BFF (Brian Fuentes Forever)

Head’s up to those of you back east. There’s a baseball that’s headed your way. It left Anaheim last night sometime around 9:30 p.m. Yeah, that’s right, Brian Fuentes served it up to one Miguel Cabrera; so be on the look out for something resembling a meteor crashing back to earth.

After all, today is "Earth Day" and we're still waiting for Cabrera's homerun ball's return to the planet.

Okay, so here’s the thing about Brian Fuentes from my point of view. Last night’s homerun was more about Cabrera than it was Fuentes in my opinion. Cabrera is probably one of the five best hitters in baseball. He’s going to take your pitcher yard every now and then. Besides, it wasn’t like Mike Scioscia was going to banish Fuentes to the bench when he returned from the DL. I know some Angel fans would prefer something along those lines, but they’re not living in the real world.

All I know is that if Fuentes can solidify his hold on the closer position, the Angels will be a much deeper and ultimately better ball club. Now, if he can’t do that, I trust that Scioscia will remove him from that role at the appropriate time. As always that’s on his time not ours (ours, being the fans’). We saw this last year when Kevin Jepsen started taking on a bigger role. And even though that was a move that had to be made; it made the team weaker because the Angels’ lost some depth in their bull pen.

So – if you want the Angels to succeed; you should be hoping that Brian Fuentes is successful. The booing that took place last night was actually disgusting to me. If you want to boo someone, boo Johnny Damon.

Speaking of Damon; just before Jered Weaver struck him out looking; I yelled out “He’s going to be taking!” Sure enough Damon took a called strike 3. I figured it was a cold night and Johnny wanted the evening off. Seriously, it was predictable because Damon is one of those guys who like to look at a lot of pitches and if you can make your pitch, you can catch him looking.

The funny thing about his ejection to me (and you have to remember, I don’t need a whole lot of incentive to find things about Johnny to poke fun at) is that he actually played well the two games his team lost and when his team wins one; he’s in the clubhouse. I guess if the Angels have to lose a game, I can swallow that bitter pill a little easier knowing Damon didn’t have a role in it.

Now, did you notice how I diverted this conversation away from Fuentes and on to Damon? Isn’t it more fun to make fun of Damon than it is to lament over a bad outing of one of our own?

Don’t get me wrong – if Fuentes starts to struggle on a regular basis; I’ll be among those calling for Rodney to become the closer. I’m just not in that panic mode yet. That was only his second outing and he’s coming off the DL.

Scioscia will do the right thing because believe it or not, he probably wants to wins games even more than we fans do. I’m just saying.