Is anyone interested in a cheap, young secondbaseman who is on fire right now and likely on track to fulfill his future batting champion potential after a brief bump in the road earlier in the year? Surely someone out there would be willing to pay top dollar for this fine specimen.
Maybe the Angels should send more struggling hitters to the minors.
There is little doubt that Howie Kendrick caught the attention of some prospective Angel trade partners with the hitting clinic he put on today as he single-handedly beat the Tribe into submission with three hits, including a home run, and five runs driven in. This little outburst couldn’t have come at a better time for the Angels who are in the midst of trying to pull off some significant trades and need all the valuable trade chips they can horde.
To start the season Kendrick was one of those nice trade chips, but his early season nosedive sent his value into the tank. But since returning from a brief exile to the minors, Kendrick is slowly reconstructing that value, albeit slowly. But yesterday’s display of both power and run production should hopefully rekindle some of those fantasies of Howie becoming the next great batting champ in the minds of GMs around the league. The emergence of Maicer Izturis as a quality everyday secondbaseman has made Kendrick expendable despite his return to future star status and if the Angels can now use Kendrick’s surge to find a way to pull off a blockbuster deal, then they we are all going to look back at this game as the reason they were able to make it happen.
Good News:
- Thank the baseball gods for John Lackey. The scorching hot Indian line-up could barely even touch Big John. Ace? We don’t need no stinking ace.
- That’s two games in a row now that Kendry Morales has collected an extra-base hit off of a southpaw. Looks like he might have finally found that natural right-handed stroke we keep hearing so much about and now provides the Angels with yet another convenient excuse not to use Brandon Wood… ever.
- With one game left in the month, Bobby Abreu has now posted 23 RBIs for the second consecutive month. After knocking in just 21 runs total the first two months of the season it is amazing to see just how big a run producer Abreu has become especially when he still has yet to display any kind of consistent home run power.
Bad News:
- What was with Brandon Wood pinch-hitting in the 8th inning? The game was probably over, but not a guarantee, especially after the events of the last two games. I can’t help but wonder if Sosh was on strict orders to try and find Wood some playing time because there are scouts for other teams in the stands that want to seem him for a potential trade.
- Bobby Mosebach just had to come in and start getting knocked around in the ninth inning, didn’t he? Haven’t we had enough of that this series? I started having post-traumatic stress flashbacks. Let’s not do this again please.
- Why the heck didn’t Robb Quinlan play? The guy finally started hitting and then he rides the pine in favor of Reggie Willits against a ripe for the picking lefty like Laffey? C’mon, Sosh, you know better than that.
Halo Hero:
- Howie Kendrick
While Lackey’s strong start was probably more important in the grand scheme of things, Kendrick’s overall numbers were vastly superior and made for his best game of the year by far.