home sweet home?

Well after a very hectic last couple of weeks, I'm finally back home in Southern California for the summer.

And just about the time that the Halos returned from their marathon 14-game road trip. Unfortunately, me being home means that my mlb.tv account is useless and I'm once again dependent on Terry. Though I'm not complaining about not seeing last night's game.

Last night started promising enough, with Saunders breezing through 2 innings (despite all those fly balls) and the Halos scoring some early runs thanks to Frandsen. It seemed like Joe could wiggle out of the jam in the 3rd - until Ryan Braun sent the ball over the fence for a grand slam. And Saundo never really recovered. Those that didn't hit the ball hard, he walked, regressing to his early season form.

(Terry mentioned a perplexing split between Joe's home and away performances. Much like Abreau's hitting splits, those kind of extreme results at home and on the road are interesting.)

Of course, it was clear that it was just one of those games, so the real news was Aybar's injury. After seeing the replay, I don't think that there was any intent from McGehee - it was just an unfortunate result of a hard play and an errant throw. Hopefully Aybar is only out for a week or so, because the Angels' infield depth is already stretched at the seams.

With the ineptitude of BWood, injury of Kendry, and fragile-ness of Izzy, the Angels are running out of quality players to plug into holes. Frandsen has been a pleasant surprise and very much a critical piece. But it'd be wishful thinking to believe that the Angels can pull another one of those out of Salt Lake. Aybar's injury needs to be short-lived, otherwise the Angels are in real trouble. The ironic thing is that in the preseason, many talking heads and bloggers (like me!) noted the lack of the usual Angels depth. They just figured the weak point was in the aging outfield, rather than the young, homegrown infield. But while none of the outfielders (including Matsui!) have hit the DL, five infielders have (Wilson, Mathis, BWood, Izzy, KMo). Just goes to show the unpredictability of a season.

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Before coming home, I gave myself a full day to relax (away from packing/moving) and celebrate the end of a tough quarter. It took the whole morning to travel by bus + BART, but I got to the Oakland Coliseum in time to see warmups (but not batting practice.. I forgot the Angels don't do batting practice for day games). I also was able to get some autographs on that ball I got last fall.

My plan has been to get as many signatures from the 2009 team as I could. That day I got Weave, Trevor Bell, Saunders, and Fuentes to sign. I tried to call over Jepsen and Kaz to sign, but my guess is that they had stuff to do. In fact, when Shields was throwing a bullpen with Butcher, Kaz came out and it seemed like Butch was like "Where've you been?" (I actually was hoping to see Kaz throw a bullpen, so I maybe I was right in guessing it was his day to throw??). Kaz didn't seemed too fazed, but instead joked that he wanted to hit. (Now I really wished that they hadn't skipped batting practice. How funny is it to see AL pitchers try to bat?) Another funny moment - when I was trying to get Joe to sign, the guy in front of me had a Pedroia jersey on. Joe gave him this "C'mon man!" look and said "Boston?! Really?!" Of course Joe signed his program/ticket/whatever, but it was quite funny to see him raze the guy for having the nerve to show up in RedSux gear! I also saw some guys wearing Fuentes jerseys. I thought it was quite gutsy to buy and wear the jersey of a player that's endured a lot of fans displeasure. I wasn't surprised to see them crowd around him while he was signing some things near the bullpen. After I headed over and got him to sign, he called one of them "Dad" and everything made sense. Fuentes is from Merced, so it'd make sense for his family to come see him at Oakland.

Unfortunately, he never got into that game. Ervin had a bad game and it ended up a blow out. The lousy play soured the game and forced me to watch my first loss in person. Otherwise, it was an absolutely gorgeous day, I had really great seats (almost directly behind home plate and about 20 rows up), and a very nice lady seated to my left. And you know, the Coliseum wouldn't be so bad of a stadium if they didn't have that monsterous structure in the outfield.

Great way to take in what will probably be my only game of the season.

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Some other notes/observations over the couple weeks angels&aimee has been dormant:

- Aybar's hot streak, while coinciding with his "demotion" to 9th in the lineup, has also occured while he has been swinging at earlier pitches. Like Sosh says, he's learning to balance his agressiveness to the role of leadoff.
- Matsui is another batter I've noticed swinging at a lot more at early pitches. The lineup really needs him to pick up some weight with Kendry gone and he's responded nicely.
- Going 11-3 on the road trip was exactly what the team needed. Even though they were against "lesser" teams, if they can plummet the bad teams and break even (or better!) with the good teams, it should put the Halos in a good position to steal the division.
- The above point depends, of course, on being able to beat the Rangers. If they do as bad as they did last year, the Rangers will be in the playoffs and the Angels at home. Being swept, as the Angels were in Arlington for a earlier 2-game set, isn't going to cut it, even if they were both 1-run games. The Angels need to find a way to win those.
- Despite some clunker performances lately by the rotation, they're definitely showing that they can be effective. Weave and Santana have been good for a while now and Pineiro is putting in some good ones too. Saundo, despite his step back last night, has started to put things together, and Kaz seems to be moving in the right direction (it's now just a matter of putting together few walks, deep games, and fastball command simultaneously).
- The bullpen is still scary, but the new Francisco Rodriguiz has brought a LOT of stability to the 'pen. If Jepsen and Rodney can shake off this newfound bout of ineffectiveness and Bell can re-discover his mojo, the Halos could have something very close to a respectable bullpen.
- As I tweeted, the Halos are really relying on the long ball this season. In the 46 games they hit a HR, they've won 30 of them. In the 21 that they don't, they've won 6. Not exactly the Angels of old!
- I read about the Angels' draft picks. I'm not going to pretend I know anything about these picks, let alone what it means for the farm, but I thought it was quite amusing to see that the Halos once again went against what the "experts" thought/predicted and didn't pick Californian high school RHPs. The consensus seems to be that they picked a lot of high-risk/high-reward toolsy guys. I don't really have a problem with that, seeing that they had multiple picks and so could take more chances. I'm just anxious for them to sign them all and begin the replenishing of the farm.
- When BWood and Mathis return from Salt Lake, they'll both be worth watching closely. First to see if BWood's "injury" vacation has let him reclaim his head and hitting ability, and secondly if Mathis can restart his hot start in the batter's box. In my opinion, having Mathis behind the plate and guiding pitchers is going to be a big boost.