own channel here. Fox Sports West carries Los Angeles Kings and Los Angeles Angels games.

"That's too many channels," said Marc Ganis, a sports industry consultant in Chicago. "I can't imagine that is sustainable on a long-term basis."

Ganis has been something of a go-to guy for quotes about the business of LA teams for the Times dating back, at least, to the McCourt acquisition of the Dodgers. And while he's been kind of a gloomy Gus about the crazy nature of these deals, I share his skepticism that this is going to go off without a hitch. "The Dodger agreement with Time Warner Cable may be a tipping point", the LAT piece reads, as far as the willingness of cable networks to pony up for a sports channel that is double what Fox Sports West is charging ($5/user*month for the proposed network).

Labels: dodgers, tv

Alex Taberrok at Marginal Revolution tries to sell the standard-issue cable TV spiel that non-sports consumers aren't being ripped off by cable TV pricing practices:

Here is where the LA Times and the others go very wrong – they reason that $30 of the $40 charged is due to sports so each person is paying $7.50 for football ($7.50*4=$30) and $2.50 for Top Chef ($2.50*4=$10) and, therefore, the Top Chef viewer is being ripped off because 3/4 of their bill is going to support programming they never watch!

...

Conceptually it’s much clearer to say that each person is being charged $10 for the programming that they most want to watch.

Yet this does not change the underlying truth that the bill is still what it is! More of a sports fan's bill goes toward the things they prefer to watch, while less of someone who likes "Top Chef", say. The LAT article can be found here:

So far, people seem willing to pay. But the escalating costs are triggering worries that, at some point, consumers will begin ditching their cable and satellite subscriptions.

"We've got runaway sports rights, runaway sports salaries and what is essentially a high tax on a lot of households that don't have a lot of interest in sports," said John Malone, the cable industry pioneer and chairman of Liberty Media. "The consumer is really getting squeezed, as is the cable operator."

A key concern is that the higher bills driven by sports are being shouldered by subscribers whether they watch sports or not. National and local sports networks typically require cable and satellite companies to make their channels available to all customers.

"I pay $98 a month for cable and half of that is for sports?" said Vincent Castellanos, 51, a fashion stylist who lives in Los Feliz. "I've never once gone to a single sports channel. I wasn't even aware I was paying for it. I want my money back. Who do I call?"

As much as Taberrok might like to elide this, he can't ignore what's happening in San Diego with the Padres, which is a precursor to the whole house of cards falling down.

Labels: tv

Blackstone Group, one of the corporate entities that owns the Dodgers, successfully quashed a move for discovery that would grant her access to just about everything regarding the subsequent sale of the Dodgers. She only made out with $131M in the divorce settlement, while Frank got $2.1B. I really don't care, so long as they're both no longer in the picture in Chavez Ravine. (Hat tip to my Facebook pal John Patterson.)

Labels: dodgers, mccourts

Eno Sarris at Fangraphs on how the new schedule will affect the NL's use of the DH. Basically, it comes down to: keep a full-time DH (i.e. pretend you're in the AL anyway), use a pinch-hitter, move an aging or bad-glove guy into the slot, or most intriguingly, add someone to the roster in June. Andre Ethier, whose contract is now pretty pricey for a guy who can only hit righties, starts to look a little better in that light.

Update: Interesting idea from Baseball Prospectus' Russell A. Carleton: let the teams decide whether they want to use the DH in their home park for the whole year:

Some time prior to the free agent period starting (so before the World Series ends), teams are required to make a decision. For the next season, they can decide whether their home park will be a DH park or a pitcher-batting park. The decision holds all year, but teams can switch back and forth from season to season as they desire. Everyone submits their choices in a sealed envelope and they all get revealed live. How fun would the day after that be?

Labels: dh rule, rules