....So You’re Saying They Have a Chance
[Season Record: 14-18]
This has not been the season that many expected for the Angels, but I remain [hesitantly] optimistic that something good can come out of this long baseball season still. They were finally able to clinch their first series win against the surprising Baltimore Orioles (who still lead the AL East, believe it or not), by winning the first two of the three-game series, after about 3 weeks of losing, but it after that it went down hill again, for about another week. They lost the final game against the O‘s, then went on the road and were swept in Tampa Bay by the Rays, and lost two of three to the Indians, and found themselves buried at the bottom of the division standings. Luckily for them, they had the worst team in baseball, the Minnesota Twins on their schedule a couple more times, and were able to take advantage.
Since their series loss to the Indians at the end of April, the Angels haven’t lost a series in May, and are starting to play a little better as a team, thanks to a few positive changes, great starting pitches, and some favorable early scheduling. For some reason, they have played the Twins three separate times already, even though they are in a different division, and have only faced one other team in their own division so far, but the Angels aren’t complaining. They swept the Twins at home to start May off strong, including two shutouts to finish off the series. The most notable performance of the season so far, came in game 3, when Jared Weaver was dominant and nearly perfect, hurling his first career no-hitter, and the Angels offense woke up and scored 9 runs, in what looked like a momentum changing game for their team (finally). The Angels starters hadn’t been getting much run support, as the Angels offense has been borderline terrible, but it looked like this may be the spark the team needed to propel themselves back to where they want to be.
That thought went away rather quickly when the Toronto Blue Jays come to town, a team the Angels have had trouble with for many years now, no matter what their record was. The Blue Jays shut the Angels out in the first two games, with two complete game gems by their starters, and it looked like that momentum pendulum was swinging back the other way again. The Angels managed to win the last two games of the series, behind two strong performances from their 4th and 5th starters, as their starting pitcher depth was on display once again, enabling them to eek out a series tie, when it looked like they were down and out. Then it was back out to Minnesota, where they won two of three, and, even though the one loss was another shutout, it looks like they are starting to play well.
The team made several eye-opening changes, en route to their improved performance, including a new closing pitcher, releasing one of their veteran players, and starting a 19-year-old in centerfield, among others. Jordan Walden led the league in blown saves last season as a rookie, and got off to a slow start this season, so manager Mike Scioscia made the change, demoting Walden, and promoting the much more trustworthy Scott Downs to the closer role. I’ve been on the Scott Downs bandwagon since he was brought in last year, and I felt he was actually underused, especially this season, considering how effective he is against both left-handed and right-handed hitters, and his impeccable control (a necessity for a closer, in my book). Walden can throw 100 MPH but that doesn’t mean much when you can’t throw strikes and the hitters are looking for the fastball because you can’t throw a slider for a strike if your life depended on it, so I applaud the move whole-heartedly.
One of their more popular players, Bobby Abreu, was released earlier in the month, due somewhat to lack of performance, but probably more because there simply wasn’t much playing time for him with this team. He is a liability as an outfielder because of his diminishing defensive skills, as he has slow reaction time to balls hit in his direction, and he doesn’t run as fast as he used to make up for it. His offense had been lacking over the past couple of seasons, hitting about .250 the last two years, after being a career .300 hitter for the most part, leading up to them. I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs that it looked like he would be on his way out, but I’m still sorry to see him go, because I thought he could teach some of the other hitters some patience at the plate. I’ve never seen one hitter get to a 3 ball- 2 strike count so many times in my life, unless I was just paying attention more to his at-bats than other players (which is quite possible), and I was advocating the idea of him as the leadoff hitter for the last couple of years, because he does things leadoff hitters are supposed to do in most of his at-bats. Scioscia finally did put him in the leadoff spot in a couple of games (against the A’s and the Twins, I think) and he did pretty well, but in the long run, there just wasn’t enough room on the squad for someone who can basically only play designated hitter against right-handed pitching, so they released him. One of the biggest issues with the team was the leadoff hitter role, as Erick Aybar has failed miserably (like I predicted last year, since he’s a free swinger and seems like he always will be), and Peter Bourjos is a mediocre hitter at best at this point in his career, so even his gold-glove caliber defense hasn‘t been able to keep him in the lineup this season. When the Angels decided to release Abreu, they brought up their young 19 (or 20)-year-old, and one of the league’s top-rated minor league players, Mike Trout, and he has taken over the leadoff role. Trout was hitting about .400 in the minors, and he has showed some surprising patience, and even more surprising power, to go along with his great speed and energy. He’s also shown some good outfield skills in center field, while playing nearly every game since his call-up from the minors, and his team is hoping that he can find a way to get on base and score some runs.
In another move to bolster their roster in a much-needed area, the Angels made a trade to improve their bullpen earlier this month as well, trading for the Padres Ernesto Frieri, a name probably unfamiliar to most. I know him because of my fantasy baseball research, so I was glad to hear they got him because of his low ERA and WHIP (walks/hits per innings pitched) and high strikeout totals over his short career for the Padres, but I was also a little disappointed to hear that they traded away Alexi Amarista to get him. Amarista is a good little player who can hit, run and play numerous positions, so they gave up some high potential to get Frieri, but it could help them out in the long run, because they definitely needed help in the bullpen, since they had one of the worst bullpen ERAs in baseball before he arrived, and there obviously isn’t much room for Amarista to play for the Angels right now (or even in the near future, since his main positions were middle infield and outfield). Now it looks like they are going to have to call up one of their other top prospects, catcher Hank Conger (who played last year in the majors) because their regular catcher, Chris Iannetta has to have surgery on his wrist and will be out for about two months. Ironically, he injured himself in the 2nd inning of the game when Weaver threw the no-hitter, but stayed in to catch the duration, and then found out he was severely injured. So far the moves have paid off, but they still have quite a bit of work to do if they want to make a run for the postseason.
Hopefully they can carry the momentum they have started this month into their next series, against the rival Texas Rangers, who are in first place in the division, and 7 games ahead of the last place Angels. It’s obviously still early in the season, but this could be one of the most pivotal series of the season for the Angels, if they can find a way to win at least two of these upcoming games and gain some ground in the standings. If they somehow find a way to sweep the series, they will find themselves only 4 games back and in the thick of the race, but if they lose all three, then they will be 10 games back, and the Rangers will have even more confidence going forward, so this will be a huge test for them. The first game on Friday will be probably one of the most anticipated pitching matchups of the series, with the former Ranger, CJ Wilson, going against the Japanese import player who was signed to a huge contract to replace Wilson, Yu Darvish. The weekend games are going to be nationally televised (FOX and ESPN, respectively), so the whole country will get to see what the two teams are all about, and the pressure will be even greater to perform well.
Their starting pitchers have been very good for the most part this season (except for a couple poor starts from Santana, surrendering far too many homeruns), as most people expected, especially over the past couple of weeks, but their offense hasn’t lived up to its potential, and has been very inconsistent. It’s hard to perform well as a starting pitcher, when your offense gives you virtually no run support every time out there, so you have to basically shut out the opposition to have a shot. Weaver, Haren and Santana have been given some of the lowest run support in the majors, and they can’t be perfect (I think Santana was given no runs in three starts in a row, so he was winless even though he was pitching better than earlier in the season). Most people will point out that Albert Pujols has only one homerun, and didn’t hit his first until after over 100 at-bats, which is highly unusual, but I am not really worried about that. I am more concerned with the fact that he was probably trying to hard to hit that first homerun, instead of just trying to hit. Many players press too much and try to do more than they are capable of in the first season of a huge contract, and he was awarded one of the richest contracts in history coming into this season, but I think he will be able to get back into his normal groove soon. People forget that he started off poorly last season as well, and then ended up with more than 30 homeruns, while leading his team to a world championship, so I don’t think it’s worth worrying about [yet]. I’m more concerned with the strikeout numbers and his low batting average, considering he has hit over .300 and accumulated about 250 more walks than strikeouts for his career (a stat I couldn‘t believe when I first saw it), but I think those will improve as time goes on and he gets more comfortable and patient at the plate. Once the team gets back into the Angels hitting philosophy, which is aggressive base running and going from first-to-third on base hits, knocking in runs with base hits and sacrifices, instead of going for the homerun too often, then they will be much better off. It seems like a lot of them are pressing and trying to pull everything, instead of taking pitches (and walks), hitting to the opposite field, and running the base paths aggressively to put pressure on the opposing defense, which will eventually lead to runs, just like it has in the past when they had much less powerful hitters in the lineup. I think the hitters on the team need to watch how Howie Kendrick hits the ball well to right field, and follow suit in their at-bats, especially some of the less powerful players, like Aybar, Callaspo, Izturis and Bourjos (when they play). Too many of them seem to be trying to make up for the poor start with one mighty swing, only to find themselves jogging back to the dugout after recording another easy out. Torii Hunter has been making a concerted effort to hit the ball to right field which has resulted in a fairly high batting average thus far, and some of the other power hitters seem to be starting to follow suit. Kendrys Morales is occasionally hitting the ball the other way, and the mighty Mark Trumbo can hit the ball hard in any direction, but they will be an even better team once Albert Pujols and Vernon Wells figure out how to hit the ball to right field again. They have to find a way to keep Trumbo in the lineup (not just against lefties) but that tends to weaken their defense since he can only play the corner outfield and infield positions, when he isn’t in the DH spot (where he usually is against lefties, since Morales isn’t as good as a right-handed batter). When he plays in the outfield that takes away either Hunter or Wells, who have each won gold gloves as centerfielders, so that obviously limits their defense there, and now that Callaspo is hitting better, Trumbo isn’t necessarily the best candidate for 3rd base (and obviously Pujols is the everyday 1st baseman), so it’s a juggling act just to get him in the lineup, but their offense needs him, so Scioscia has to find a way somehow. I sort of like the move of Callaspo (when he plays) to the 2nd spot in the lineup, where he has hit well in his past few starts, mainly because I didn’t think he fit in as #6 hitter where he was last season and earlier this season. If Trout and Callaspo (or Kendrick) can get on base, and Pujols, Hunter, and Wells can figure out that they just need to get hits, and not necessarily homeruns, to score runs, then they can become the dangerous team they looked like they would be, on paper. We all know you can’t be paper champions in any sport, no matter how good it looks.
The bottom line is that their offense has been anemic for most of the season, putting far too much pressure on the pitching staff, and the bullpen has not been up to par thus far. If they can maintain the top notch starting pitching performances, utilize their bolstered bullpen more effectively and [most importantly] find ways to score runs with their typical aggressive style of offense, then they stand a good chance of making a run, despite their poor start to the season. Some of you might remember that they started the 2002 with a 6-14 record, just like this season, and they went on to win the championship that year, so that gives me solace that they can do it again. We shall see….
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