Daily Links for the LA Angels including Vlad signs with the Orioles, Yanks considered trading for Kazmir, Young demands a trade from the Rangers and much more…
The Story: Vladimir Guerrero agrees to sign with the Baltimore Orioles.
The Monkey Says: And so ends the speculation of the Halos bringing back Super Vlad and I couldn’t be happier. The last thing I wanted was to see Bourjos back in Triple-A and Bobby Abreu fumbling around in left so that Guerrero can show off his declining bat speed in the middle of the Angel order.
The Story: The Yankees “kicked around” the idea of trading for Scott Kazmir, so says Ken Rosenthal.
The Monkey Says: Which pretty much means someone in the front office said, “Hey, what about Kazmir?” And then he was promptly shouted down.
The Story: Michael Young wants a trade out of Texas.
The Monkey Says: Muahahahahaha! This couldn’t be working out better. The Rangers went out of their way to overpay Adrian Beltre and trade for Mike Napoli all so they could ruin their team chemistry by pissing off their clubhouse leader and putting themselves into a position where they must now trade him for less than full value. This really couldn’t be working out any better for the Angels.
The Story: Did the Angel gloves really improve?
The Monkey Says: The infield is essentially the same, though it will definitely be better with Morales at first full-time instead of a bunch of players learning on the job. The real question is the outfield, which should be better, but how much better largely depends on if Peter Bourjos is able to hold onto his starting job in center.
The Story: Vernon Wells chose baseball over college football.
The Monkey Says: Vernon was allegedly recruited by University of Texas but chose baseball instead. I’d say that decision worked out pretty well for him. In fact, he has 126 million pieces of evidence to prove it.
The Story: The Angels aim to recapture their road swagger.
The Monkey Says: The Halos weren’t a good road team last year, but have been real road warriors in previous years. However, what concerns me more is that the Angels weren’t very good at home last year either and that is usually a very bad sign that there is something deeper plaguing a team than an inability to get their heads on straight on the road.
The Story: The Brewers got screwed out of Mike Trout because of Mark Teixeira.
The Monkey Says: That’s funny to think about, but there is no guarantee the Brewers would have even taken Trout, especially since almost every other team passed on him so that he could fall to #25. It is also worth noting that the Angels had the #24 pick in the draft that year and used it on Randal Grichuk, but it is very likely they would have taken Trout their instead had they not had that extra 25th pick. So really, this is all a moot point.
The Story: Single-game regular season tickets go on sale for the Angels on February 26th.
The Monkey Says: If anyone wants to buy me some tickets, that would be much appreciated.