Daily Links for the LA Angels including Halos use the long ball to defeat the Padres, seven sent down to the minors, Morales is close to being put on the disabled list and much more…
The Story: The Angels homered their way to a 9-6 victory over teh San Diego Padres yesterday.
The Monkey Says: Torii Hunter and Vernon Wells went back-to-back for their first homers in the spring and Mark Trumbo smacked his fifth dinger later on in the same inning. Heck, even Brandon Wood got in on the action with his second spring hom run. The downside to the day though was Joel Pineiro got touched up for four runs on eight hits, including two home runs allowed, over four innings. No worries for Pineiro though as that was really just his first bump in the road this spring and he still managed to fan five batters while issuing just one free pass. Joel blamed the homers on him tinkering with his off-speed stuff during the game, so thta should make us feel a lot better too.
The Story: The Angels demoted seven more players to minor league camp.
The Monkey Says: Ryan Brasier, Ysmael Carmona, Ryan Chaffee, Tyler Chatwood, Andrew Taylor and Tyson Auer all got a ticket to minor league camp, leaving just 40 Angels remaining in camp now. By my calculations, that leaves Kevin Richardson, Alexi Amarista, Kevin Melillo and Gil Velazquez as the only non-roster invitees left in camp.
The Monkey Says: Kendry is still in the early parts of the his running program, which DiGiovanna believes makes it unlikely that Morales will be able to get into a spring game by the end of the coming weekend, the Angels’ pre-set drop-dead date for him to be given clearance to start the regular season. I’m actually starting to think that it really is best for Kendry if he takes the first 15 days of the regular season off, just to make sure he is 100% over the course of the very long season.
The Story: Hisanori Takahashi is dealing with survivor’s guilt in the wake of the disasters in Japan.
The Monkey Says: As callous as it may sound, I hope that Takahashi isn’t too distracted by what is happening in his homeland to give his full focus to baseball. These kind of thing affect everyone differently, so it could be that Takahashi uses baseball as his escape or the trouble in Japan could have a negative effect on his performance early on in the season.
The Story: It now seems that every AL West team is unsettled at closer in the wake of Andrew Bailey’s injury.
The Monkey Says: Oakland might actually be stuck with Brian Fuentes as their closer now. Good luck with all that. Texas, ironically, really needs Frank Francisco back if they are going to move Neftali Feliz into the rotation. Seattle will at least eventually get David Aardsma back, whereas the Angels will likely be going with some kind of closer by committee.
The Story: Fernando Rodney is the oddball of the Angel lockerroom.
The Monkey Says: If this was supposed to make me feel better about him being the Angel closer, it pretty much does the opposite.