{"id":7720,"date":"2010-07-13T16:20:28","date_gmt":"2010-07-13T23:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=7720"},"modified":"2010-07-13T16:20:29","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T23:20:29","slug":"luke-warm-july-13-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=7720","title":{"rendered":"Luke Warm: July 13, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Landestoy Luke<\/p><\/div>\n

By Landestoy Luke<\/p>\n

Can we all agree the\u00a0Home Run Derby\u00a0should be taken \u2018round back and sent to the glue factory? At least with the\u00a0Slam Dunk contest\u00a0in the NBA, there\u2019s some variation. In baseball, a home run is a home run. Yeah, a 500 foot homer is impressive, but most of the time it all looks the same: Guys hits ball, ball goes far\u2026.whoopie. Don\u2019t look for anything to change, though, as there\u2019s nothing to take its place and\u00a0MLB\u00a0doesn\u2019t want to give away that revenue. As long as people will watch the likes of\u00a0Vernon Wells\u00a0and\u00a0Chris Young\u00a0try to hit the ball far, they\u2019ll keep putting on the show.<\/p>\n

Buried here:\u00a0The Angels\u00a02010 season. Granted, the Rangers just got swept by the pathetic Orioles, but this Angels team just has too many holes and not enough thumbs. The pitching staff is among the worst in the AL and outside of\u00a0Jered Weaver, who can they rely on? It\u2019s tough to know which\u00a0Ervin Santana\u00a0is for real.\u00a0Joe Saunders\u00a0doesn\u2019t miss enough bats and his middling stuff gets knocked around as a result.\u00a0Scott Kazmir\u00a0has been a disaster, with him bottoming out by giving up 13 ER\u2019s in 1 1\/3 innings vs.\u00a0Oakland\u00a0last week. The bullpen is an even bigger mess and while the perception has been that closer\u00a0Brian Fuentes\u00a0is the biggest problem, he\u2019s actually been their best reliever this year. What? Don\u2019t believe me? Look at these WHIPS:\u00a0Fernando Rodney\u00a0(1.52),\u00a0Scott Shields\u00a0(1.68),\u00a0Kevin Jepsen\u00a0(1.47) and\u00a0Jason Bulger\u00a0(1.57) have been horrible compared to Fuentes (a respectable 1.22).<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t just the pitching. The offense has been subpar as well. 11th<\/sup> in OBP and 10th<\/sup> in slugging forecast an even sharper decline in run production is coming. There has been talk of getting Nationals slugger Adam Dunn. He would definitely help out, but he may help this offense be average at best. An average offense can\u2019t sustain a terrible pitching staff. Sorry Halos, just the messenger here.<\/p>\n

On top of that, Texas \u2019s acquisition of\u00a0Cliff Lee\u00a0takes away any margin of error the Angels may have had. He\u2019s a 2-3 game improvement in a division where they already lead the Angels by 4 1\/2 games. Are the Angels going to play 8 games better than the Rangers from this point on? Uh, no. But hey, take heart Angel fans, at least you took 5 of 6 from the Dodgers.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t think I\u2019m only putting the 10 count on the Angels. The Dodgers aren\u2019t going anywhere this season either. I\u2019ll explain that tomorrow along with a recap of the All-Star Game. Nah, then it means I have to watch that thing.<\/p>\n

Landestoy Luke is a former semi-pro baseball player in the California-Nevada Independent League. According to Luke, one of his most memorable accomplishments was giving up the 12th<\/sup> run of the game vs. the Carson City Johnnies, which allowed everyone attending in Carson City to get a free dozen donuts from a local donut establishment.\u00a0\u00a0After 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":"

By Landestoy Luke Can we all agree the\u00a0Home Run Derby\u00a0should be taken \u2018round back and sent to the glue factory?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"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-7720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7720"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7722,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720\/revisions\/7722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}