The June 14th, 2013 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels including Angels tried to draft Tebow, sign a top draft pick and much more...

The Story: Former scout Tom Kotchman recalls the time the Angels tried to draft Tim Tebow.

The Monkey Says: Drafting football players was an old trick the Eddie Bane regime loved for some reason. Let's just be thankful that this didn't happen because Tebowmania coming to Anaheim might have been enough to make me quit life.

The Story: The Angels signed their third-round draft pick, Keynan Middleton.

The Monkey Says: He signed for under slot, as did two of the other top ten picks they signed. They have one other guy who signed exactly at slot, so they have some excess pool money to throw around which will be important when it comes to them top pick Hunter Green and some of the other high school talents they drafted.

The Angels are 10 games under .500. They are 11.5 games back in the division and 9.5 games back in the Wild Card race. Baseball Prospectus and Coolstandings.com each give the Angels a roughly 5% to 7% chance of earning a playoff berth. Go ahead and cling to that hope if you want. We here at Monkey with a Halo would be ecstatic if they somehow pulled that off, but we are also realistic. In all likelihood, this team is toast. Come the trade deadline, they are almost certainly to be in a position where they should become sellers.

To that end, we are going to continue a series that inadvertently started last week with Howie Kendrick by evaluating each of the potential trade pieces the Angels have. Up next is the one off-season acquisition that Jerry Dipoto got right, Jason Vargas!

Out of all the trade pieces the Angels have to deal, and it really isn't that money, Vargas is clearly the most confounding asset. On one hand, he is an impending free agent, which more often than not means he'll be traded. On the other hand, the Halos are not your ordinary basement-dwelling seller. They have designs on contending for a championship next season and desperately need pitching to reach that goal. So do they look to move Vargas, or do they keep him?

The June 13th, 2013 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels including Blanton to have next start skipped, Madson wonders if HGH could help and much more...

The Story: Joe Blanton will not make his next scheduled start.

The Monkey Says: They say they are only pushing him back a few days, presumably so he doesn't get exposed by the Yankees. They haven't committed to when he will start next though. The Angels will need someone to start Tuesday the 18th, so that could be Blanton unless the Halos liked what Jerome Williams gave them yesterday. They've given themselves an out here, hopefully they follow through but my hunch is that Blanton will get at least one more shot.

The Story: Ryan Madson wonders if HGH, under the care and direct supervision of a physician, could help him in his recovery.

The Monkey Says: Madson was very careful to limit his curiousty only to HGH and only under a doctor's care so as not to stir the PED hornet's nest. Personally, I think this is a very valid question. The MLB-paid doctor in the article claims there is no recuperative benefit to HGH(and, yes, there are studies that show it helps with recovery from injury), but that is largely what athletes have used it for. That, of course, begs the question of why HGH is banned if it doesn't help? At this point, the well is probably poisoned since HGH has the taint of on it now. Even if the medical community finds that it can help with recovery without adverse long-term effects, MLB will probably never allow it. This despite the fact that they allow Adderall, which is just a brand name for speed, exemptions at several times the rate of the rest of society.

It was looking to be another snoozer with a familiar storyline. Angels offense struggles and sputters to another defeat while another starter pitches well enough to win, but doesn't. But it wasn't to be, thanks to a clutch bases-clearing, inside-the-park "grand slam" by Erick Aybar. Sure, it was technically a 3-run triple, with an run-scoring error, but let's not argue semantics.

Until the seventh inning, starter Jerome Williams had been decent, but not spectacular. After a giving up a couple runs in the first inning on ground-outs, Williams only surrendered a couple more solo home runs to Chris Davis and Adam Jones. Meanwhile, the struggling Angels offense cobbled together a couple runs on a massive Hank Conger home run into Eutaw street and an RBI double by a red-hot Howie Kendrick.

But the big blows came in the seventh on Aybar's heroics, in addition to a two-run home run by Albert Pujols, who looks like he could be on the verge of breaking out. If that happens, this offense might just be good enough to get the Halos rolling again.

------

Game Notes

-- Howie Kendrick continues to rake. His average is now up to .324 after adding a couple hits on Wednesday. 

-- Brad Hawpe certainly looks like he can't hit anymore at the big league level, but the reserve outfielder appears to be able to still see the ball well at the plate. Hawpe drew two walks, including one that was key in helping load the bases for Aybar in the seventh inning.

------

Halo Hero of the Game

Way to go, Aybar! His on-base % is all the way up to .283, now!

As we all know far too well right now, the Angels pretty much stink. The only thing more surprising than the mere fact that they are so bad is the manner in which they have managed to be so disappointing. Yes, the pitching hasn't been very good, but a lot of people saw that coming. What people didn't predict was that their offense would be so underwhelming.

Last year, the Halos had one of the top offenses in all of baseball. All they really changed was replacing Torii Hunter with Josh Hamilton. Even with a potential decline from Hamilton, the thought was that the lineup should still be pretty good. That is how it should have played out, especially with Howie Kendrick and Peter Bourjos having career years at the plate. The problem is that they have had two very disappointing players in their lineup. Right smack dab in the middle of the lineup, to be precise.

Teams can handle disappointing players, but what they can't handle is having underachieving hitters occupying premium run production slots in the order. There is no more stark example of that than what Albert Pujols has done, or rather failed to do, batting third for the Halos.

Here is the production the Angels are getting from their three-hole hitters (almost entirely Pujols) in 2013, right up until Scioscia shook up the lineup over the weekend:

The June 12th, 2013 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels including Sean Burnett out at least a month, Robert Coello placed on the DL, Dane De La Rosa recalled and much more...

The Story: Sean Burnett's exam found no new damage, but he won't touch a baseball for at least a month.

The Monkey Says: So there is no surgery, but there is also no real idea of what he needs to do to get healthy. Shutting him down for a month amounts to just crossing their fingers that things work themselves out in that time. Even if they do, he is going to need several weeks of progressing through a throwing program to be ready for big league action again. Best case scenario, he returns in early August. It seems far more likely that by the time he is healthy, the Angels are out of contention and just keep him on the DL for the rest of the season.

The Story: Robert Coello was placed on the DL with shoulder inflammation and Dane De La Rosa was recalled to take his place.

The Monkey Says: Coello claims his arm problems started a week or two ago, which is conveniently right before he started not being able to get anyone out.

The Angels continue to confound with their winless ways. They pitched well, they played remarkable, stunning, jaw-dropping defense, and still couldn't defeat the Baltimore Orioles. Starter Jason Vargas pitched as well as he could've. Peter Bourjos, fresh off the DL, showed just why he is in centerfield instead of Mike Trout, robbing JJ Hardy (the same guy Trout robbed last year with his famous catch) of another home run. Even Mark Trumbo, he of the awful defensive reputation, made a nice sliding grab in right field. 

What must this team do to win?

At this point, GM Jerry Dipoto must be having feelings of futility, wondering exactly what went wrong.

Scene: Jerry Dipoto stands beside a white board. "Get Good Players" has been emphatically crossed out. "What other ideas?" he asks the room.

— Sam Miller (@SamMillerBP) June 11, 2013

Just about sums it up.

Orioles 3, Angels 2

------ 

Game Notes

-- One bright spot to this game was certainly the Peter Bourjos robbery. Now this is quite the doozy. Poor JJ Hardy. 

-- Mike Trout hit his second home run in as many days. You know what else Trout has done in two days? Play left field. Where are all those people who think offensive performance correlates with defensive happiness, now?

-- Kevin Jepsen continues to dominate out of the bullpen. Do we really trust this guy, though?

-- Sean Burnett's injury woes loomed large in this game, when lefty reliever Scott Downs was summoned in the seventh to preserve a 1-1 tie. He promptly allowed all his inherited runners to score on a Nick Markakis single. The one job he has left in the bullpen (get a lefty out), he couldn't even do that.

-----

Halos A-Hole of the Game

Yepp.