Curtis Pride, an easy man to root for.

Are the Halos planning on a Rivera/DaVanon platoon in RF until Vlad is ready to play again?

Hey Dan...

Look at the Angels' pitching staff's peripherals...

K/BB ratio, home runs, OPS allowed...all middle-of-the-pack...

The Angels are doing this with smoke-and-mirrors, and are ripe for a fall...

We could see the Rangers win the division with a .500 record...

Yeah, the division's prettiness has sure taken a turn for the worse the last 2 years.

reeking of awesomeness[/quotes

For the benefit of flash photography....

Ladies and gentlemen, that thump you just heard was the sound of the Angels' division lead falling.

8ball -- Unless the defense is vastly improved over last year. I don't know about "vastly," but I'd cop to "significantly," based on the rock-hard science of my eyeballs. 3B was a defensive disaster last year; this year it ain't. O-Cab's much better than D-Eck. Jose is much better than Bengie. And even the 40-year-old, I think, is at least somewhat better than the arthritis case we had in CF last year.

But it was really more Davanon and Figgins in center than Anderson last year, so I'm not sure that's the proper comparison.

Anaheim is 10th in the A.L. in defensive efficiency right now.

But my point is more that, Anaheim's ERA is deceptive, because the pitchers (and the defense) aren't really performing well enough to support that ERA. It is pretty fluky, given the peripherals, and they should end up coming back to earth.

For some reason I don't think it's impossible for the Mariners to win the division.

For some reason I don't think it's impossible for the Mariners to win the division.

Well the AL West is what the AL Central used to be in terms of lacking a team capable of winning 90+ games. Given that there's only 4 teams in the division, any of them has a shot (even Oakland, although their window is almost shut). Anaheim's still the best on paper and Texas has a lot of good young hitters, so it will most likely be one of them. But if Beltre can get back on track (plus a half dozen other guys, to a more limited extent), they could do some damage. I'm really disappointed/surprised that Jeremy Reed has been so mediocre.

Oakland's interesting only because so many hitters are so far below expectations: Chavez, Kendall, Swisher, Durazo... plus the loss of Crosby. If they ever get on track, they're an 85 win team--which could be enough. And IIRC, they have a pretty soft schedule in the second half of the season. I wouldn't bet on it, but I wouldn't be shocked if they're not mathematically eliminated in the first week of September.

Curt is a great guy. He practiced with my HS team when has in AA. He was 6 years ahead of me. I'm glad he's getting more service time. It's too bad he was held back during his prime years. He also took a difficult route to the majors having played scholarship basketball at William and Mary and baseball for the Mets org during the non-scholastic year. His best sport was soccer and if the MLS existed 15 years ago he would have been Freddy Adu. Unfortunately he cannot read lips in anything but English so he was forced to play baseball over soccer since he would have had to play soccer in Europe. For him to stick around this long is a testament to his tremendous athletic ability.