Dave Cameron at FanGraphs put together a list of the five worst contracts in baseball. Two of them belong to the Angels: Josh Hamilton, who has hit like Trevor Plouffe this year, and Albert Pujols, whose contract Cameron rates "as toxic as the next two worst contracts in baseball put together." Given a look at the Angels' payroll - $137 million for a 46-50 team - the only surprising thing is that they didn't get three on the list.
Blanton, tonight's starter, has the worst ERA (5.53) of any qualified pitcher in the American League. He can take heart, though - Scott Diamond is inching closer to qualification, and the Twins lefty is also at 5.53 for the year.
The Angels are bad, but in a much more mundane way than the Twins are. The Twins have zero starting pitching and hit for no power, which makes their mediocrity at least explicable. The Angels aren't bad at one thing, they just aren't good at anything either; they're in the middle of the league in runs scored and runs allowed, strikeouts recorded and home runs hit. They're just not that good. The only surprising thing is that their payroll is huge.
I guess their one saving grace is that Mike Trout is having, if possible, an even better year than last year (or at least equally good).
Twins Notes
We mentioned the Twins starting pitching above, but here's a couple of stats for you: Deduno is the only Twins starter to have an ERA under the league average (3.61, league average 4.05). He (60%) and Kevin Correia (53%) are the only two to throw quality starts at a higher percentage than the league as a whole (51%). And while every Twins starter is currently below the league average walk rate, not one is anywhere close to the league average for strikeout rate (19.9% for the league; Correia leads the staff at 13.2%.)
We noted the other day that Wilkin Ramirez isn't near back yet, but Phil Miller reported that his headaches are gone, which is if nothing else a positive sign in his recovery from his brain injury as a human being, never mind as a ballplayer.
