On this date in 1998, Ken Griffey Jr. reached the 50-homer plateau for the second consecutive season. No one in the AL West will reach 50 homers this year – Nelson Cruz of the Rangers leads the division with 28. Here are today's AL West links…
- Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times tells the story of right-hander Steve Delabar, who was substitute teaching not long ago and has now joined the Mariners' big league pitching staff.
- Dave Cameron of U.S.S. Mariner would like to see the Mariners play Kyle Seager at third on a daily basis. Alex Liddi, another option, appears to need more Triple-A seasoning despite the 30 minor league homers he hit this year.
- Mike Trout is Baseball America's minor league player of the year and B.A.’s J.J. Cooper explains that the Angels outfielder stood out as a big league prospect when he was just 16 years old. Click through for old scouting reports on Trout, who’s still just 20.
The Delabar story is nice. Isn’t it like that movie “The Rookie” about that Rays pitcher who was a high school teacher?
The Delabar story is awesome, everyone should go read that. He was a high school substitute teacher riding the high school baseball team bus on April 1st, now he’s in the majors.
Steroids are harder to use, and all of a sudden, 28 homeruns is a lot again… 3 cheers for the little guys.
With the emergence of Trout, Trumbo, Bourjos (and Walden), plus the signing of Weaver to a long-term deal, the Angels season has certainly gotten better as it’s gone along.
It would be great to lose the atrocity that is the Wells contract, but what’s done is done. The Angels have a lot to look forward to.
If they wouldnt have taken that contract they might be able to sign CJ Wilson. That would be a sick rotation for them…
Sure he’s overpaid, but there is a lot of worse dead weight dropping off the books this year. Matthews $11.4mil, Kaz $9.5mil (net of buyout), Pinero $8mil, Rodney $5.5mil, Branyan $1mil, and Wells actually makes $2mil less next year. That’s $35mil. Take away Weaver’s raise of about $7mil and that leaves $28mil for Arb raises (which should be minimal) and free agents.