Purgatory Online

Monday, June 30, 2003

With three days' worth of voting left, it's Troy Glaus 627,189, Eric Chavez 469,324. Barring an online onslaught in favor of Chavez or Robin Ventura (who's about 20,000 behind Chavez), Glaus looks like the Angels' first All-Star starter since Wally Joyner in 1986.

MLB.com's subscriptions page now has a section for "Digital Delivery Service," which is apparetly what they're calling their pay-per-download stuff. Right now, they've got Clemens's 300th win, Millwood's no-hitter, and the no-hitter thrown against the Yankees by six Astros pitchers. Each download is $3.95. Considering that you can also buy by-the-day access to the video archives, I'm hopeful they'll make some of those older games available for download too.

Up, down, up, down. The Angels swept the Dodgers in Anaheim over the weekend, and have won four of their last five to bring themselves back to one game over .500. Unfortunately, despite the fact that a win's a win, the three victories over the Dodgers are somewhat misleading. While the Angels' starting pitching limited the Dodgers to just two runs in the three games, the Angels themselves were somewhat mediocre at the plate. They scored just three runs in each of the games, a rate of production that might be sufficient to beat Los Angeles but won't cut it against many other teams. Granted, the Dodgers themselves have some pretty excellent pitching, but at the moment the Angels rank just seventh in the AL in OPS and 10th in runs scored. With Brad Fullmer out for the season just after coming out of a slump, the onus is on everyone else - particularly Shawn Wooten and Jeff DaVanon, who figure to get the bulk of Fullmer's playing time - to pick up the slack.

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

The latest Moreno price cut at Edison Field: doing away with higher prices for tickets to more in-demand games. Over the short term, this is understandable - Moreno wants to get a repuation as a fans' owner, a populist in the mold of Bill Veeck, perhaps, and lowering ticket prices is good press. Over the long term, though, pegging at least some ticket prices to demand just makes more sense. If I'm going to spend $20 to see a baseball game, why would I spend it to see the Devil Rays on a Tuesday instead of the Red Sox on a Saturday? But if the D-Rays ticket cost $16, and the Sox were $22, maybe I'd think about it.

Okay, probably not. But I'm sure some people would.

Moreno's move is in direct contract to the latest bit of idiocy from the Chicago Cubs, who actually own a ticket broker service to which they release blocks of unsold tickets, which are then resold at scalpers' prices.

Holy crow! King Kaufman at Salon.com points out a new online exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame's web site, featuring a database of every uniform worn by the teams in the American, National, and Federal leagues since 1901, plus all kinds of great information on the history and development of uniforms in general. There's an exhibit in the Hall itself showing how the standard uni has changed over the years, of course, but that's just a handful of examples (albeit real, as opposed to photographs and drawings). Awesome stuff.

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Ervin Santana and Jeff Mathis, Angels prospects at Class A Rancho Cucamonga whom I mentioned a few weeks ago, have both been selected to play in the "Futures Game" during All-Star weekend, intended to be a peek at each organization's most promising minor leaguers. Santana and Mathis will be the only Angels representatives (a total of 50 players make the two teams, so that's actually slightly higher than average). The game is on Sunday, July 13, starting - I think - at 4:00 central time. Santana and Mathis will be on opposing teams, since the format for the game is U.S.-born players versus foreign-born players.

Following up on his lowering beer and concession prices, new Angels owner Arte Moreno is lowering ticket prices for certain seats in an effort to draw more families and children. Maybe it's just me, but I think it's pretty funny that a businessman would take the kind of steps to bring kids to the ballpark that Disney wouldn't.

Which is not to say I enjoy sitting near large numbers of kids, because generally parents seem to have an attitude that anything their kids do is okay as long as they're at the ballpark. Shrieking, whining, kicking seats, whatever. And if it does dimly impinge on them that perhaps el nino diablo is bothering people who actually came to watch the game, their temporary solution is always to buy them something with sugar in it. Brilliant.

I guess I never understood the impulse to bring a child to a baseball game if he or she isn't going to watch it. There are thousands of more comfortable places to be with a kid than a baseball stadium, where you're expected to stay more or less in one place for three hours, surrounded by strangers, on hard seats. I know for sure that if I didn't love to watch baseball games there's no way in hell I'd spend money to do that alone, much less with a child. But compare the number of parents you see explaining a play to their child, or teaching them to score a game, with the number who are completely ignoring them and you'll see what I'm saying.

Monday, June 23, 2003

With a week's worth of balloting to go, Troy Glaus seems to have solidified his lead over Oakland's Eric Chavez for the starting third-baseman's job on the AL All-Star team. Glaus now leads 408,739 to 314,081, the closest margin of any leader in the AL, but still pretty comfortable.

That's nice and all, but Glaus is also in a fairly nasty little slump that dates back to June 6. During that time, he's 4 for 42, with one home run. I'd swap the All-Star Team selection for a few more hits any day, and I'm guessing that so would Glaus.

So what happened? On Friday the 13th, the Angels seemed on their way to getting well - lineup intact, starting pitching coming around, three games over .500 for the first time all year. And then...well, I'm going to resist the temptation to say that everything went wrong, but it looks like it was pretty close. The offense has been anemic, scattering a few hits around but stranding legions of runners on base. The starting pitching, meanwhile, imploded again; yesterday's win over the Dodgers by Kevin Appier was the first time an Angels pitcher not named Ramon Ortiz had won a game since June 10. Subtracting Ortiz, the starters' ERA over the past ten days or so is somewhere in the early ionosphere.

At this point, even the wild card is looking pretty desperate. The Angels will have to catch no fewer than four teams ahead of them - Oakland, Toronto, Boston, and Kansas City - while fighting through a tough division schedule down the stretch.

Sunday, June 22, 2003

Well, I'm back, and I feel like the parents of a teenager who've returned home to find a naked kid passed out in their front yard, a keg floating in the swimming pool, 650,000 cigarette butts smoldering on the sitting room divan, and several police cars parked on their front lawn.

Obviously, the Angels' performance over the last week has been just ghastly, and, in a couple of hours, they get to hit against Kevin Brown, who is far and away the best pitcher in the NL this year. I really have no idea what's been going on, so I'll save the scathing commentary until tomorrow (or Tuesday - I have to catch up at work, too, you know), but let's just say that in the next few weeks I anticipate writing about whether the Angels should trade away a couple of their mainstays to contenders.

Friday, June 13, 2003

Your humble correspondent will be on vacation starting tomorrow, so updates to Purgatory Online will be sporadic, if not non-existent, until Sunday, June 22, at which time I'll post a long and gleeful account of the winning streak they're about to go on.

The Angels generally platoon at a couple of positions - notably second base, with Kennedy and Gil, and DH, with Fullmer and Wooten, and Scioscia has never been afraid to occasionally start a bench player in the outfield or shuffle somebody in at first if he feels like giving somebody the day off. Fortunately, there are several Angels who can play multiple positions - Spiezio can take first, third, one of the corner outfield slots, or even second; Wooten catches and plays first, Gil's taken time all over the infield at various times. This is not an inflexible team.

Still, throughout 2002, the Angels' backbone, their baseline lineup, was Eckstein-Erstad-Salmon-Anderson-Glaus-Fullmer-Spiezio-Molina-Kennedy. Platoons, substitutions, adjustments were made, but that was the standard.

Know when the last time was the Angels fielded that lineup? April 6. For basically the entire season, they've been without one of their regulars or another - starting with Kennedy, then Erstad, then Eckstein (who recovered from his hand injury only to fall victim to the flu). Along the way, Salmon and Percival were sidelined for a while as well.

Supposedly, that ends tonight, against the Mets. Everyone's healthy. Having won four straight series, everyone's starting to find a rhythm. And with Oakland just a game and a half ahead, it's time to move into the passing lane.

Thursday, June 12, 2003

So of course Benji Gil goes and hits a home run during the Angels' 5-3 victory over Philadelphia last night. I hear Gil told reporters before the game, "Sean said what about me on Purgatory Online? You tell him I'm gonna go deep tonight, and then I'm gonna take this bat and shove it straight up his ass!"

Ulp.

Anyway, the starting pitching was again good enough to mention - Appier went 5.2 innings, giving up two earned runs on six hits. His ERA has fallen to 4.65, still nothing to brag about but not out of place these days, in this league. Ben Weber, whose performance this year has been sensational but overshadowed by Brendan Donnelly's, picked up the win in relief by striking out all three of the batters he faced, while Donnelly himself continued his amazing run, throwing an inning of scoreless relief and dropping his ERA to 0.26.

Unfortunately, Donnelly did allow an inherited runner to score, that runner being the responsibility of Scott Schoeneweis, who got the shaft as far as seeing his ERA jump even higher than it already was. Schoeney, the Angels' only left-handed reliever, entered the game with two out in the top of the second to face Jim Thome, the Phillies' left-handed power-hitting first baseman. Schoeneweis did his job, getting Thome to ground out to first, and was left in to start the eighth, as Philadelphia had Bobby Abreu - also a lefty - leading off that inning. Abreu beat out an infield single, Schoeneweis was lifted in favor of Donnelly, and the Phillies managed to get Abreu around on a single and two fielder's choices. Still, the run's gotta be charged to someone, and Schoeneweis did put him on.

Remarkably, though Schoeneweis is the Angels' only left-handed option out of the pen, and despite the fact that his 7.00 ERA puts him dead last among the Angels' relievers, the Angels don't seem to have been hurt much by his performance. He's gone a mere 18 innings in 25 appearances, is 1-0, and has blown only one save. I haven't investigated, but I suspect that Scioscia is primarily going to him in situations where the game isn't on the line, and he can afford to give up a run or two without jeopardizing a win. Last night, entering with a three run lead, two outs, and the bases empty, would be a good example.

The Angels did make an attempt to acquire another lefty for the bullpen recently, apparently, but Chuck Finley wanted a starting spot. I understand, of course - the guy's been a starter all his life, and that's the routine he's comfortable with - but the last thing the Angels want to do right now is mess with the rotation, after it's finally achieved some semblance of efficacy. Finley might actually have been worth a gamble in Callaway's spot in the bullpen, but as a starter he's strictly in the Angels' past.

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

In the most recent update to the AL All-Star balloting, Troy Glaus has expanded his lead over Eric Chavez to 33,000 votes (up from 11,000 or so on June 2). Chavez has actually lost some ground to the Yankees' Robin Ventura, currently in third place for the eminently logical reason that he's a Yankee.

And now, the obligatory moment of crankiness: it's great to be able to vote online and all, but the way the online ballot works has got to change. There's a handy little link at each position to allow you to see how the candidates stack up against each other, statistically...if the only stats you care about are ABs, batting average, homers, RBI, and steals. Nothing else. And would it kill them to add a comparison utility, wherein you could check off players on your short list and then see just those players?

Okay, anyway, here's the current analysis of the real contenders:

Glaus - 209 AB, .297 / .391 / .579, 14 HR, 7 SB.
Chavez - 217 AB, .253 / .332 / .479, 12 HR, 5 SB.
Blalock - 212 AB, .349 / .405 / .580, 11 HR, 0 SB.

Chavez is on that list solely because he's in second. He clearly doesn't dserve serious consideration compared to either Glaus or Blalock. Tony Batista's numbers are just as good, if not better, than Chavez's.

Huff has been removed from the list since my last evaluation, because - silly me, why don't I follow the Devil Rays more closely? - I didn't realize that his inclusion at third base was one of those quirks of the All-Star ballot that seems to happen every year: a guy gets listed initially at a position he's expected to play, then things change and he spends the majority of his time at another position, and they can't change the ballot because they've already printed a jillion of them. In this case, Huff's played only eight games at third base, with the remainder of his time at first.

And boy, Glaus and Blalock are pretty close, aren't they? Blalock's outhit Glaus 77 to 62, but Glaus has drawn more walks, 33 to 20. Otherwise, Blalock would seem to have a slight edge in everything except homers - including defensively, where Blalock has a .927 fielding percentage, a 2.67 range factor, and a .711 zone rating, compared to Glaus's .925 / 2.41 / .699. Glaus is certainly a worthy All-Star, but there's not much doubt that if the Rangers had won the World Series last year, and Blalock been the Series MVP, he'd be leading the pack right now.

Mike Scioscia thinks Benji Gil is coming around. Well, Scioscia's definitely smarter than I am when it comes to running a baseball team, so I'm hopeful he's right. Then again, you wouldn't expect him to write Gil off in public, would you?

The Angels have split a pair with the Phillies over the past couple of days, dropping Monday night's contest 3-0 before winning a 2-1 nailbiter last night. Both games featured excellent starting pitching, with Washburn throwing effectively into the eighth and Lackey keeping the Phils' bats quiet into the seventh. Erstad's returned, but has yet to get a hit in the eight at-bats he's had since coming off the DL. Percival, meanwhile, claims that the shorter leg kick he's using to reduce the strain on his hip has given him more control, without diminishing velocity. Admittedly, he's only pitched three innings since his return, but he's given up no hits and just one walk in those three innings, in fewer pitches (18, 18, and 15) than his season average of 19.4.

Eckstein is believed to be ready to return to the lineup tonight, which means we should finally see Benji Gil sent back to the bench. Gil has appeared in every game since May 29, and in that stretch he's 3 for 22, with an abysmal .364 OPS for 2003. Meanwhile, the Angels have two talented middle infielders treading water in Salt Lake: second baseman Chone Figgins is batting .323, with an on-base percentage of .399 and a slugging percentage of .535, has speed, and switch hits; shortstop Alfredo Almezaga is hitting .345, is on base at a .397 clip, and is slugging .467. I know I've mentioned the possibility before, but I think I'm officially at the point where I believe that the Benji Gil era in Anaheim needs to come to a close. That's not to say that Gil won't rebound and put up decent numbers eventually - he's had a couple of fine major league seasons in a platoon role, and had an outstanding run in the playoffs last year - but with Kennedy putting up solid if unspectacular numbers and a pair of 25-year-old prospects in Salt Lake, the 30-year-old Gil is superfluous.

Charles Piercegets L'Affaire Sosa right in Slate:

Elsewhere, well, it's not the job of sportswriting to create illusions and it is even less the job of sportswriting to maintain them. Sammy Sosa may have profited from an image that it was in the interest of the sports media to create, but his little bit of gamesmanship is no more serious because it may have damaged that image. His obligation to our need for cardboard heroes and plastic drama is minimal at best. (And to argue that he's made a fortune off that image is to miss the point. Caveat emptor still obtains in that transaction.) When Ian O'Connor, one of the finest daily sports columnists in America, writes that Sosa is a "victim of his own power and fame," O'Connor is indicting the sportswriting profession as surely as he is Sosa.

Monday, June 09, 2003

Incidentally, Erstad hit .407, with six runs scored, four RBI, and a stolen base in 27 at-bats during his rehab assignment. Think he's looking forward to being back?

The No Rest for the Weary matchup is tonight, as the Angels play the Phillies in the only broadcast on the MLB slate tonight. The Angels are fresh off their longest road trip of the year, in which they went 7-5 through Baltimore, Tampa, San Juan (vs. the Expos) and Miami. After that humidity-soaked excursion, I'm sure they don't mind the long trip back to the West Coast to play tonight.

Philadelphia, meanwhile, took both ends of a doubleheader from the A's yesterday, then hopped a plane to Anaheim a few hours after the Angels.

The Angels have actually been playing pretty well lately; the offense has picked up some, and the starting pitching has picked up a lot. Tonight, Jarrod Washburn - who's been by far the best Angels starter this year - will get the ball, and Darin Erstad should be back in the lineup for the first time in almost two months. Unfortunately, David Eckstein is sidelined with a deep bone bruise, and Tim Salmon may be limited to DHing, again due to a bruise. But slowly, this team appears to be reassembling itself to take its best shot at a run on a playoff spot. At the moment, they're 10.5 games out of the AL West lead - Seattle just finished going 11-1 on a road trip, for Chrissakes - but just three games behind New York for the wild card.

The wild card...yes...that would do nicely...

Anyway, the game's on ESPN tonight, a rare treat for those of us following the Angels from outside Orange County.

Friday, June 06, 2003

Where have you gone, Troy Percival? Last night's 14-inning loss was the first time since Percival was sent to the DL that they truly needed him. Callaway blew a two-run lead in the bottom of the inning, virtually sealing his doom: when Percy returns tomorrow, Callaway will probably be sent down.

It was a sloppy, sloppy game; the Angels lost because they won the race to commit the most mistakes, but it was damn close. The Expos let the Angels back into the game in the eight and ninth, and then the Angels blew a couple of opportunities to pull ahead in extra innings - most notably in the 12th, when, with men on first and second and nobody out, Scott Spiezio was inexplicably not bunting and ending up popping out to the catcher (the next batter, Garret Anderson, flied out to center, which would easily have scored a runner from third). Shields, Donnelly, and Rodriguez all pitched very effectively in relief, and Lackey's start was marred only by a four-run meltdown in the third, aside from which he pitched five scoreless innnings.

Tonight, the Angels will go from muggy Puerto Rico to muggy Miami, where they'll open the last leg of this four-city road trip. Kevin Appier, who's pitched well in four of his last five starts, will get the ball for the Halos.

Sammy Sosa has been suspended for eight games as a result of his corked bat. He's appealling, naturally, probably on the theory that it can't hurt and it might get his sentence reduced, but if you ask me, eight games seems pretty light, even assuming his explanation is true.

Thursday, June 05, 2003

MLB is advertising the downloadable version of Roger Clemens's 300th win again. Good. Now if only they'd do the same for the 2002 playoffs...

Man-o-manimal, if the Expos don't want to move to Puerto Rico, I know a team that does. The Angels smacked the Expos around for the second straight night, hitting seven home runs just one night after hitting six. Jeff DaVanon hit two home runs again, his third consecutive multi-homer game - a feat accomplished only four times in the past, and never since 1969. Garret Anderson hit three dingers of his own. Glaus went 3 for 5, Fullmer went 2 for 5, and both of them went long, too. The two games agains the Expos have been such blowouts that, in both cases, the bench was almost completely emptied. Only Fullmer didn't get in Tuesday night, and Wooten was the odd man out last night.

Huge props go to Washburn for pitching in that bandbox for six innings and giving up just one run, and to Shields and Rodriguez for pitching one scoreless inning apiece. Although Frankie did walk two, he also struck out two, a phenomenon we may have to get used to. Of the relievers, only Mickey Callaway gave up a run, but of course that was in the bottom of the ninth with a ten-run lead, a serve-it-up situation if I've ever seen one.

That makes five wins in the last six games. Have the Angels come around? After finishing their series with the Expos tonight, they travel to Miami to take on a Marlins team that's actually a little worse than the Expos, so hopefully they can keep up the pace. And they'll need to - the Mariners are showing no signs of slowing down up atop the AL West, and we've still got a ways to go before we're contending for the wild card.

King Kaufman serves as the voice of sanity regarding Sammy Sosa's corked bat in Salon.com today. Aside from discussing the fact that corking your bat doesn't really help much, if at all (which isn't the point, but is interesting anyway), Kaufman wonders why we consider pitchers who doctor the ball "colorful," but hitters who doctor the bat "cheaters." This point was also made last night by Peter Gammons on Baseball Tonight, and yesterday on ESPN.com by Rob Neyer (who, like Kaufman, quoted Robert Adair - the author of The Physics of Baseball - about the properties of corked bats).

Kaufman, Gammons, and Neyer have a point - and maybe more of a point than they realize. Pitchers who doctor the ball are essentially interfering with the entire process of pitching. Once you've scuffed or spat on or otherwise altered the ball to sharpen its break, even a mediocre delivery will do. But hitters who alter the bat still have to select pitches and make pretty decent contact before that alteration really comes into play. True, replacing wood with cork will make the bat slightly lighter - like 0.1% lighter - and thus fractionally improve bat speed, and true, in baseball even the tiny advantages matter, but that's still no guarantee of success.

Yesterday, MLB X-rayed 76 of Sosa's bats, and found none containing cork or other illegal substances. It looks likely that they'll also X-ray at least some of the bats he used during the 1998 season, when he and Mark McGwire were engaged in the home-run record chase. Assuming that those bats come up clean, I think that all but the most conspiracy-minded of us could conclude that either Sammy is telling the truth about the bat being for batting practice only, or that his adventures in lumber modification began very recently. During the course of the investigation, MLB is expected to review film of Sosa in action; I think perhaps an equally telling experiment would be to review film of his taking batting practice, and to ask how long he's been using a corked bat for BP. It would be very suspicious indeed if they were unable to find proof that Sosa had previously used a modified bat for the reason he says he did.

Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Good Lord, and here I thought I was being a little hard on Sosa. Is Rick Morrissey always this bad a writer, or has the current story somehow pushed him to new lows in temperance and new highs in hackneyed prose? "In the slow-motion replays, tiny shards of Sammy Sosa's reputation hang briefly in th air before dropping to the ground." Jeeezus. Morrissey even manages to imply that we should take Sosa's corked bat as evidence that he uses performance-enhancing drugs. Look, if the Tribune's that hard up for columnists, I'd be happy to give it a shot.

The Angels crushed the Expos last night, 15-4, in the first laugher I can remember in a long, long time. Three of the first five Angel batters homered, and they tallies six round-trippers in all - two from newly-minted offensive machine Jeff DaVanon. Considering that Puerto Rico's Hiram Bithorn Stadium is 313 and 315 down the lines, and about 350 to the power alleys, an offensive explosion isn't really unexpected. It's just nice that it was the Angels for once.

I suppose by now everyone's hear that Sammy Sosa was caught using a corked bat last night, when the bat in question broke during an at-bat in the first inning of the Cubs-Devil Rays game. Sosa's explanation was that the bat wasn't one of his gamers, but rather a batting practice bat he used to put on a show for the fans. Sosa's other bats have all been confiscated, and will be checked for illegal modifications.

While it's obviously prudent to wait for the results of those tests, it does seem to me that there's something wrong with Sosa's explanation. It's batting practice, i.e., the time when you work on your swing and get yourself into a groove. Why on earth would you be using different equipment, getting yourself used to a bat with different properties than the one you were going to use during the game?

Tuesday, June 03, 2003

In the latest AL All-Star balloting, Troy Glaus continues to lead Eric Chavez at third base. It's close between them, but the Rangers' Hank Blalock may be the real All-Star at this position (currently fourth), and Tampa Bay's Aubrey Huff (not in the top five) deserves some consideration. Here's how they break down offensively - as always, sorry for the crappy formatting:

Name - ABs - OPS - HR - SB - Votes

Glaus - 178 - .959 - 11 - 6 - 145,729

Chavez - 195 - .769 - 10 - 5 - 136,622

Blalock - 182 - .978 - 9 - 0 - 83,801

Huff - 217 - .921 - 14 - 1 - <50,463

Seems obvious to me that Chavez doesn't really have much of an argument. His OPS is significantly worse, his ABs are middle of the pack, he's no better than the rest in terms of going long (which, yes, is already taken into account in OPS, but deserves some singling out as a statistic for the "excitement factor," considering it's the All-Star Game and that's what a lot of fans want to see), and five stolen bases doesn't mean much.

Clearly, we've got yet another case of talent lag, the tendency of All-Star voters to reward players for previous good seasons rather than the ones they're having now. Glaus is enjoying the effect, too - there's no way he'd be close to the top spot if the Angels hadn't won the World Series last year - but he also happens to be putting up the numbers to justify his selection.

The other Angels seem to be polling respectibly, but don't have a realistic shot at being voted in. Scioscia, of course, has control over a few roster slots as the AL Manager, and will almost certainly take Salmon and Donnelly (provided he stays healthy and doesn't melt down in the next few weeks), and might take Garret Anderson, Scot Shields, or even Ben Weber. Erstad and Fullmer would have to have incredible Junes to warrant consideration, while Percival - deserving as he is for his many years of unsung brilliance - will probably stay home because of the low numbers resulting from his stint on the DL.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Bobbie's Buckeye Bar in Tonapah, Nevada, is offering gamblers the chance to bet on which of the following numbers will be larger: (1) number of hits by Darin Erstad during the three games he's expected to play in Salt Lake while on rehab assignment, or (2) number of punts by the University of Nebraska football team during their game against Utah State on September 6.

Monday, June 02, 2003

Well, it's nice to see that the Angels can still take three of four from the Devil Rays, though, realistically, that was the minimum we should expect from them. Four-game series are tough; even against Tampa Bay you don't really expect a sweep, but the difference that last game makes - the difference between 3-1 and 2-2 - is huge, both psychologically and in the standings, particularly if (as was not the case this weekend) it's against someone you're contending with for a playoff spot.

The story this weekend seemed to be that of the role players. Jeff DaVanon continued to impress, going eight for twelve (including two home runs from the leadoff position yesterday) and establishing himself as the no-question fourth outfielder after Erstad returns this coming weekend. If Brad Fullmer continues his plunge - he's at .291 now, and sinking - DaVanon also gives the Angels the ability to shift Erstad to first for a few games.

Saturday, meanwhile, was Chone Figgins's day in the sun. Figgins went two for four with three runs scored and two stolen bases, and played left field for the first time in his major league career. Previously, he'd played exactly one inning in the outfield, a stint in center during a blowout loss to Baltimore. Figgins is ordinarily a second basemen, so the Kennedy-Gil platoon at that position means finding other ways to use him. But Gil is having a terrible year so far, and we may not be far from seeing him cut loose. Gil's 30, and makes "only" $400,000, so the Angels could probably afford to let him go in favor of the 25-year-old switch-hitting Figgins, but they'll need to give Figgins a few more at-bats at the major league level to assure themselves that he's ready.

The Angels are off today before beginning the National League portion of their schedule against Les Expos - or Los Expos, now, I guess, since the series will be in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There should be plenty of Angels fans in attendance - the Molina brothers are from Puerto Rico, and their father was actually inducted into the Puerto Rico Sports Hall of Fame last year.

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