Daily links for the LA Angels including Scioscia’s decision on Napoli is one of the worst, the PTBNL in the Fuentes trade is named, Bulger and Stokes activated from the DL and much more.
The Story: Mike Scioscia’s shunning of Mike Napoli ranks as one of the worst managerial decisions of the year.
The Monkey Says: Naps definitely should have played more this season, but I don’t know if it was one of the five worst decisions in baseball. It isn’t as if Napoli has been ignored totally, after all, he will be setting a new career-high in at-bats in the next few games.
The Story: Loek Van Mil has been traded to the Angels to complete the trade of Brian Fuentes.
The Monkey Says: The Angels promised that the prospect would have upside, but they took it too literally. Van Mil is the tallest player in professional baseball at 7’1″. The Netherlands born product is the very definition of a project as he is 25 years old and still pitching in relief at Double-A where he has gotten shelled so far this year. Just to give you an idea of how highly Van Mil is thought of around the league, it should be noted that the Twins had to designate him for assignment when to make room for Fuentes and no team claimed him. The general reaction here is that folks are upset with such a poor return on Fuentes, but remember that the Twins really are only getting him for six weeks and paying his entire salary over that time, so there never really was much of a chance of them getting anything significant back.
The Story: Jason Bulger and Brian Stokes have been activated from the disabled list.
The Monkey Says: Bulger will be a welcome addition by all, meanwhile Brian Stokes will only be welcomed by Scott Kazmir who will just be glad to finally have someone else on the active roster with a worse ERA than his. Technically, these are the first of the annual September callups, but don’t expect any real prospects to be promoted until next week when the minor league regular season is over.