The April 24th, 2013 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels including 'disrespect' for Hamilton, Aybar out until next week, Burnett ailing and much more...

The Story: Dave Schoefield thinks dropping Josh Hamilton to fifth in the batting order is "disrespectful."

The Monkey Says: Calm down. He moved down one spot. It isn't like he was batting ninth. There was also the lefty-lefty matchup to consider. This is a fairly justifiable decision given Josh's struggles. We know from Pujols last season that this isn't something Scioscia considered lightly. To say it was born out of panic is just wrong-headed. Maybe Scioscia just wanted to light a bit of a fire under Hamilton and I don't really see anything wrong with that.

The Story: Erick Aybar will not come off the DL on Thursday as first expected.

The Monkey Says: He is going to test his heel in a few extended spring training games first and hopefully return for the Oakland series next week.

In a game that looked uncomfortably similar to last night’s meltdown, Howie Kendrick sent his teammates back to the locker room with something to celebrate. The Angels battled to a 4-3 lead heading into the eighth behind a gutsy performance from starting pitcher Jason Vargas. But a rough, rough defensive eighth inning brought Vargas’ first victory to a screeching halt.

Mark Trumbo made a mental error, making an unnecessary throw home from first instead of taking a sure out. Andrew Romine later completely missed a routine ground ball, allowing the bases to load with zero outs. Reliever Scott Downs gutted it out, however, and allowed only one run to score, tying the game 4-4.

In the ninth, with a runner on second, Adrian Beltre smoked a sure double to left field off of Ernesto Frieri, only to find it snuffed by a spectacular Mike Trout diving grab.

Two innings later, Howie Kendrick sent a screaming liner over the centerfield wall to give the Angels their second walk-off victory in three days. These April victories count, and the more the Angels can snag, the better, obviously.

Angels 5, Rangers 4

Game Notes

-- Peter Bourjos is really starting to take hold of that leadoff slot. The speedster legged out another infield single, and gave me another unhealthy heart palpitation. Is this only infatuation? Or is there more...?

-- Josh Hamilton went 1 for 5, but the box score doesn’t tell the whole story. The slugger is starting to really swing the bat with more authority, being robbed of an RBI double to deep left in the first inning by a terrific Jeff Baker sliding catch. Baker paid the price, however, with what looks like a bruised left knee. This Angels blogger thinks Hamilton is priming up for a huge month of May.

-- After recording the final out in the seventh, Jason Vargas became only the second Angel starting pitcher this season to complete seven innings. His pitch location and command looked much better in this outing, and looks to start eating innings with the same voracity as last year. The Angels bullpen could really use the diet. (Forgive this terrible food analogy)

-- Speaking of the bullpen, Dane De La Rosa did a nice job rebounding from last night’s rough outing, logging two perfect innings to set up Kendrick 11th inning heroics. With the bullpen stretched so thin, Scioscia had no choice bringing him, and Downs, and Frieri back with no rest. But a job well done holding together a creaky ship the best they could.

-- Luis Jimenez’ defense is miles away better than it was even in spring training. The rookie made a few more nice plays at third, and ignited a late-inning rally with a hit that ultimately fell short. But you’ve just got to love the poise this young man is playing with.

Halo Hero of the Game

'Nuff said.

It’s no surprise the Angels have a farm system that ranks dead last or next to last in all of baseball.  There are many reasons for this.  When Eddie Bane was the scouting director, the Angels were prone to drafting high-risk, high-reward high schoolers and rarely dipped into the collegiate ranks.  This resulted in a few homeruns, like Mike Trout and Peter Bourjos, but a lot of strikeouts as well (think Ryan Bolden or Cam Bedrosian so far).  When there aren’t any players in-between, the organizational ranks are left bare once the good players are promoted. 

The Angels also had an unfortunate scandal in Latin America that resulted in scrapping the entire infrastructure out there.  For two to three years, there simply weren’t a lot of highly desirable Latin American prospects coming to the U.S and making a difference.  The Angels also have made it a habit of signing top free agents in the offseason, which has resulted in the loss of top draft picks on a continual basis.  It may only be one or two picks, but players like C.J. Cron and Kaleb Cowart are considerably easier to find in the first round than they are in the third round. 

Finally, the Angels have traded away many of their most desirable prospects to land big name major leaguers to help in the short term.  So what players could we add to the Angels organization had they not made these trades and how would they rank as a system?

Another season, another big money Angel free agent slugger struggling in April. As we all know far too well by now, Josh Hamilton has been flat out terrible for the Halos. His numbers really can't get much worse, nor can his overall dilemma given that his problems are much more difficult to figure out than one might think.

The easy answer is that his plate discipline and contact ability have gone to crap. That is true, sort of. His plate discipline and contact rates have always been pretty ugly, but it has always worked for him, at least until he had a prolonged slump late last season and then again to start his Angel career. Given how bad he has been this year, one would expect his numbers at the plate to be much worse than normal. But they aren't, and so begins are quest to figure out what the hell is going on with Hamilton.

The discipline and contact issues are bound to be a factor, but they are actually somewhat improved over 2012. His overall swing rate has decreased by over a full percentage point from 2012, but it is almost one percentage point above his 2011 swing rate. He is also making a lot more contact than in 2012, up to 71.3% from 64.7% in 2012. That is actually pretty encouraging, but his current rate is still the second-worst rate of his career, so it isn't all good news.

Now here is where it gets very confusing: Hamilton is currently posting a career-best by a substantial margin of 3.99 pitches per plate appearance. That stat nearly blew my mind, though it is somewhat explained away that Hamilton has been striking out at a 28.4% rate, which is a ridiculous rate. Turns out that you need to see at least three pitches to strikeout. Who knew? But at the same time, Hamilton's 6.2% walk rate isn't too far below his career average, so it isn't as if he is completely falling apart at the plate.

The April 23rd, 2013 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels including Hamilton dropped down in the batting order, the time the Angels almost trade for Miguel Cabrera and much more...

The Story: Mike Scioscia moved Josh Hamilton to fifth in the lineup against southpaw Derek Holland last night.

The Monkey Says: Scioscia is always loath to drop a star in in the lineup so as not to feed the perception that something is wrong, but moving him down a slot seems like a nice compromise seeing how Hambone can barely make contact against a lefty this year. Plus, knowing that Ron Washington has no problem intentionally walking Pujols to get to Hamilton, it forces Texas to pitch to Pujols more. It will be interesting to see if Josh moves back to clean-up against righties today and tomorrow, but I suspect he will.

The Story: Revisiting the time the Angels almost traded for Miguel Cabrera.

The Monkey Says: Rumors vary that the deal fell apart because the Marlins wanted Kendrick or some say it was because of Wood. I tend to think that it had more to do with the money involved as Arte Moreno hadn't yet lost all semblance of fiscal responsibility at that point.

One of the prime theories we were operating under during the off-season was that Jerry Dipoto had knowingly built a shaky rotation. But to make up for the rotation's deficiencies, he had loaded up on bullpen reinforcements so that Scioscia could shorten the game for the starters. The problem with theories is that they don't always prove true. Take tonight for example.

Joe Blanton had his best start of his Angel career, but that is just damning him with feint praise. He wasn't very good at all having allowed 12 hits in six-plus innings of work without striking out a single batter. That he gave the Angels a chance to win the game was more a lucky side effect than anything else. But the Angels did get that chance, staking Joe to a three-run lead entering the seventh. This is exactly how the plan was supposed to work. Only it didn't.

Scioscia tried to steal a little bit of rest for the bullpen by letting Blanton start the seventh, presumably because the Halos are going to be forced to use Jerome Williams to start this Thursday with Tommy Hanson going on bereavement leave. That may not have been the smartest choice since the very hittable Blanton allowed a hit. That led to Michael Roth coming in and giving up a jamshot bloop single to Berkman. Oh, well. But it was not well because Dane De La Rosa was called upon next and he took that small spark of bad luck and fanned it into a real conflagration. Still, the Angels had a shot to get out of the inning with the lead, only a high-bouncer off the plate by Jeff Baker resulted the tying run scoring.

It was hardly the most egregious bullpen meltdown, but it was one brought about by Dipoto not building enough bullpen depth for his plan to actually work. He knew he was taking a risk on Ryan Madson, who has yet to throw a pitch for the team and he couldn't have planned for Jepsen to get hurt, other than someone always gets hurt. Even in a best case scenario, the bullpen always felt like it was one arm short. Tonight, the whole short-handed bullpen fell short up to and including Ernesto Frieri who failed to hold up his end of the bargain by failing to keep A.J. Pierzynski in the park.

This is isn't first time this has happened this season and it won't be the last. Sooner or later, Dipoto is going to need a new plan.

Rangers 7, Angels 6

Hey look! The Angels are good again. YAAAAY! Now our rankings can be fun again... at least until we start talking about the starting rotation...

RANK	PLAYER	CHANGE	COMMENTS
1		-- 0 Last Week: 1	Albert Pujols - Just imagine how good he would be if he had someone hitting behind him who could actually hit.
2		-- 0 Last Week: 2	Mike Trout - Dear BBWAA, kindly take note of who wildly outplayed who when the Tigers and Angels played last weekend.
3		+2 Last Week: 5	Mark Trumbo - Trumbo looks exceedingly comfortable at the plate and is really reducing the number of bad at-bats. The league should be scared.
4		-- 0 Last Week: 4	Ernesto Frieri - Just a thought, but maybe Ernasty should pitch more than once a week.
5		+4 Last Week: 9	Garrett Richards - Jerry Dipoto trade Kendrys Morales and Jordan Walden and spent over $28 million only to find out that his second-best starter was a guy already on the team that had been forced into the bullpen.
6		+4 Last Week: 10	Peter Bourjos - He still isn't walking, but he does lead the AL in infield and bunt hits. Hey, man, whatever works.
7		-1 Last Week:6	Chris Iannetta - He is feast or famine with the bat, this week was a feast.
8		+3 Last Week: 11	Sean Burnett - Say hello to the only off-season acquisition by the Angels that is actually working out as well as expected.
9		+4 Last Week: 13	Scott Downs - Slowly but surely he is beginning to resemble the Downs that was the glue of the bullpen for a season and a half.
10		-7 Last Week: 3	Howie Kendrick - I think we all knew clutch, situation hitting Howie was only going to last so long. It was nice having him around. He will be missed.
11		-- 0 Last Week: n/a	Luis Jimenez - Lucho not only finally gives the Angels some depth but he might even be giving the Angels a tough decision to make once Alberto Callaspo gets healthy.
12		-4 Last Week: 8	C.J. Wilson - Wilson is a walking, talking example of why the Quality Start stat is complete and utter bullshit.
13		+2 Last Week: 15	Tommy Hanson - Only an Angel pitcher could shutout the powerful Tigers offense for six innings and still have it be a discouraging outing.
14		+6 Last Week: 20	Dane De La Rosa - The Angels traded a prospect to Tampa for a 30-year old reliever that turned out to possibly be pretty decent. Isn't it supposed to work the other way around?
15		-3 Last Week: 12	Jason Vargas - Well, he didn't give up a homer in his lone start this week, so that's progress... right?
16		-- 0 Last Week: n/a	Michael Roth - It is only fair that an unorthodox pitcher like Roth be used in an unorthodox bullpen role. If Scioscia makes that happen, Roth might be my new favorite Angel.
17		+4 Last Week: 21	Jerome Williams - For the week, Williams went 6.1 innings, allowed three runs on eight hits and two walks. That is a better line for a start than either Blanton or Vargas had. I'm just sayin'.
18		-11 Last Week: 7	Josh Hamilton - So, anyone else wondering if the Yankees might be willing to trade Vernon Wells for Josh Hamilton?
19		+6 Last Week: 25	Brendan Harris - Look at li'l Brendan muscling up to show some power this week! His defense has been hit or miss, but his bat has done well enough to hold down the fort in Aybar's absence.
20		-3 Last Week: 17	Hank Conger - Anyone that can catch C.J. Wilson and prevent him from completely falling apart is A-OK in my book.
21		+3 Last Week: 24	J.B. Shuck  - FUN FACT: Shuck leads the Angels with a 1.055 OPS.
22		+1 Last Week: 23	Andrew Romine - Which happens first: Aybar comes off the DL or Romine collects another base hit?
23		-- 0 Last Week: n/a	Michael Kohn - We are now officially in the "throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks" phase of building a bullpen.
24		-6 Last Week: 18	Joe Blanton - [EXPLETIVE DELETED]
25		-3 Last Week: 22	Mark Lowe - Placed on the DL with a stiff neck that was brought about by constantly hanging his head after walking every other batter.

Dropped from rankings: Jepsen (blaming arm problems on forgetting how to pitch again), Callaspo (made obsolete by Lucho placed on DL)

Biggest Riser: Harris and De La Rosa, up six spots

Biggest Dropper: Hamilton, down 11 spots

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