The March 21st, 2012 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim including Walden has a very rough outing, Morales has his return delayed until Thursday, Trout makes his spring debut and much more…
The Story: Jordan Walden got lit up in his outing yesterday.
The Monkey Says: There is no real reason for his struggle other than he just wasn’t good. The best thing we can say here is that this is only spring training, so there is no reason to panic, but, um, yeah, people are starting to panic. I still have plenty of faith in Walden, but he is going to have to improve quickly to allay a lot of the concerns about his consistency amongst the fans.
The Monkey Says: The Angels are off on Wednesday, so Thursday is the earliest he can come back. This just another reason to believe that Morales is going to have to sit on a regular basis once the regular season begins.
The Story: Mike Trout made his spring debut on Tuesday.
The Monkey Says: He went 0-for-3 with a walk and a caught stealing, which doesn’t matter because he isn’t going to make the Opening Day roster assuming nobody gets injured.
The Story: Mark Trumbo made an errant throw from third base that hit a photographer in the back of the neck.
The Monkey Says: Here’s the thing, if this was Alberto Callaspo, it would be a non-story. But since it is Trumbo, it is a big story because apparently a guy learning to play a new position is not alllowed to make any errors whatsoever.
The Story: C.J. Wilson is taking a Twitter vacation.
The Monkey Says: He may want you to believe that it was because of the Napoli thing, but I think it is really a lot more to do with the fact that it was his turn in the rotation yesterday.
The Story: Did the Angels buy themselves the AL West?
The Monkey Says: Ugh, that phrasing just makes my stomach churn because it stinks of the 90’s Yankees mentality. Worst of all, I can’t really argue against it. The Angels still have several core players that are homegrown, but the fact that they had to pay up for Pujols and Wilson is going to overshadow that for a long, long time.
The Story: ESPN ranked Vernon Wells the 494th best player in MLB.
The Monkey Says: That’s behind Hisanori Takahashi at #460 and Alberto Callaspo at #438. So, yeah, that’s pretty bad. He might be able to bounce back a little bit this season and crack the top 400… if we’re lucky.