The March 8th, 2012 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim including Angels suffer their first loss of the spring, Giants kick an Angels scout out of their facility, Weaver says he will miss Mathis and much more…
The Story: The Angels suffered their first loss of the spring, falling 6-4 to the Mariners.
The Monkey Says: Congrats, Seattle, this might be the only time this year you beat the Halos. The noteworthy development of this game is that Mark Trumbo played three innings at third base. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a single ball to make a play on. Oh well.
The Monkey Says: The two teams are saying they kissed an made up, but Giants manager Bruce Bochy still seems to think he did nothing wrong by having the scout ejected. This will no doubt be brought up again when these two teams meet in interleague play.
The Story: Jered Weaver says he will miss Jeff Mathis.
The Monkey Says: He’s probably the only one.
The Story: Mike Trout is out of action with the flu and may not play in games for another week.
The Monkey Says: This is something of a blessing in disguise as it should make it harder for Trout to make a case to win a roster spot that the Angels are not going to give him. PR disaster avoided thanks to a stomach virus!
The Story: Vernon Wells is a prime candidate to be released this season.
The Monkey Says: It certainly is possible, but I don’t think the team will make such a move lightly. He would have to be truly terrible (again) for them to dump him, in part because they could probably use him as bench depth since he doesn’t seem the type to complain too much about getting benched if he fails to hit two seasons in a row. Hopefully this is a bridge the Angels won’t ever have to cross.
The Story: Jerry Dipoto says the bullpen will go forward with the palyers currently in camp with the team.
The Monkey Says: This goes against the rumor of them shopping for a southpaw reliever, but it does make more sense. It is also possible he is just plain not being honest with us.
The Story: The Angels are ninth in Fangraphs’ shorstop positional power rankings.
The Monkey Says: I can’t argue with that, but I think we all know that Aybar has the ability to either put the Angels way down the list or even a few more spots up it.