{"id":7932,"date":"2010-07-27T14:38:04","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T21:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=7932"},"modified":"2010-07-27T14:38:06","modified_gmt":"2010-07-27T21:38:06","slug":"luke-warm-july-27-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=7932","title":{"rendered":"Luke Warm: July 27, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_7510\" style=\"width: 232px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-7510\" href=\"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?attachment_id=7510\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7510\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7510 \" title=\"Landestoy Luke\" src=\"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Landestoy-Luke.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"222\" height=\"227\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-7510\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Landestoy Luke<\/p><\/div>\n<p>By Landestoy Luke<\/p>\n<p>There was excitement in\u00a0Anaheim\u00a0this weekend when the Angels swept in seemingly from nowhere and plucked Dan Haren from the\u00a0Arizona Diamondbacks\u00a0in a trade.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Sorry Halo fans\u2026.this doesn\u2019t make a lick of difference in 2010. Beyond that, though, this is a great deal. Haren won\u2019t help the Angels make up 7 \u00bd games on the Rangers or 10 games on the wild-card leading Rays. If anything, they hold serve with the Rangers after they acquired\u00a0Cliff Lee.<\/p>\n<p>First things first, getting rid of\u00a0Joe Saunders\u00a0is a plus for the Angels. Saunders fans will say, \u201cBut L-Man, he\u2019s won 16 and 17 games the last two seasons!\u201d If you say that, then you haven\u2019t paid attention to my column lately. Saunders doesn\u2019t strike out enough guys to justify his middling control (3.36 walks per 9). He also has trouble keeping the ball in the park, a problem that will be exasperated by pitching in\u00a0Arizona\u00a0. The BABIP gods have come to collect after his very fortunate 2008. His BABIP has gone from .267 in \u201908 to .290 in \u201909 to .305 this year. His WHIP is a horrible 1.5 and has little chance of improving. Angel fans, you should have been willing to give this guy away for free.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he was a main piece in a trade that netted you a solid starter in Haren. Haren\u2019s fly-ball tendencies will play better in Anaheim than in Arizona . Haren has the ability to miss bats, almost striking out one batter per inning. He has also pitched over 216 innings each of the last 5 years. He has walked less than 2 batters per 9 innings over the course of his career and is as reliable as they come. His numbers look down this year, but that\u2019s largely a product of his high BABIP (.355), so he should improve this year provided he wasn\u2019t hurt too badly last night.<\/p>\n<p>Another huge plus is that he\u2019s extremely affordable at $11 mil per season. It begs the question whether there are larger problems in Arizona . Haren is the type of player they should be keeping, not looking to unload with 2 more seasons left on his contract. This deal hints that all may not be well in Arizona , which may make things easier for the NL West.Whatever the case may be, this deal sets up the Angels in a great position for 2011 and 2012.<\/p>\n<p><em>Landestoy Luke is a former semi-pro baseball player in the California-Nevada Independent League. Luke was once traded for former\u00a0Angel Ray Chadwick\u00a0in the CNIL. After spending some time as an advance scout in the Mexicali League, Luke now spends his time as a freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Landestoy Luke There was excitement in\u00a0Anaheim\u00a0this weekend when the Angels swept in seemingly from nowhere and plucked Dan Haren from the\u00a0Arizona Diamondbacks\u00a0in a trade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7932"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7934,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7932\/revisions\/7934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}