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Albert Pujols‘ bothersome left foot injury is about to cost the Los Angeles Angels slugger significant time out of the lineup.

According to Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times, Pujols has left the team and returned to Southern California to have his foot evaluated after suffering another setback Friday night:

#Angels DH Albert Pujols has returned to SoCal to be evaluated. Re-injured L foot Fri night. Doesn’t look good. Out for a while.

— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) July 27, 2013

The Angels are in Oakland this weekend for a critical series against the AL West-leading Athletics. Pujols was in the lineup Friday night and went 1-for-5, including a single that sent home two runs in the top of the ninth. When Pujols reached first base, however, Angels skipper Mike Scioscia was forced to send in Collin Cowgill as a pinch runner.

Pujols, in his second season in Los Angeles, has struggled throughout the 2013 campaign with plantar fasciitis. Though the 33-year-old slugger has stayed in the lineup on almost an everyday basis, DiGiovanna is speculating this latest setback will likely send him to the disabled list:

My take on Pujols from covering Scioscia for many years. By way #Angels MGR spoke today, Albert appears headed for DL.

— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) July 27, 2013

Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register had the Los Angeles skipper’s quote on Pujols’ status, agreeing with DiGiovanna’s expectation of a DL stint:

Scioscia, on Pujols: “It’s sorer than anything he’s dealt with.” Dont be surprised if this is finally the DL for Pujols. #Angels

— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) July 27, 2013

Pujols has missed just two games all season, but the affect of Pujols’ lingering foot injury has been apparent. The slugger’s bout with plantar fasciitis has rendered him unable to play the field for much of the season and significantly affected his plate approach. The injury has gotten to the point he’s even talked about the possibility of offseason surgery with Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times.

“When we get to that point, we’ll talk about it,” Pujols said. “I’m definitely going to try to do something after the season to help me out and not play in that pain I’ve been playing in. There’s no doubt that I’ll be a full-time first baseman next year.”

Pujols is batting a career-low .258 this season with 17 home runs and 64 RBI. At his current pace, Pujols would fail to reach 30 home runs for the first time in his career.

Having signed a 10-year, $254 million contract with the Angels before the 2012 season, Pujols’ first two years in Los Angeles have been a struggle. He needed a torrid end to the season to reach 30 home runs and 100 RBI last year, as he set career lows in batting average and on-base percentage.

The former St. Louis Cardinals great has been a significant factor in the Angels’ disappointing 2013 season as well. The high-priced squad is 48-53 heading into Saturday’s action, 11 games behind the Athletics. Los Angeles is also 8.5 games out of the second wild-card spot.

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The Los Angeles Angels have dropped four of their last five games against the Minnesota Twins, which is important to consider when making your MLB picks as the two teams meet up at Angel Stadium.

Courtesy of SBR Forum, the Angels are minus-175 home favorites in the pro baseball odds, with the betting total sitting at 8.5 in the market.

Let’s take a closer look at this American League matchup from a betting perspective, while offering up a prediction along the way. 

Begin Slideshow

The 2013 MLB All-Star Game Tuesday night at Citi Field in New York has a chance to carry an interesting and historical meaning, opening the proverbial door for special opportunities in communities that need them. 

Thanks to the efforts by Head & Shoulders and Los Angeles Angels left-hander C.J. Wilson, all it will take are a few swings…and some timely misses.

That’s right, long-ball lovers; tonight the strikeout will be on center stage.

Though most baseball fans are drawn to the MLB All-Star Game because of the chance to see herculean home runs—followed by more herculean home runs—or a respective league’s home-field advantage possibilities during the World Series, tonight’s game will put a great deal of importance elsewhere.

As part of the continuing support for the MLB’s RBI program (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities), Head & Shoulders has announced a special challenge: If a pitcher strikes out the side in the second inning of the All-Star Game, they will donate $1 million to the RBI program.

Yep, that’s $1 million.

The announcement is an added bonus to the already successful “Season of the #Whiff Campaign,” where Head & Shoulders donates $1 to the RBI program for every strikeout in the 2013 season.

Keeping up with the power of social media, a fanbase can tweet the specified hashtag (#whiff) plus their team’s Twitter handle every time a pitcher from that club records a strikeout. The team with the most tweets at the end of each month can earn $10,000, encompassing a total community effort for each team.

It’s a community helping another community. Simple enough.

At the head of this, not only for the Los Angeles Angels, but also nationally, is pitcher C.J. Wilson.

I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to chat with the Angels’ pitcher, and Head & Shoulders “Mane Man,” about his involvement with the campaign and the potential donation.

Wilson, who was introduced to the RBI program when he was 15 years old while playing youth baseball in the Los Angeles area, is excited about such a hands-on charitable group.

“It’s great,” Wilson told me over the phone, “I get to go out there and do my job—strike people out, help people get some fantasy (league) points—and it’s all for a great cause.”

In addition to his 110 strikeouts this year from the mound, C.J. has contributed via a few rare plate appearances, where he has struck out four times. Instead of beating himself up, though, he looked at the bright side of his misfortune. “When I was hitting last week, I struck out,” he laughed, “And I thought…hey, that’s a dollar for donation.”

It remains to be seen if the hitters in tonight’s game will have the same fresh outlook, but with such a hefty announcement during a media-rich All-Star week (see Yasiel Puig and Freddie Freeman), you can count on more than a casual glance, no question.

It’s something that Wilson, who missed out on being an All Star this year, understands. “I wish it was me out there,” he said. “I would like the chance to (strike out the side), but I didn’t get the votes.”

That doesn’t mean he won’t be around tonight, however. C.J. will be taking over the Head & Shoulders Twitter handle (@HSforMen) for a portion of the game, spreading the word about the campaign and fielding fan questions.

And who knows, perhaps he may divulge a scouting report or two for the possible hurlers (Matt Harvey and Max Scherzer) in the second inning.

It wouldn’t hurt.

After all, the middle of the lineup for both the AL and NL teams are not what you would call Adam Dunn-esque. As Wilson joked, “(Dunn) could probably use (the program) as a tax write-off.”

Predictions and outcomes aside, the added recognition of RBI can only help the game of baseball and softball moving forward—during a time when they aren’t necessarily in line with pop culture.

It really is a win-win. Perhaps that’s the growth John Young had in mind when he started the RBI program in 1989.

So, though it may be odd, don’t be afraid to applaud the backwards-K tonight. Let the roars echo around Citi Field following a swing and a miss…followed by another and another. Salute the failed bunt with two strikes.

Enjoy it!

Because tonight, much to the delight of C.J., is all about the strikeout, making this game different from the rest.

Note: A very special thanks to C.J. Wilson for taking the time to chat. For more from Rick Suter follow him on Twitter @rick_suter

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Don’t look now, but Josh Hamilton and the Los Angeles Angels are kind of hot at the moment.

Actually, my bad. Please do look now, because this is something that we have to talk about.

The Angels have played 25 games since June 12. They’ve won 17 of those, which is a .680 winning percentage. And that’s a nice number for them to look at, because their winning percentage in their previous 65 games was .415.

Hamilton, meanwhile, has been a primary contributor to the more recent hotness of the Angels’ overall hotness. In 14 games since June 25, he’s hitting .346/.426/.654 with four home runs. Numbers like those call to mind the numbers he was putting up early last year, which is another good thing for the Angels to feel all good about.

But can Hamilton sustain it? For that matter, can the Angels?

Good questions. Put on your discussion hats and follow me this way.

Can Hamilton Sustain It?

You might be skeptical of the little run Hamilton is on. 

After all, this is a guy who hit .251/.325/.492 from the middle of May on last year, and who was hitting .207/.262/.378 in his first 72 games this year before warmth-breathing fairies breathed some warmth into his bat.

And the fact is that, no, Hamilton is very unlikely to have a 1.080 OPS for the rest of the season. We have to be fair here, and expecting him to keep that up is unfair.

We know that in part because his hot stretch has been built on the back of a .400 BABIP. Hamilton did have a .390 BABIP a couple of years ago in 2010 when he was hitting everything on the screws, but he had a .320 BABIP last year and has a .328 BABIP for his career.

Based on these numbers, the hits presumably won’t keep falling at the rate they’ve been falling for him over the last couple of weeks.

Hamilton’s hot stretch, however, is not a total mirage. He’s not hot by accident. He’s hot because he’s figured things out.

Hamilton has found his lost power, for one. He had a .171 ISO before he got hot, and he has a .306 ISO during his hot stretch. An ISO of .300 is elite territory, but it’s hardly beyond the realm of possibility that Hamilton could maintain a seat in this realm for the rest of the year. He’s always had pop, and he’s coming off a year in which he had a career-high .292 ISO despite all of the issues. 

Also, the fact that Hamilton is hitting balls hard now looks like the product of a much-improved approach at the plate. It shows up just from looking at his strikeout and walk rates.

Before June 25, Hamilton struck out 25.2 percent of the time and walked only 6.29 percent of the time. Since June 25, he’s struck out 23.0 percent of the time and walked 11.5 percent of the time.

How do you get numbers like those?

Well, it helps to stop hacking at everything in sight, and Hamilton has been doing that. FanGraphs has his swing rate in the past 30 days at 52.9 percent. That’s lower than his season mark of 55.8 percent and much lower than his 2012 mark of 58.9 percent.

Even more significant are the types of pitches Hamilton is laying off.

If you watched Hamilton earlier this season, you probably saw what I saw: a guy who could neither lay off nor hit off-speed stuff. All pitchers had to do was throwing something with some spin at him, and he would be rendered as dangerous as a dormouse.

But recently? Not so much.

Using data from TexasLeaguers.com, we can see that Hamilton is laying off the stuff he couldn’t lay off before:

What this tells me is that Hamilton has reestablished the connection between his brain and his bat-swinging gears and rotors. He had to know all along that pitchers were trying to and, indeed, actually beating him with off-speed stuff. He just couldn’t adjust, but he has since adjusted.

We can also see here that Hamilton has generally done a good job of staying in the zone when he has chosen to swing at off-speed stuff:

So there’s that, and here’s a video in which Hamilton illustrates the point by crushing an off-speed offering from Edward Mujica.

Hamilton was struggling earlier in the season because his approach was about as out of whack as an approach can be. Now his approach is very much in whack, and he’s reaping the benefits by whacking the ball.

Hamilton sustaining his hot streak, or some kind of hot streak, for the rest of the season hinges on him sustaining this approach. If he can, then he’s going to be the productive hitter that Arte Moreno thought he was buying over the winter.

Now then, how about the rest of the team? 

Can the Angels Sustain It?

The secret to winning one game is scoring more runs than you allow. The key to winning a bunch of games is to score a lot more runs than you allow.

Simple stuff, really, and the Angels can tell you all about it.

Before June 12, the Angels scored 4.35 runs per game and allowed 4.72 runs per game. That qualifies as “not very good” by most standards, so it’s no surprise that the Angels had a “not very good” record.

But since June 12: 5.64 runs scored per game and 4.36 runs allowed per game. More like it, don’t you think?

Now, 5.64 runs per game is too high to sustain for very long. That number doesn’t scream “fluke!” as much as, say, six or seven runs per game, but nobody in baseball is averaging as many as 5.5 runs per game—and the American League average is only 4.43 runs per game. 

However, the one thing we were all saying about the Angels offense before the season was that it was going to be a good one because it had Hamilton, Albert Pujols and Mike Trout. If the three of them hit, the Angels were going to score a lot of runs.

Well, Trout has been awesome all year, Hamilton is finally hitting and Pujols has a respectable .840 OPS over the last month. In other words, the Angels offense is finally what it was supposed to be.

Pujols’ health makes it hard to count on him maintaining all season long. But we know Trout is legit, and we’re operating under the assumption that Hamilton has solved his approach issues.

If the two of them keep it up and the Angels get varying degrees of production from Pujols, Howie Kendrick and Mark Trumbo the rest of the year, it’s really not hard to imagine their offense adhering to the five runs per game margin the rest of the season. 

The Angels should be good on that end of the equation. It’s the other end that represents the tricky part.

According to FanGraphs, Angels pitchers have a 3.85 ERA over the past month. That’s not great, as it only ranks 15th in baseball in that span, but it certainly looks good next to the 4.24 ERA Angels pitchers have racked up for the whole year.

The bullpen deserves much of the credit. Angels relievers have a 3.12 ERA over the past month and have blown only one save. 

That’s largely Ernesto Frieri‘s doing, as he’s been downright absurd over that span with a 15.80 K/9 and a 1.98 BB/9. That walk rate reeks of unsustainability given that Frieri‘s career BB/9 is 4.58, but he’s also pounding the zone better than ever with a Zone% of 53.4 over the past month. His career mark is 47.4, so it’s fair to wonder if something’s clicked for him.

If something has, that’s good news for the Angels.

They can’t have Frieri doing what he did last August, when he suddenly lost his stuff and contributed to a bullpen nightmare that put a huge dent in the Angels’ postseason chances. Frieri‘s pitching right now like a guy who’s going to avoid another spell like that, and that’s a good thing because having that rock at the end of the bullpen is always, well, good.

But really, it’s the starters who make for the key here.

Over the past month, Angels starters have a merely decent 4.27 ERA. But that’s misleading, as it’s inflated by horrid work from Jerome Williams and a couple of bad starts from Tommy Hanson. The rest of the guys have been solid, particularly Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson.

Weaver has a 3.03 ERA in his past five starts and has allowed only two earned runs in his last 20.2 innings. Wilson has a 2.60 ERA since the beginning of June. Basically, he and Weaver have been the effective one-two punch the Angels were hoping they would be.

Weaver has been helped by extra velocity. According to Brooks Baseball, he was averaging 87.19 miles per hour with his heater before June 27. In three starts since then, he’s been at 88.01 miles per hour. That’s not a small gain, and it’s encouraging seeing as how Weaver’s fastball was more like a moderately quick ball earlier in the season.

By the way, the past three teams Weaver has faced are Detroit, St. Louis and Boston, three of the best in the business at putting runs on the scoreboard. Point being: He looks like he’s back.

As for Wilson, however, don’t be fooled.

The key to Wilson’s success in his past eight starts is his walk rate. He had a 4.23 BB/9 before June, and has a 2.60 BB/9 since June. Be wary of that, as he’s traditionally been a 4.00ish BB/9 guy as a starter, and his walk rate hasn’t declined because he’s done a better job of putting pitches in the strike zone.

For the season, Wilson’s Zone% is 44.1. In the past 30 days, it’s 43.2. That gives his lower walk rate a mirage-ish quality, which tells me he’s probably going to revert back to being himself very soon. And when Wilson is himself, he can be infuriating to watch.

Speaking of infuriating to watch, there’s Joe Blanton.

He’s been getting knocked around all season, and at this point I’ve given up believing the lies his FIP and xFIP have been telling about him being owed some good luck. The guy has mediocre stuff, and it speaks volumes that he hasn’t posted a BABIP under .300 since 2009. He’s hittable, plain and simple.

Tommy Hanson, meanwhile, was hard at work being something of a Blanton clone before he went on the disabled list with a forearm issue.

As expected, his velocity was on its way down for a third straight season, and his strikeout rate also took another turn for the worse. He’s a fly-ball pitcher who can’t miss bats at this point, and that’s not the kind of guy any team wants to put too much faith in.

With Wilson likely a ticking time bomb, Blanton all Blanton-y and Hanson all Hanson-y, what the Angels really need is for Jason Vargas to come back strong and pick up where he left off before he went on the disabled list with a blood clot. He was having a very strong season with a 3.65 ERA, and a 3.05 ERA in 11 starts since the third week of April.

If the Angels can get Weaver and Vargas making consistent starts together for what will feel like the first time all season, then they’re going to be able to rely on at least two guys. Wilson will be a wild card, but he’s certainly a better No. 3 starter than Blanton and Hanson.

If it all comes together, the Angels’ rotation could be…decent.

So, let’s add up all the pieces: an offense that should be pretty good in large part because of a pricey star player who should be pretty good, a bullpen with a ninth-inning rock and a decent rotation.

Not a recipe for a world-beater, that, but that does sound like the recipe all of us had in mind for the Angels before the season. Point being that they should be a good team from here to the end, if not necessarily a great team.

The bad news? That’s that “good” baseball likely won’t be enough to catch up to the Oakland A’s and Texas Rangers if they continue to play as well as they’ve played in the second half.

The good news? That’s that one or both of those teams could be overcome with injuries and/or other nasty things and make life much easier for the Angels.

The Angels won’t stay scorching hot forever, but they have a shot to save their season so long as they stay warm.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted. 

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.

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After a while it must get kind of old hat for Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout.

You know, another great defensive play, he trends on Twitter.

Big deal, right?

On Friday night, in the top of the fifth inning in the game between the Los Angeles Angels and Pittsburgh Pirates, Trout indeed found himself once again trending on Twitter after robbing Pirates first baseman Gaby Sanchez with a fully extended dive to take away extra bases.

For Trout, it doesn’t matter whether he’s playing center or left field—he’s already making a living in legal highway robbery.

His Twitter faithful still continue to be amazed by what they see from the 21-year-old superstar.

It’s certainly not the first time Trout has given reason to trend on Twitter.

Check out this sick play he made on Jeff Keppinger back in April.

Quite frankly, no other player can close on a ball the way Trout did on that night.

And then, the play last year—robbing J.J. Hardy of a certain home run—a play that’s still highlighted on MLB Network a year later.

Trout’s defensive abilities are, of course, just one of the five tools he shows off on a regular basis. But it’s already a finely honed skill for sure.

Doug Mead is a featured columnist with Bleacher Report. His work has been featured in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, SF Gate, CBS Sports, the Los Angeles Times and the Houston Chronicle.

Feel free to talk baseball with Doug anytime on Twitter.

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The Los Angeles Angels are a mess. Their 29-38 record is the second-worst mark in the American League, and the Texas Rangers and Oakland A’s are miles ahead of them in the AL West.

But the Angels aren’t just any mess. They’re the kind of mess that invites rubbernecking. It’s impossible not to see them, slow down and say, “Man, how did that happen?”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The last couple years have seen the Angels spend roughly $450 million on big-name free agents with the sole purpose in mind to do great things. And after nearly making the playoffs in 2012, they were supposed to get in and go to the World Series this year. The 2013 season was supposed to see them do anything but fall apart at the seams like they have.

How it’s all gone downhill is probably already a book-length subject. But since all I’ve got here is an article, the best I can do is focus on the miscalculations and misfortunes that waylaid the Angels.

The story goes a little something like this…

Misstep: The Extension and Subsequent Marginalization of Mike Scioscia

Let’s step into the TARDIS and travel back to January 2009.

At the time, the Angels were fresh off their fourth postseason appearance in five years and had won 194 regular-season games in 2007 and 2008. All under the watchful gaze of Mike Scioscia.

You can’t blame Angels owner Arte Moreno for wanting to lock a guy like that up for the long haul. Moreno did that and then some, signing Scioscia to a 10-year contract extension that had the potential to keep him in Anaheim through 2018.

Ten years is a long time to commit to any manager, but the Angels committing that many years to Scioscia felt right. He first came aboard in 2000 and proceeded to make the Angels into a powerhouse by crafting them in his image. The Angels played a unique brand of baseball under him, one characterized by aggressiveness on offense, strong defense and quality relief pitching.

After committing 10 years to Scioscia, you’d think that the Angels would have made it a directive right then and there that the club would continue to be operate in his image. Evidently, that never happened.

Since he replaced Tony Reagins in October 2011, general manager Jerry Dipoto has further and further cemented himself as the man in charge in Anaheim, even going so far as to fire hitting coach Mickey Hatcher, one of Scioscia’s longtime generals, last May.

According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, Scioscia actually considered stepping down after Hatcher was given the boot. Even now, Rosenthal says that Dipoto and Scioscia have a strained relationship, which is easy to believe.

It’s not just that Dipoto has knocked Scioscia from his throne. There’s also the reality that the Angels have moved away from Scioscia-ball and more toward the “Moneyball model.” They’re less about being aggressive and more about powering up.

This is especially true now in 2013. Per FanGraphs, the Angels are ninth in home runs and 21st in stolen bases. Not exactly what you’d expect from a Mike Scioscia team.

Marginalizing Scioscia and doing away with Scioscia-ball could have worked, mind you. Other teams have won with the Moneyball model. The Angels could have, too.

Part of the reason why they’re not has to do with bad investments, and you know which one of those stands out the most.

Bad Investment: Albert Pujols

Albert Pujols suffered through the worst season of his career in 2011. He hit 37 homers, but his .906 OPS was well below the career mark of 1.050 that he bore at the start of the season.

The Angels wanted Pujols anyway, so much so that they signed him to a 10-year, $254 million contract that had the baseball world buzzing.

“Albert’s career performance clearly speaks for itself,” said Dipoto in a statement, via ESPNLosAngeles.com. “He has proven to be the best player of his generation.”

That was the sentiment of the hour when Pujols signed. Sure, he was coming off a down year, but he was Albert freakin’ Pujols. He’d figure it out.

Looking back now, however, the warning signs were there.

The big injury Pujols dealt with in 2011 was a fractured wrist that put him on the disabled list, but his Baseball Prospectus injury database also shows a hamstring strain, a wrist contusion, a hand contusion, shoulder soreness and an ankle sprain. These were precisely the kind of nagging injuries that age tends to invite. And at 31, Pujols was no spring chicken in 2011.

There was also Pujols’ plate discipline in 2011, which wasn’t very Pujols-esque. Per FanGraphs, he saw his BB% tumble below 10 percent for the first time in his career, and he also hacked at more pitches outside the strike zone than ever before.

Consider those last two paragraphs together. They should read like a prophesy for what Pujols would become.

Indeed. Once baseball’s brightest star, Pujols has only traveled further down the path he began treading in 2011. Good health has continued to elude him, and his plate discipline is still far from what it once was. This year, he’s swinging at more pitches outside the strike zone than infamous bad-ball chasers like Ichiro Suzuki and Adrian Beltre (see FanGraphs).

Pujols’ deal isn’t the only contract the Angels have handed out that’s living up to the warning signs. The other big one the Angels handed out during the 2011-2012 offseason is, too.

Bad Investment: C.J. Wilson

Contrary to Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson was coming off his best season when the Angels signed him to a five-year, $77.5 million deal.

Wilson had just gone 16-7 with a 2.94 ERA for a Texas Rangers team that made it to within one strike of winning the World Series. On the surface, he looked like just the kind of guy you want at the top of your rotation: talented and a winner.

One thing that didn’t make sense about Wilson’s 2011 season was his walk rate. After posting a 4.10 BB/9 in 2010, his BB/9 fell to 2.98.

Quite the improvement, but it didn’t add up.

Here’s a look at Wilson’s Zone%’s (that being the percentage of pitches he’s thrown in the strike zone) in 2011 as compared to 2010, according to both Baseball Info Solutions and PITCHf/x by way of FanGraphs:

These numbers show a very slight improvement in Wilson’s ability to throw strikes. One much more slight than his walk rate would lead one to believe, anyway. 

And there’s the problem. Wilson’s 2011 walk rate looked like a guarantee that he had sharpened up his command when the subject was, in fact, still up for debate.

A couple years later, Wilson’s 2.98 BB/9 from 2011 looks like an obvious outlier. His BB/9 went back up to 4.05 in 2012, and it’s at 3.90 this year. Not so coincidentally, he’s gone from being a sub-3.00 ERA pitcher to a guy with a 3.88 ERA in an Angels uniform. 

Now, to be fair, it takes a lot more than two bad investments and a disconnect between a GM and a manager to kill a baseball team. These things help, but they can’t kill a team quite like Murphy’s Law.

The Angels can tell you all about that just from their experiences in 2012.

Murphy’s Law: The Angels’ 2012 Season

It’s hard to give the Angels too much guff about what happened in 2012. They won 89 games, after all, and were one of baseball’s best teams after Mike Trout came aboard in late April.

That’s one thing that went right for the Angels. Everything else, though…

The Angels were expecting huge production out of Pujols. They eventually got it, but not before he slumped to the tune of a .536 OPS through his first 36 games.

The Angels were expecting a big season out of Wilson, too. They only got half of one, as he went from having a 2.43 ERA in the first half to having a 5.54 ERA in the second half.

Elsewhere in the starting rotation, the Angels were expecting big seasons out of Dan Haren and Ervin Santana, who both posted ERAs in the low 3.00s and combined for 27 wins in 2011. The 2012 season saw their ERAs skyrocket, and they both ended up with losing records.

In the bullpen, the Angels were expecting Jordan Walden to follow his All-Star rookie season with an even better sophomore season as the club’s closer. He was demoted from the closer’s role before April was even over, and the bullpen was thrown into a state of flux for the rest of the season.

Ernesto Frieri eventually stabilized the closer’s role, but even he struggled in August when the Angels bullpen lost a staggering seven games (see FanGraphs).

Considering all this, it’s actually amazing that the Angels managed to win 89 games. Things could have been a lot worse.

At the same time, it was obvious that things needed to get a lot better. That’s where things went wrong the ensuing winter.

The Wrong Idea: The Angels’ 2012-13 Offseason

It wasn’t hard to spot the weaknesses that Dipoto needed to address last winter.

Jered Weaver pitched well all season, and Zack Greinke added some stability after he came over from the Milwaukee Brewers at the trade deadline, but the Angels’ starting pitching was a weakness in 2012. Combined, their starters posted a mediocre 4.04 ERA. 

The bullpen was worse. Despite Frieri’s best efforts, Angels relievers still only managed a 3.97 ERA that ranked 22nd in baseball. Only the Brewers and Colorado Rockies blew more saves.

The Angels’ shopping list for the winter should have consisted of the following: pitching, pitching and more pitching—and not just any pitching…the good stuff.

Moreno had other ideas. According to Ken Rosenthal, it was Moreno who spearheaded the club’s pursuit of Josh Hamilton, and his signing left little financial wiggle room for Dipoto to rebuild the pitching staff. He was going to have to do what he could.

Gone went Haren, Santana and Greinke, who signed a then-record contract for a right-hander with those blasted Los Angeles Dodgers.

In their place, Dipoto put Jason Vargas, Tommy Hanson and Joe Blanton. It only cost Kendrys Morales to get Vargas, Walden to get Hanson, and $15 million over two years to get Blanton. Like that, the club’s mediocre rotation was replaced by a thrifty one that promised to be equally mediocre.

Dipoto spent a little more freely on the bullpen, issuing $8 million to Sean Burnett and $3.5 million (guaranteed) to Ryan Madson. The latter was a calculated risk, as Madson was still recovering from Tommy John surgery and would only be able to help the Angels once/if he got healthy.

The pitching staff was retooled, but it was clear all along that much was going to have to go right in order for the retooling effort to pay off. 

It all went down seemingly for the sake of bringing aboard Hamilton, who would surely be able to shore up…

Well, an area that didn’t really need to be shored up. After finishing fourth in MLB in runs scored in 2012, the Angels were hardly in dire need of another hitter.

These being the Angels, it’s only natural that the hitter they didn’t need to spend on has turned out to be another bad investment.

Bad Investment: Josh Hamilton

With Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson, the warning signs were subtle. There, but subtle.

The same can’t be said of the warning signs with Hamilton. It was obvious the moment he inked his five-year, $125 million contract that the Angels were going out on a limb.

Hamilton was as hot as Kate Upton at the center of the sun through the first six weeks of the 2012 season, but he hit only .251 with a .325 OBP over his final 116 games. His prolonged slump was characterized by an abundance of strikeouts, and those were no accident.

Hamilton swung at pretty much everything thrown in his general direction in 2012. Per FanGraphs, only Delmon Young hacked at more pitches, and nobody swung at more pitches outside the strike zone. Worse, nobody swung and missed at more pitches than Hamilton did.

The Angels had no choice but to hope that things would change in 2013. Instead, it’s been par for the course.

Hamilton is still among the game’s most prolific hackers, right up there next to Yuniesky Betancourt and Carlos Gomez (see FanGraphs). He’s also still chasing more bad pitches than he should be, and he’s is whiffing more often than all but two other players.

For Hamilton’s $15 million salary, what the Angels are getting is a .217/.274/.390 slash line. Rather than bolster what was already a strong offense, he’s made it weaker.

That’s just one of many things that has gone wrong for the Angels in 2013. Murphy’s Law is attacking them again.

Murphy’s Law Again: The Angels’ 2013 Season

The Angels got off on the right foot this season, winning on Opening Day in Cincinnati in extras by the final of 3-1.

The mess started to materialize soon after.

The three big signings have all been disappointments. We know about Hamilton, and Pujols has been only marginally better with a .757 OPS. Rather than key components of an elite offense, they’re just “meh” components of an offense that ranks eighth in the American League in runs scored.

Wilson, meanwhile, has a 4.02 ERA and has had only two starts in which he hasn’t walked multiple hitters. He hasn’t been horrible, but he’s certainly pitched much more like a back-end starter than a front-end starter.

Elsewhere in the starting rotation, only Vargas has turned out to be a reliable producer. Weaver had to go on the DL after his second start of the season and has been hit-or-miss in the starts he has made. Hanson has been limited to seven starts, in which he has an ERA over 4.00. Blanton has an ERA near 6.00 and has already lost 10 games.

The bullpen has been worse off. Madson still hasn’t pitched yet, and it’s up in the air whether he’ll be able to pitch at all in 2013 after suffering a setback in his recovery. Burnett has since joined Madson on the DL with an elbow problem. The relievers who are and have been active have posted a 4.11 ERA that ranks 23rd in MLB.

Put numbers like these together, and there’s no way you’re ending up with anything other than a rotten team.

The best thing this particular rotten team can do now is serve as a cautionary tale with a number of key lessons:

Lesson 1: Don’t make a long-term commitment to a manager only to marginalize him later.

Lesson 2: Don’t say “yes” when the warning signs say “no.”

Lesson 3: Help your team where it actually needs help.

Lesson 4: Hope like hell that the baseball gods are on your side.

No, there’s not a lot teams can do about that last one. But if the Angels are any indication, the baseball gods are going to be a lot nicer if you don’t screw up the first three.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted. Salary and contract info courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts. 

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Peter Bourjos just made Tuesday’s game between the Baltimore Orioles and Los Angeles Angels all about him.

In just the bottom of the first inning, Bourjos saw J.J. Hardy blast a 1-1 pitch to deep center and climbed the wall to take back what would have been a two-run home run. Even teammate Mike Trout must be jealous.

You can bet that Bourjos will be all over SportsCenter on Wednesday thanks to this gem of a catch, and I’d even venture so far as to say that this could be the catch of the year.

For those of you questioning whether moving Mike Trout to left field in place of Bourjos was a mistake defensively, I think we just got our answer.

Peter Bourjos Just made one the greatest catches you will ever See!!!!#greatcatches #angels #epic twitter.com/RogerLodge7/st…

— Roger Lodge (@RogerLodge7) June 11, 2013

This isn’t Bourjos’ first time robbing hitters, however. He has had five home-run-saving catches since 2010, which leads MLB.

Peter Bourjos just made his 5th career HR robbery, tied with Cameron Maybin for the most since 2010.

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) June 11, 2013

Bourjos clearly has the speed, timing and athleticism to be an elite fielder, and he shows it off at regular intervals. We’ve seen him rob Daniel Murphy, make diving catches and simply become a hitter’s nightmare in 2011.

This must feel like deja vu for Hardy, as just last year he was robbed by an Angels center fielder, but that time it happened to be Trout.

A year and a day after Mike Trout’s superhuman catch against the Orioles, Peter Bourjos makes the… instagram.com/p/acAofKL2Cg/

— Mike Furrh (@Mike_Furrh) June 11, 2013

Bourjos is back from the DL, and the fans love it.

I’m already looking forward to the Peter Bourjos poster giveaway Angels stadium will be giving away soon of that catch…

— ℓкяgιяℓ (@LKRGIRL) June 11, 2013

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim were recently swept by the Houston Astros, a team with a minuscule payroll widely believed to be one of the worst in the modern era.  

This drops the Halos’ record to 25-33, 11 games out of first place in the AL West and seven games out of the wild-card picture.

With a seven-game win streak now decidedly in the rearview mirror, here are five things wrong with the Angels this season.

All stats courtesy of ESPN.com and current as of 8 p.m. ET, June 4.

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One of the greats has passed. Dr. Lewis Yocum, one of the top sports surgeons in the world, died on Tuesday according to Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times. Long the team physician for the Los Angeles Angels and a consulting surgeon to hundreds of major league players, Yocum‘s work at the Kerlan-Jobe Clinic in Los Angeles placed him on a high pedestal. While no sports surgeon is in any Hall of Fame, Yocum deserves consideration, along with his mentor, Dr. Frank Jobe.

The esteem he was held in was manifest in two ways. The surgeons he trained and the medical staffs he consulted with often identified themselves as “Yocum guys.” The orthopaedic fellows from Yocum‘s Kerlan-Jobe program, along with those from James Andrews’ ASMI fellows make up the majority of sports surgeons today. The legacy Yocum built through his mentorship is strong, with some of the top names in sports medicine today amongst them.

Yocum was also honored by his own team. The Angels’ training room was named on May 5th for Dr. Yocum, an honor to be sure, but one even more than most realize. The training room is the holy of holies in most locker rooms, a place where no one enjoys going, but within those walls, the trust that must be shared takes on an element of the confessional. That everyone in an organization would agree that one man, one doctor, was worthy is truly notable.

The list of Yocum‘s patients is extensive. Returning players in recent years like Stephen Strasburg, Dustin Pedroia and Daniel Hudson barely scrapes the surface. Just the list from the last few years would be enough to fill out the rosters of a couple All-Star teams (the list is below). 

Yocum‘s research was also groundbreaking. His work on the rotator cuff, along with Dr. Frank Jobe, led to the near universal use of the “thrower’s ten” exercises which helped reduce the number of shoulder injuries. His work on shoulder impingement also led to a much greater understanding of what could be done to help baseball pitchers. His work went beyond the shoulder, with key papers on the knee and elbow to his credit as well. 

Dr. Tim Kremchek, the team physician for the Cincinnati Reds worked with Yocum and sums up how so many in the industry feels. Kremchek told me “I got to know Lew over the last 15 years and taking care of high profile athletes, there was no one better. He was always calm, straight up, experienced. Always invaluable assistance. Great doctor, great human being, and a better friend. In this business, too many people are trying to keep the case. Lew was there to help the player.

The loss of Dr. Yocum is one not just for the Angels, for whom he served so long and well, but for all of baseball. As yet, there is no doctor enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, but when it does, Dr. Yocum should be noted alongside the giants of his profession and the best of baseball. 

Patient List:

Major patients:  Stephen Strasburg, Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, Jordan Zimmermann, Kendrys Morales, Ted Lilly, Robb Nen, John Lackey, Randy Wolf, CJ Wilson, Francisco Liriano, Billy Wagner, Joakim Soria, Jake Westbrook, Cal Eldred, Scott Erickson, Daniel Hudson

Others: Chris Narveson, Cory Luebke, Joe Wieland, John Lamb, Ryan Kalish, Sergio Santos, David Riske, Tsuyoshi Wada, Trevor Crowe, Anthony Reyes, Danny Duffy, Felipe Paulino, David Aardsma, Hector Ambriz, Carlos Gutierrez, Mike Aviles, Zach Miner, John Franco,  Lucas Giolito, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Jeremy Bonderman, Jose Arredondo

Special thanks to Dan Wade for his research assistance on this piece.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The Los Angeles Angels have put together a season-high five-game winning streak, which can’t be ignored when making your MLB picks on Friday as they take on the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium.

Sports bettors will find that the Angels are minus-115 road favorites in the pro baseball odds (courtesy of SBR Forum), while the total sits at nine in the betting market.

Let’s take a closer look at this American League matchup from a betting perspective, while offering up a prediction along the way.

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