Saturday is the 30th anniversary of one of the great trades in Angels history. NEWSPAPER COVERAGE FROM BACK IN THE DAY. The Orioles made room for a young Cal Ripken Jr. by trading Doug DeCinces and a scrub pitcher to the Angels for Dan Ford. DeCinces went on to accrue 18 WAR in 5 seasons including a monster 7.4 n 1982 for the AL West division winners. Although Baltimore won the World Series with Ford in 1983, he accrued a total of 0.2 WAR for the birds. The sting of the lopsided trade is historically ameliorated by that championship and the tenure of Cal Ripken Jr. But still... 18 > 0.2 ...Wow just Wow.
Slow News Day, two articles...
A very long but detailed and amazing article destroying the credibility of PSA baseball memorabilia authentication. Absolute scum working out there.
Tests on Dustin Richardson Found 5 Banned Substances. Dustin Richardson, a former Chowd reliever, was suspended this week for 50 games after a random drug test came up positive for FIVE performance-enhancing drugs.
4 ) John Hellweg, 10/29/1988 -- rhrp/rhsp, High A
7 wins, 4 losses. 95.2 IP, 3.67 ERA, 76 hits, 121 K/63 BB. 13 runs saved, 2.9 WAR
Friends, Sex, and baseball edition of Halolinks:
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MLB dot com has gotten into the whole prospect-ranking business. After years of letting Baseball America and John Sickels brag about his great-grandchildren, Bud Selig's site is using spiffy graphics to highlight a Top 100 Prospects List on its heavy traffic main website. There is even an archived link to their 2011 selections... Oooo they've been at this a while.
Three Angels lead the list, with outfielder Mike Trout ranked #3 in all of the sport, infielder Jean Segura #55 and pitcher Garrett Richards at #67. Pretty good - not the best showing by any team, not the worst.
But there are two that got away... Tony Reagins traded Left Handed Starting Pitcher Tyler Skaggs to the Diamondbacks in the summer of 2010 as part of the Dan Haren deal. Of course, Jerry Dipoto had a hand in that as the then-acting General Manager of Arizona's National League team. MLB's #38 selection is Matt Harvey, a 3rd round selection in the 2007 draft who had big bonus money demands that Arte Moreno did not meet. Harvey went in the first round of the 2010 draft, the 7th overall pick by the Mets after a distinguished stint on the college mound. Harvey struck out 156 batters in 125 IP last year split equally between High-A and AA.
Blame Tony, Jerry and Arte that the Angels have 3 and not 5 players in MLB's current Top 100 Prospects.
Skaggs, Trout and Richards was part of the 2009 motherlode draft with 5 picks in the first 48 picks as compensation for losing John Lackey and Francisco Rodriguez and even Jon Garland. One lost aside from that is the Rockies got the 32nd and 34th picks in the first round as compensation for losing Brian Fuentes to the Angels as a free agent signing. One of the picks was Rex Brothers, he of the 13 K/9 in 40 major league innings pitched last season. The two draftees of those first five not on the big radars are the oft-injured but still mashing Randal Grichuk and pitcher Tyler Kehrer who repeated Low-A Cedar Rapids in 2011 and has yet to post an ERA under 4.
10) Kole Calhoun, 10/14/1987 -- Of/1B, High A
.324/.410/.547 with 23 HR and 20 SB. +33 runs bat, -3 glove, 4.0 WAR
No Princes in Texas edition of Halolinks:
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So, as most of you know, I'm going on the Angels Fan Cruise, and we leave this Friday afternoon. It's a short, 3 day adventure with about 150 Angels fans and some of the players and front office/radio people. We get off the ship bright and early Monday morning, so final thoughts will be posted after I arrive home from the port. This will be my 8th Angels Fan Cruise. I missed the first one, but haven't missed one since.
The Rev has asked me to write about it -as it happens- and I will try my best to write as much as possible, but the pictures will be uploaded on the Halos Heaven Facebook Page, since that's the easiest way for me to upload them and save them all.