As we all saw last night, Jered Weaver returned to action for the Angels and he was back in more than just his mere presence. Weaver dominated the Dodgers through six innings, racking up seven strikeouts in the process. It was a tantalizing performance indeed. But it wasn't the end result that is piqued my interest but rather how he went about doing it.

It only took four pitches for Weaver to flash what we hadn't seen from him in some time. That would be the 91 MPH fastball he used to blow away Carl Crawford. For most pitchers 91 MPH is nothing to brag about, but for Jered, it was a minor miracle considering he had not touched 91 MPH, much less broken 90 MPH, since a start on September 23rd, 2012. There were only four starts in between due to the off-season, but the velocity dropped further and further in each game despite the layoff. The low came in his previous start where he never even hi 89 MPH before he inadvertently broke his non-throwing elbow.

Now almost two months later, Weaver is back to his old self, sort of. That 91 MPH pitch was the only pitch that high on the radar gun and he didn't touch 90 MPH again after the first inning. What he did though was consistently work at 88 and 89 MPH with his heater averaging out to 88.16 MPH on the night. That is two full MPH more than he averaged in his final start before his injury. Most encouraging of all, his final fastball of the night was measure at 88 MPH, so he was able to hold the velocity despite not having built the kind of arm strength he normally would have at this point of the season.

So, how did he do it?

There were a few notable differences between Weaver's last night and Weaver back in April. First and foremost, Weaver was obviously coming off a lot of rest since he had to sit idle with his broken left elbow. That could explain the velocity spike, but we didn't see a similar effect after Weaver had a whole off-season to rest up. What we do know about Weaver when his velocity started to dip late last season was that he was plagued by tendinitis in his biceps. The Angels led us to believe that this cleared up over the winter, but perhaps it didn't. For reasons that the team never fully explained, Weaver ended up needing eight weeks to recover from his broken elbow even though the original prognosis suggested he'd miss between four and six weeks. It is almost like he was nursing an injury to his pitching arm as well only the team never told us. They would never do that, right?

The May 30th, 2013 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels including Hanson talks about his mental health issues, Bourjos resumes running, Lowe DFA'd and much more...

The Story: Tommy Hanson opens up about the mental issues he had in dealing with the death of his brother.

The Monkey Says: It is big of Hanson to talk about this as mental health is a pretty taboo topic in pro sports lest one should appear to have a weakness. Just look at how much Zack Greinke still gets mocked by internet trolls for his battle with mental illness. Also, the Angels should be applauded for being so understanding with Hanson as Tommy suggests it was the team that actually encouraged him to take some more time. I don't think a lot of the ballclubs would've done the same thing.

The Story: Peter Bourjos is running again, but still isn't at full speed.

The Monkey Says: But he is "running with purpose," whatever that means. It sounds as if Peter will start a rehab assignment in the next week or two.

The Dodgers nearly made a comeback against an tottering Ernesto Frieri in the 9th inning, but the story of the night is definitely the return of Angels ace Jered Weaver. The now-healthy starting pitcher, the anchor for the staff, finally made a triumphant return to the Big A, eight weeks after shattering his left elbow in his second start of the season.

With a heightened velocity and his familiar pinpoint control, the lanky right-hander held the Halos' up-the-freeway rival Dodgers listless over six innings. While a pitch-count governor was the only thing keeping him from going further, Jered Weaver did all that could have possibly been asked of him in his first start back from the DL.

The offense touched up Dodger starter Chris Capuano for three runs, highlighted by a massive Mark Trumbo bomb to deep left centerfield. An insurance run was added in the sixth inning off Javy Guera, with Trumbo lifting a sac fly that scored Mike Trout to give the Angels a 4-1 lead at the time. That run would prove to be crucial.

Ernesto Frieri looked pretty bad once again, surrendering a couple long home runs to Adrian Gonzalez and Scott Van Slyke. Once again struggling to put hitters away, the Angel closer nearly blew another save, but fortunately hung on to preserve Weaver's first win of 2013.

Angels 4, Dodgers 3

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Game Notes

-- Jered Weaver's velocity, a season-long topic, seemed to be up a tick, which is an encouraging sign. Most notable was a first-inning 91-mph 4-seam fastball that blew past a flailing Carl Crawford for a strikeout. Yes, we are hurrah-ing over a 91-mph fastball. But for a guy like Jered Weaver, you can't get excited enough about it. Weaver's slider also looked nasty, featuring a nice sharp bite which no doubt helped his fastball play up a few notches.

-- Might be a mirage, might not be. But for this Angel team to continue to move forward this season, they will need more of what Kevin Jepsen and Garrett Richards provided out of the bullpen tonight. Both nailed down 1-2-3 shutdown innings to hand the ball to Frieri, who… well, we all know what he did. Positives, people. Positives!

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Halo Hero of the Game

For the shut-down start, Dream Weaver gets his first "Halo Hero of the Game!"

Fangraphs is great site that provides many an interesting and fun thing. One might even be tempted to call it FUNgraphs, amirite?

Sorry.

Anywho, one of the interesting things that Fangraphs rolled out recently was their ZiPS projections for the rest of the season. Basically, it is the ZiPS projections we all love so much during the off-season only now it updates daily with projected season numbers for every player and team. I had hoped that combing through the projections would inspire me with some hope for the rest of the Halo season but, well... NOPE.

Even with my dreams dashed there is still some funnish tidbits worth reviewing:

-ZiPS RoS has the Angels going 60-50 the rest of the way, which is encouraging in that we won't have to suffer through all of this miserable play for much longer, but it still has them finishing with a record just barel over .500 at 83-79.

-Believe it or not, that does still provide a tiny glimmer of hope in that it ZiPS has the Yankees and A's winning the wild card spots with just 87 wins each. As such, if the Angels can find a way to overachieve by four or five games over the remaining 110 games, they could manage to slip into the post-season. That is a much rosier picture than last season when both wild card teams in the AL won 93 games.

The May 29th, 2013 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels including Dr. Lewis Yocum passes way, Burnett to DL, Hanson activated and much more...

The Story: Angels team physician and famed sports surgeon Dr. Lewis Yocum passed away yesterday.

The Monkey Says: This is a huge blow to the Angels and sports in general. Yocum had been with the Halos for 36 years and only few weeks ago had the team training room named in his honor. There are literally hundreds of players who would not have careers if not for Yocum's pioneering work with Tommy John surgery. He will be missed.

The Story: Sean Burnett was placed on the DL and Tommy Hanson was activated to take his place.

The Monkey Says: The team is spinning Burnett's continue arm problems as a normal part of his recovery, but this hardly seems normal. The good news is that he has been examined a number of times over the last two months, so it is unlikely that anything serious is wrong with him. As for Hanson, this seems like a good sign that he'll pitch on Friday. Although it is odd that the team activated Tommy instead of Weaver since it deprives them of a roster spot that they could've stashed another reliever for a few days.

It's still too soon to declare the 8-game winning streak a mirage for the Angels, but boy have they looked uninspiring these past couple games. After the offense roared to a 5-run lead yesterday, C.J. Wilson returned to his wild-boy tendencies. Today, the bats decided to stay home.

Dodgers starter Hyun-Jin Ryu spotted pitch after pitch, and the ones he didn't pump into the strike zone were strikes anyways, courtesy of the once-again swing-happy Angel bats.

The 2013 Freeway Series swings back down south to Anaheim. Hopefully the Halos can put up a better showing for the home fans.

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Game Notes

-- Joe Blanton probably saved his rotation spot after today's 7-inning effort. I really don't understand the overwhelming desire for this guy to fail. If he can pitch serviceably the rest of the way (and he hasn't been terrible for the past couple starts), then we'll have a solid innings eater, as advertised. Jered Weaver and Tommy Hanson come back, Jerome Williams returns to solidify the bullpen, everyone wins. Either way, Blanton wasn't terrible today; he was simply out-dueled.

-- Additionally, Erick Aybar went 0-4 out of the leadoff spot. Detractors will point out that he has done a terrible job, but he's actually been hitting .321 (9-28) the past few days, so I don't quite get the criticism there either. He should walk more, and maybe he's killed himself by swinging at first pitches too often, but who else would you bat there? And no, Mike Trout is not going back to the leadoff spot. That ship has sailed away with Captain Scioscia.

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Halos A-Hole of the Game

While he didn't pitch terribly, he did give up a home run to Luis Cruz. That's just shameful. Congrats, Mr. Blanton. 

Also, this is a picture of Joe Blanton as a Philly. Joe Blanton is a bad hitter. Joe Blanton looks funny when he hits. This is an appopriate photo for the occassion.

Typical. I start writing about the winning streak, with the Angels up 6-1 against the Dodgers in what, I assumed, would be game nine of it….and, yeah.

However, I will continue, with the same direct question to the Angels that I was going to start with, if they had won today.

"Who are you people, and what have you done with the Angels?

You won eight straight. You’ve been knocking in runs at an astonishing rate, and doing so both with monster hits and good old fashioned hustle. You have superstars who are playing like they deserve the name, and unknown call-ups who look like they’ve been in the majors forever. Even your deservedly derided pitchers have suddenly come right, and you might even have an Ace again by Wednesday. Even today, when the streak ended, despite CJ Wilson’s issues in the 5^th, you all pretty much played the way you’re meant to, you just couldn’t quite get it back after the 5^th inning.

Is this some kind of a trick? Were you playing possum all of April, in an attempt to deflect expectation, or are you building us fans up now so that if things fall apart again, we can at least say “Well, they had a good May”?

Or, dare I hope, have you finally started to put it all together?"

It certainly feels like it. Admittedly, those eight wins came against struggling teams, but the Angel’s have lost to worse teams this year and, let’s not forget, until this streak they were a struggling team as well. They’re still a long way back from the Rangers and A’s, both of whom are winning regularly, so the streak hasn’t made up all that much ground in the division. There’s a long way to go yet, but you have to start somewhere, right?

The most encouraging thing is that the improved results have been on the back of truly complete team efforts.  The starting rotation, if you can still call it that, has been remarkable. They’ve gone deep, too, (until today) limiting the bullpen’s exposure, although even that hasn’t been the terrifying prospect it was earlier in the year.

The offense has, if anything, been even better. Prior to the start of the freeway series, the Angels had scored 119 runs since May 1^st. Several of their losses earlier in the month were close affairs, and their wins have ranged from the gritty to the downright blowout. Add in the solid defense that even hardened skeptics have come to expect from this team, and it’s been a great run. Even Mike Scioscia getting ejected, I think, was a good sign – he’s passionate again.

All good things must come to an end, and this particular streak just did. Here’s hoping it wasn’t an anomaly, and that this season might just have gotten started. My only gripe – I understand dramatic tension, but did they really need to leave it this late? We get it. Now get on with it.

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