Wow, what a busy day it’s been so far. Sorry I’m a little late with the post but I just got back from a parade and now I get a little baseball before I had back out to the city festival and fireworks! woohoo!

JJ Hardy is back but he’s still not 100% so his starts will be spaced out with Casilla or whoever for a bit yet. And it’s fun to have the team back home because Justin gets to work out with them and we get reports of how is BP is going – yeah, apparently he’s knocking the fluff out of the ball but no, he’s not quite ready to do a rehab assignment yet but the signs are still improving every day.

After that fantastic start from Duensing last night, I’m really hoping that Kevin continues to improve off his last great outting and has better location and efficiency. Maybe he’ll actually have a REAL shot at a complete game today? It’s a gorgeous day for baseball and both KL and JC are at the game… so jealous. Hope the boys give them a great game!

That kind of sucked again…  and the story of the day today is injuries.  Kevin Slowey left after the 3rd inning after feeling soreness in his right triceps again – the same thing that kept him out of his start a couple weeks ago.  He’d been feeling fine but it was obvious that his location was still suffering during the whole game.  He got through the first inning pretty well but still was throwing too many pitches.  It just wasn’t a good day for Kevin and he’ll be re-evaluated on Monday.  Also being evaluated on Monday is Ron Mahay who took an odd, awkward tumble while trying to field a bunt and left the field in obvious pain.  I have no idea what that means for tomorrow’s game since it seems like a DL stint for at least one of these guys might be in the future – no matter how much we hope not.

***UPDATE:  Both Slowey AND Mahay are headed for the DL.  Anthony Slama and Nick Blackburn have been called back up.  This could be an interesting time of it.  Nick’s been doing really well in AAA but I always say that AAA batters are not the same as MLB batters.  However, the most encouraging sign for me is his ground ball rate has been phenomenal – THAT has much less to do with the batter’s level of play.  Anthony hasn’t been stellar but he won’t be intimidated or anything coming back up here either so I’m hoping he does well.***

Kudos to the brand new CF for the Angels (the one who pushed Torii Hunter over to RF) because it was really his day.  He hit his first MLB homerun, plus got a triple, 4 RBI and has some SPECTACULAR fielding.  He’s got a promising future ahead of him.