​Grayson Rodriguez, a 26-year-old right-hander, will get the start for Anaheim tonight. He sits in the 96-plus mph range with ample extension due to his 6’5” frame, but injuries have curtailed his momentum, marking his second stint on the injured list this season and wiping out all of last year. When his control is sharp, as it was during the 2023 and 2024 seasons with Baltimore, his changeup can be a credible secondary offering. However, when his command slips, the changeup falters, and that spectrum has shown up in six starts this year, leaving him with a 5.3 BB/9—an area that understandably concerns his teammates and coaches. Here’s hoping he stays healthy and has a long, productive career, even if tonight he ends up allowing 15 runs in two innings.
On the current pitching landscape, the Twins sit at the bottom of the league in bullpen ERA this morning, while the Angels are slightly better, ranking 25th. A small bright spot for Anaheim is Louis Varland, who carries a sparkling 0.94 ERA.
If you’ve ever wondered why there isn’t a SB Nation site dedicated to the Angels, the reason traces back to a site writer’s misconduct. In 2015, Angels outfielder Josh Hamilton faced a relapse and admitted to using illegal drugs. This was especially painful for Angels fans given that the team had signed Hamilton to a highly lucrative contract in December 2012, despite his documented substance abuse issues and irregular behavior preceding the deal. The contract was a gamble, and that gamble didn’t pay off. Hamilton went from a 4.0 bWAR season in 2012 to 1.3 in 2013 and 1.4 in 2014. After his relapse in 2015, the Angels traded him to Texas and agreed to pay $73.5 million of the remaining $79.5 million on his contract through 2017, with Hamilton out of baseball by 2016. The team had hoped to retool around Mike Trout, but that massive salary burden became an obstacle, and the Angels have not returned to the postseason since their 2014 playoff sweep.
That anger understandably colored fans’ perceptions, but it crossed a line when a Halos Heaven writer published an article wishing for a player to die due to addiction issues. I won’t quote the offending piece, but it’s accessible if you wish to see the exact language. The backlash was swift and severe: every staffer at Halos Heaven was fired, the piece was deleted, the site reorganized, and eventually SB Nation distanced itself from the project. New contributors joined, but the site never recovered its former readership, and SB Nation eventually ceased active coverage there. The broader internet-blogging environment over the past decade has made sustaining independent sports blogs especially challenging, as social media often amplifies sensational content at the expense of nuance. In baseball circles, starting an independent blog is particularly tough; Crashing The Pearly Gates has found some footing, but others, like Inside The Halo, have grappled with restrictions around game coverage and permissions.
Substance abuse isn’t a new hurdle in sports, of course. A parallel tale familiar to music and sports fans alike is the arc of Ed Delahanty, whose drinking and infamous demise on a train became part of the lore surrounding baseball’s history and its ongoing conversation about addiction and accountability. The literature and fan discussions around these topics show how teams, media, and communities wrestle with difficult, painful realities—often recognizing the boundaries between empathy, accountability, and the desire to protect a franchise’s image while honoring a player’s humanity.
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