Halos Heaven

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

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Friends, Sex, and baseball edition of Halolinks:

• Friend of Halos Heaven and frequent guest on LunchTime HaloTalk, Sam Miller has hit a new high...the cover of the February 6th edition of ESPN The Magazine: How the Los Angeles Angels recruited Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson - ESPN The Magazine. "So you're looking at me and that guy?" (C.J.) Wilson asked Dipoto mischievously. "The guy with the high elbow, wears No. 5?" Maybe the exhausting days of negotiations had weakened Dipoto's poker face. Or maybe, secretly, he wanted Wilson to know. Dipoto wouldn't confirm anything, but Wilson saw -- or at least imagined -- something in Dipoto's eye that told Wilson he was right. "Are you for real?" Wilson asked. "I am absolutely for real," the GM responded." Reading that clip from the article gives me goosebumps. Congratulations Sam, soon they'll be singing about you and the cover. By the way, best video comment..."You can be high, but you'll never be 1970's rock band high." Kind of like me, I can write well (sometimes), but not Sam Miller well.
  
• Another Miller post, this time for the lowly OC Register, reviews Agent Scott Boras' most extraordinary contracts - The Orange County Register. It's one of those photo, click-through things, but worth the time. "What follows are the dozen most extraordinary contracts that the O.C.-based Boras ever negotiated for his clients. These aren't necessarily all deals that turned out poorly for their teams; they're deals that seemed unthinkable or groundbreaking at the time. Also, a lot of them turned out really poorly for their teams. But such is the sport.
• Rob Neyer finds an interesting stat: I Love My Teams, But ... - Baseball Nation. "Fifty percent of men and 32 percent of women ages 18 - 24 say that they'd give up sex for an entire year if it meant their team could win a championship, according to a poll by Yahoo Sports." Here's where he found the study: What's More Important: Sex or the Superbowl? - Self.com. Maybe that only has to do with baseball and football, or perhaps American sports because there's this: This Week In Great Quotes Linking Soccer Injuries To Sexual Frequency "'He's always [injured and unable to play] because we have sex seven to ten times a week,' Poor fella. Boo-frickin'-hoo.
  

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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.

(Stirrups sent me his. The tagline was "Where I got my handle...attached!" Gotta love Stirrups)

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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

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No Princes in Texas edition of Halolinks:

• Besides my family, baseball, movies, and music are the things that occupy the most time in my brain. So when 'Moneyball' opened in theaters back in September, I was at the first showing on the first day. And guess what...I hated it. And apparently so did a couple other people. During the showing, three people got up and left the theater. I remember thinking that the movie was slow, almost boring. Anyway, it looks like some disagree with me: 'Moneyball’ gets 6 Oscar nominations: How many can it win? - Yahoo! Sports. "Moneyball" the movie continues to surprise and excel. It received six Academy Award nominations Monday, including four biggies: best picture, lead actor (Brad Pitt), supporting actor (Jonah Hill), adapted screenplay, film editing and sound mixing." A couple of weeks ago Rob Neyer wrote this: Live-Blogging 'Moneyball' - Baseball Nation. It's an interesting exercise in blogging.
• In case you missed it: Prince Fielder signs a nine-year, $214 million deal with the Tigers - HardballTalk. Craig Calcaterra writes, "This is really off-the-wall. Partially because (a) the Tigers just last week said they weren’t going to go down that road; (b) the Tigers already have an all-world first baseman in Miguel Cabrera and, after this year anyway, a really good DH in Victor Martinez to whom they owe a lot of money through 2014; (c) Prince Fielder doesn’t get along with his dad, and if he goes to Detroit he’s going to get Cecil Fielder questions all the time." Off-the-wall is right, as a couple links after the break will point out...
  

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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.

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