6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Jeremy Bonderman, Fizz and Rex reminded us ceaselessly, is a scant 22 years old. Think about that for a moment, and then ponder his improbable two years and counting career in the majors. He embodies the success of Steve Nelson's advice that bringing up young pitchers early won't harm them. In Steve's case, the context is phenom Felix Hernandez, widely assumed to be Randy Johnson's heir apparent in Seattle; his K/9 rate gives one nosebleeds just thinking about it.

We won't know about King Felix until he makes the 25-man roster, of course, but Bonderman suffered for Detroit, posting ERAs of 5.56 and 4.89 in 2003 and 2004 respectively. As an extreme groundball pitcher, bad defense (DERs of .6865 and .6859 in those years, fifth and third worst in the league) ate him alive. Not any more: Detroit's .7113 DER is now third best in the league. Combined with his solid strikeout rate, Bonderman reminds one very much -- at least superficially, anyway -- of another underrated ace on another woebegone team, Ben Sheets of the Milwaukee Brewers. Rushed to the majors by clubs with few options, both struggled against major league hitters early in their careers despite good success in the minors. Both took years at the major league level to straighten out, but the payoff for the Brewers is finally here -- and Bonderman, at the very young age of 22, looks ready to dominate for years as the kind of ace Detroit always hoped he would be.

Certainly, tonight's performance gave us little to doubt that outcome. With eight strikeouts in eight innings, Bonderman simply dominated the Angels. Pounding the strike zone, he refused to surrender even a single walk. Only McPherson's solo shot penetrated his bafflement (though a number of balls made it to the warning track). In short, he's an answer to the Twins' Johan Santana, and while he has yet to post the kind of eye-popping stats Santana has, the polish on his stuff shows he could be there very, very shortly.

A couple umpiring moments had me scratching my head. Darryl Cousins, the first base umpire, in the top of the fifth called Craig Monroe out at first (which looked to me like it should have been safe). When Detroit manager Alan Trammel came out to argue the call, Cousins ejected both Monroe and Alan Trammell, after which bench coach Kirk Gibson stepped in. (How strange it was, incidentally, to see Gibby in a Tigers uniform. I'll never quite get used to the idea, even though I know he played most of his career in one.)

Second, in the top of the eighth, somebody called a balk against Colon. Watching the replay, I didn't see it, but balks are to me one of the stranger rules of baseball. It was a key event that sparked Detroit's game-winning rally. After the balk, Colon, who had been unusually fast up to that point, went into molasses mode for the remainder of the inning -- a bad habit he gets into whenever the game goes against him. As usual, it didn't help, and things only got worse for the Angels when Steve Finley rushed his throw to the plate, veering off on the first base side and high, allowing the winning run to score.

But I don't mean to criticize Colon too much; a two-run complete game is a great outcome, one that, thanks to the quietude of Angels bats, ended in the L column. Having extolled Bonderman, I can excuse a lot of the Angels' offensive futility against him; he's simply a good pitcher, and even good teams have tough times hitting good pitchers. But Erstad's at bat in the eighth I take direct exception to. He swung and missed at two consecutive fastballs and struck out on ball four, which to me says he's gone back into a funk at the plate. Scioscia needs to consider moving him elsewhere besides leadoff.

Finally, speaking of weird feelings, seeing Percival in a Tigers uniform, still effective, felt odd. One wonders how many more outings he has like this one left in him; he blew plenty of saves last year, and while ESPN tells us that Steve Finley has one career double off Percy, it doesn't tell us whether it happened when Percy was pitching injured, as he did so often over the last two years he wore an Angels uniform. Angels fans got to see him, one last time, his old bulletproof self, bending to a single by Vlad but not breaking. You hope he comes back, eventually, as a coach.

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