Remember how Mike Scioscia was starting to feel pretty good about the Angel offense? Not anymore he ain’t!
The Angels announced today that BOTH Torii Hunter (groin) and Vladimir Guerrero (knee) have been placed on the disabled list. Taking their place on the major league roster will be Brandon Wood and Bobby Wilson.
Neither injury is anticipated to cost Hunter or Vlad a significant amount of time, but still, having them on the DL is a bad sign, particularly for Guerrero who can’t seem to stay healthy at all anymore. Now the Angels are left with a giant sinkhole in the middle of the order (and its name is Gary Matthews). Let’s hope that Juan Rivera continues to be on fire.
Even though Brandon Wood is getting the call up, don’t count on him getting a major shot at filling the now vacant DH role with Vlad out. That Bobby Wilson was recalled as well strongly indicates that Mike Scioscia is going to use Mike Napoli at DH on a semi-regular basis while Jeff Mathis works as the main backstop. When Naps isn’t DHing, I strongly suspect Sosh will use the DH spot to continue finding ways to have Erick Aybar, Maicer Izturis and Howie Kendrick in the line-up at the same time, because you can never have enough . So all of you Free Brandon Wood supports (myself included) shouldn’t go getting too excited. Actually, now that I think about it, Angel fans shouldn’t get too excited in general now that the team is going to be badly undermanned for the next two weeks at least. All I can say is thank goodness the All-Star Break is right around the corner.
Speaking of which, this means Torii won’t be playing in the Mid-Summer Classic, so maybe Chone Figgins might still get the All-Star call after all.