The December 19th, 2014 edition of daily news for the Los Angeles Angels including Angels complete Butera trade, former first round pick Bolden shot and killed and much more…
The Story: The Angels traded Matt Long to the Dodgers to complete the Drew Butera trade.
The Monkey Says: NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! Matt Long has been freed, but in the wrong way. Funnily enough, the Dodgers actually immediately flipped Long to the Brewers where he joins Luis Jimenez. That means #FreeMattLong and #LuchoLibre are now in the same organization again.
The Story: Ryan Bolden, a 2010 first round pick of the Angels, was shot and killed.
The Monkey Says: The argument began over candy. CANDY. This is senseless and wrong.
The Story: The Angels announced that pitchers and catchers will report to training camp on February 19th.
The Monkey Says: Begin the countdown.
The Story: The Angels are discontinuing pension plans for non-uniformed personnel.
The Monkey Says: Yeah, this doesn’t sound great. To be fair, nobody is losing their existing pension and the Angels are replacing with pensions for others with a 401(k) program. Supposedly this is to give employees more control, and not cost-saving. It is kind of hard to believe the latter part, though it might be true based on the details. Generally speaking, a massive money making corporation eliminating a benefit never looks good.
The Story: The Angels seem to be moving away from switch-hitters.
The Monkey Says: Yeah, I don’t know about that. it could just be a weird blip. They still have Aybar and Yarbrough is on the way at some point. Conger was dealt, but not because he was a switch-hitter (nominally). If anything the Angels just don’t seem to aggressively pursue platoon advantages. They have deliberately passed up opportunities to create proper platoons in the lineup the last few years (i.e. not having a right-handed complement to Ibanez).
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
