The May 8th, 2013 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels including Weaver progressing, Madson could be back in a week, what the Angels would do without Scioscia and much more...

The Story: Jered Weaver threw long toss on Tuesday and should throw off a mound for the first time this Thursday.

The Monkey Says: It sounds like Weaver is still a few weeks away, but he is at least making progress.

The Story: Ryan Madson threw a bullpen session on Tuesday and could be activated from the DL in a week.

The Monkey Says: At this point, I'm pretty sure you know the drill as far as expectations with Madson, so hoping that he could be activated in a week seems pretty foolish and maybe even like they are rushing him. I'm sure that will work out well.

When CJ Wilson unraveled during his trademark one-inning stink fest, one couldn't help but have a sinking feeling about this Angels season. While many fans have already jumped ship, the national news has begun to really converge upon the Halos like sharks around a near-dead whale carcass. The Angels aren't simply bad anymore. They are absolutely, unmitigatedly, no-doubt-about-it awful, horrendous, and terrible.

Wilson's personal catcher, Hank Conger, has continued to look awful on the field. A game after Congnam Styling it up the first base line, he committed three, that's right, three errors. A couple of them contributed to four unearned runs charged against Wilson. But the third one, a crucial seventh inning throw down to third base, looked like it resulted from J.D. Martinez's batter interference. How the umpire's didn't catch it is beyond this Angels blogger.

Side note #1: The Astros are so bad, they don't even know when to duck when the opposing catcher is trying to make a throw.

Side Note #2: Replays show that his helmet clearly gets knocked off by Conger's throw, which should have automatically resulted in an out.

Let's face it, folks. The Angels just aren't a very good team. They can't even beat the Houston Astros.

Astros 7, Angels 6

Game Notes

-- The Angels are terrible

-- Mark Lowe, in his return from the disable list, wasn't so terrible. The pitcher delivered a solid 1 2/3 innings of shutout work, and lowered his ERA to a sparkling 9.00. Oy.

-- The Angels are now only 2 1/2 games ahead of the worst team in baseball. When is Spring Training over?

Halos A-Hole of the Game

Would have to give it to Conger. Without his sloppy play behind the plate, Wilson would've delivered yet another scary-but-good start to win it.

In one of the more ironic twists of fate in recent memory for Mike Scioscia's tenure with the Angels, it appears he might have himself a catcher defense dilemma. We all remember far too well the bad old days of Scioscia being too blinded by his personal defensive biases to see that Mike Napoli should be the starting catcher and Jeff Mathis should be manning a radio tower in Alaska. Now, it seems, the tables have turned and Scioscia has a real conundrum on his hands.

It was well-documented coming into the season that the Angels were so worried about Hank Conger's defense that they made a trade for Chris Snyder as an insurance policy. So very worried. Hank was able to quiet those concerns and earn a spot on the Opening Day roster as the back-up catcher. But now it looks like his defense has advanced to a point where he might very well deserve a promotion up the depth chart.

Through the first month of the season, the defensive metrics strongly suggest that Mike Scioscia is, GASP!, starting an inferior defensive catcher in order to get better offense from the position. I'll allow you a moment to look out the window to make sure the sky hasn't turned red or that your dog and cat aren't enjoying a little afternoon delight together.

Seriously though, it is true and I can prove it, with the obvious caveat that we are dealing with a relatively small sample size.

The May 7th, 2013 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels including Scioscia has no plans to quit, Lowe activated, Brasier demoted and much more...

The Story: Mike Scioscia has no plans to quit.

The Monkey Says: I don't blame him. That isn't how he operates. I still think that letting him go is the only way to salvage the season though, so I guess Dipoto and Moreno will have to be the ones to do the dirty deed.

The Story: The Angels activated Mark Lowe from the DL and sent Ryan Brasier back to Triple-A.

The Monkey Says: Lowe probably won't help much, but he is still better than Brasier. Every little bit helps, I guess.

April is done and so am I with letting pre-season preconceptions factor into the Player Power Rankings. No longer shackled by that abritrary rule that I made up myself, I may now mete out justice to those who have disappointed us thus far....

RANK	PLAYER	CHANGE	COMMENTS
1		+2 Last Week: 3	Mark Trumbo - Is there any question that he is the Angels' best player right now?
2		-1 Last Week: 1	Mike Trout - He finally looks like he is on the verge of breaking out again, although I feel like I've said that a few times already this season.
3		-1 Last Week: 2	Albert Pujols - At some point the Angels need to do something about his aching feet. A nice start would be abandoning the foolish idea of letting him play the field.
4		+2 Last Week: 6	Howie Kendrick - His quietly good season continues.
5		-1 Last Week: 4	Peter Bourjos - Just when he seemed like he was going to establish himself as the leadoff hitter, he fell victim to the exploding hamstring epidemic in that 19-inning game.
6		+4 Last Week: 10	Jason Vargas - At least someone is finally doing something to make one of Dipoto's off-season acquisitions look smart.
7		-- 0 Last Week: n/a	Alberto Callaspo - It is good to have Callaspo back but it is less good to have him back and batting fifth.
8		-- 0 Last Week: n/a	Erick Aybar - I was just thinking that a low-OBP leadoff hitter is exactly what this sputtering lineup needs!
9		+2 Last Week: 11	C.J. Wilson - As further evidence that pitcher wins are a useless statistic, I present the court with C.J. Wilson's 3-0 record. I rest my case, your honor.
10		+4 Last Week: 14	Tommy Hanson - You have to give him some respect for the way he came back from the death of his stepbrother to pitch so well against the A's.
11		-4 Last Week: 7	Ernesto Frieri - The Angels need to make a trade for "this year's Ernesto Frieri" because the old Ernesto Frieri kind of sucks right now.
12		-3 Last Week: 9	Chris Iannetta - After sitting out three games to rest thanks to catching a 19-inning game, Iannetta may have inadvertently opened the door to Hank Conger stealing playing time from him.
13		-5 Last Week: 8	Scott Downs - Stop me if you heard this one before, but Scott Downs hurt himself trying to field a comebacker. Methinks Jose Mota needs to start bringing someone along to yoga class.
14		-9 Last Week: 5	Garrett Richards - Well, the questionable decision to return him to a relief role backfired on Scioscia pretty quickly, didn't it?
15		+10 Last Week: 25	Michael Kohn - Kohn has been trying to break into the Halo bullpen for a few seasons now and I think he finally found his role, he's a 17th inning guy.
16		+5 Last Week: 21	Joe Blanton - The streak of giving up a hit in each inning is over! And now, suddenly, Joe Blanton has morphed into a hard luck loser rather than just a general loser.
17		-2 Last Week: 15	Jerome Williams - Oh, right, that's why he wasn't part of the Opening Day rotation. Another master stroke from Scioscia.
18		-5 Last Week: 13	Dane De La Rosa - DDLR might be the new Rich Thompson/Jason Bulger/Kevin Gregg. In low leverage situations, he is lights out. With the game on the line, he is a virtual lock for a meltdown.
19		-- 0 Last Week: 19	Hank Conger - As we saw with running "effort" after that bunt, Conger's real role on this team is to provide comic relief.
20		+2 Last Week: 22	J.B. Shuck  - He has been more effective than expected, but that doesn't make it OK that the Halos don't have a better option or even a right-handed platoon for Shuck while Bourjos is out.
21		-5 Last Week: 16	Josh Hamilton - Hamilton is now in the five-hole full-time. If he keeps hitting like this, let's hope Scioscia doesn't wait another month to drop him further down the order.
22		-5 Last Week: 17	Luis Jimenez - He fell off a cliff in the last two weeks, but it is good to see he still did enough to earn a bench spot.
23		-3 Last Week: 20	Brendan Harris - In his time filling in for Aybar and Callaspo, Harris registered a -0.3 WAR. Yep, don't ever worry about spending money on the bench, Jerry.
24		-- 0 Last Week: n/a	Barry Enright - If only Enright could have survived one more inning in that marathon game, we would've been treated to a position player pitching for the A's and likely an uplifting win. Instead, we haz all the sads.
25		-- 0 Last Week: n/a	Ryan Brasier - The fact that he even made the active roster tells you all you need to know about the performance and health problems the Angels have had to deal with.

Dropped from rankings: Michael Roth (clearly called up too soon), Andrew Romine (rendered obsolete), Sean Burnett (hurt because of course), Nick Maronde (not as MLB ready as we first thought)

Biggest Riser: Kohn, up 10 spots

Biggest Dropper: Richards, down 9 spots

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There is a new entry on the extinct species list: the Scioscia apologist. As of today, I am done. Done with sticking up for Mike Scioscia. In the struggles of the last few years there have been few who have defended Scioscia as ardently as I have. But now I must relent and admit that it is now time for the Angels to fire Mike Scioscia.

And I mean that literally they need to fire him *now.* Today. This morning. This hour. This minute. At least if the Halos are clinging to any hope of salvaging their season.

In my many defenses of Scioscia I have said that he is one of the top managers in the game. Like all managers, he has flaws, but his strengths greatly outweigh them. I still mostly believe that to be true. He just isn't right for this team anymore and the longer Dipoto and Moreno wait to admit that, the more damage they do to the already tenuous long-term viability of the Angel franchise.

Make no mistake, Mike Scioscia is going to be fired. This will be his last season at the helm of the Angels. It is a question of when, not if. And the when is critically important. Some have suggested that Arte Moreno has too much respect for Scioscia to let him be fired mid-season. That would be a mistake. As we've seen in Pujols and Hamilton in recent years, even the best players in the world go through bizarre, inexplicable slumps. Well, so do managers.

The May 6th, 2013 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels including it might be time for Scioscia to go, Richards returns to bullpen and much more...

The Story: Ken Rosenthal believes it might be time Mike Scioscia and the Angels to part ways.

The Monkey Says: I hate to say it, but I agree and I think it needs to happen today. Come back later this morning and I will explain why because it isn't necessarily for the reasons you might think.

The Story: Garrett Richards was shifted back into the bullpen with Jerome Williams taking his spot in the rotation.

The Monkey Says: This was a really tough decision that I was split on initially but eventually began to lean towards favoring it. The Halos desperately needed an impact reliever and Richards was their best internal option, but he was also doing a passable job in the rotation. Obviously this ended up blowing up in Scioscia's face as Williams pitched poorly in his start and Richards made two relief appearances, one that resulted in the Angels losing in extras and the next caused a one-run deficit to turn inot a four-run deficit. Literally nothing Scioscia tries works anymore no matter how smart or dumb it is.