Wednesdays with Brownie: Who wants to play LF for the Angels?

Angels’ left fielders are batting .176 and slugging .196 after 14 games (this even with Daniel Nava hitting .333 as a left fielder), which wouldn’t be a big deal if they hadn’t hit .216 and slugged .317 in 162 games last year, and you know just because your center fielder can hit a little doesn’t mean you have to give up on a corner outfield spot.

Maybe – mayyybe – it’d be different if those left fielders were defensively elite, but as a whole they’re not, and maybe – mayyybe – it’d be different if the team were hitting anyway. It’s not.

The people who claim to know these things say the Angels have a terrible farm system, which doesn’t bode well for an in-season upgrade, but let’s pretend the Angels aren’t treating the luxury tax as a hard cap and then let’s pretend a left fielder would solve all of their problems. Where to?

Cincinnati, for Jay Bruce. He’s played 11 games in left field. In his career. Kole Calhoun has played four. They can sort that out. After a couple down years, Bruce has come out batting close to .300 with four homers and 15 RBI. Know how many Angels have four home runs? Exactly. Know how many home runs Angels’ left fielders hit last year? Nine. Bruce is guaranteed $12.5 million in ’16 and has an option for $13 million in ’17.

Atlanta, for Nick Markakis. He has the better part of $31 million coming over the next three seasons, a free-agent contract that was odd considering the direction of the organization, but these things happen. The Angels might as well take advantage. Like Bruce, Markakis has come out hot — .333 batting average, nine doubles, seven walks, six strikeouts.

Colorado, for Carlos Gonzalez. Yeah, the home-road splits. Yeah, the injuries. Well, he played 153 games last season and his road OPS was .758, or about 170 points higher than what the Angels did in left last season, all venues. Two years and $37 million remain on his contract.

Milwaukee, for Ryan Braun. Yep. Dude’s going to hit forever, which is good because his contract could run to the end of 2021, when he’ll be nearly 38. He’d be creeping up on a Hall of Fame career if not for you know what, and is having a sturdy April in spite of being the one guy in that lineup a pitcher can’t let beat him.

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There’s a guy who lives in my town who rides his bike while wearing a three-foot tree branch on his head. This is the sort of thing you slow down for, even here, in Venice, Calif., where residents have weird for breakfast and the day zooms off from there. A friend of mine met him in the coffee shop, and it turned out this guy was pretty together, he said, only we still don’t know the reason behind the stick he balances on his head, and I brought this up to my friend.

“You mean,” he said, “whether he found the stick or the stick found him.”

Precisely, I said. Did this guy go looking for a stick to put on his head with which to ride around town? Or did he pick up the stick in a gutter or an alley or a park one day and think, “This should go on my head while I ride my bike”?

The point is, I don’t know the point, other than to be glad that the man and his stick found each other, and that I live in a place that generally won’t judge such a relationship and that actually has been known to applaud the sometimes cooperative features of pedaling man and teetering nature.

I thought about this at the end of last week. I was driving to an elementary school I’d never heard of in an area on the map called Central Los Angeles. The occasion was Jackie Robinson Day and the event was a celebration of who we are and what we think of each other, along with our annual examination of who we should be. Sharon Robinson, Jackie’s daughter, was there and delightful. She looked across an auditorium filled with fourth and fifth graders and told them the story of baseball as her father knew it, that it wasn’t all that long ago when 99 percent of the people in that room could not get a job in the national game.

“Anybody,” she said, “that had beautiful brown skin.”

We’d like to believe it’s so different now. We look upon the dugouts’ top steps and the front offices’ rosters and the umpires’ rooms and even the press boxes and shouldn’t be so sure.

We’d like to believe we’re trying. It does get me to wondering, however, when we do achieve something like balance, something like equality, something like what Jackie fought for, will it be because we found it? Or will it have found us?

And while maybe that gets us to the same place eventually, wouldn’t it be faster if we went looking for it? Shouldn’t we know it’s out there waiting for us?

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MLB, the players’ union, the Cuban baseball federation, the U.S. government and the Cuban government remain in negotiations to soften the regulations regarding the transfer of Cuban players to professional baseball here. There’s a lot of moving parts, not the least of which is the embargo, in its 56th year.

One possible internal hang-up is the notion – and it’s a reasonable one – that Cubans (along with most other international players, etc.) are considered free agents from the day they turn 16, while U.S. players must grind through the minors and then six years of the major leagues.

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Madison Bumgarner, due to make his fourth start Wednesday night against the Diamondbacks, hasn’t been his best self for the first couple weeks. We can assume this will pass, if for no other reason than he’s Madison Bumgarner. Yes, his velocity is down a bit and his command isn’t what it has been and he’s got some innings on that arm. On the other hand, his Aprils have typically been less precise than what happens after that, and his Augusts, Septembers and Octobers we already know about.

Meantime, he’s really had only one crummy start, and as a rule if you’re going to be a pitcher and give up some baserunners, it’d be good if you could contribute to the offense, which brings us to the fact he’s wearing out Clayton Kershaw at the plate. “Wearing out” is too strong. But he has two hits – a single and a home run – against Kershaw in four at-bats, and in the past two seasons is 3 for 11 with two homers against him.

Which brings us to this observation on Bumgarner from teammate Kelby Tomlinson, who is 0 for 12 in his career against Kershaw: “He’s kind of a freak of nature. He’s really good. He’s really a good hitter. If that’s what he did all his life he’d be one of the best hitters in the game. As it is, he pitches his whole life and is one of the best pitchers in the game.”