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

Earlier in the day, we watched Dusty Baker end the Cubs' chances of winning by performing a pair of double switches that had the insane side effect of removing the team's second- and third-best remaining hitters (Todd Walker and Matt Murton) from the game. In fact, following the Murton/Bynum substitution, no Cub batter got so much as a single, and the Cubs went helplessly to their fate as nonentity Bynum continued his extended streak of not hitting that extends a dubious offensive career in the minors. (Come on, if you can't hit better than .286 in the PCL, there's no way you're going to hit better than that in the Show.)

Cubs pitching wasn't that good either, but Dusty Baker, of course, is nonchalant about walks (hat tip: Bleed Cubbie Blue):

"I think walks are overrated unless you can run. If you get a walk and put the pitcher in a stretch, that helps, but the guy who walks and can't run, most of the time he's clogging up the bases for somebody who can run."

Of the six walks Cubs pitching allowed, half turned into runs, the difference in the game. Baker's observational skills clearly aren't that keen, which brings up an interlude for a brief story. When Helen was a little girl and lived out in the country, one of their neighbors had a horse, which of course made them the envy of all the other little-girl-containing families in the neighborhood. Helen's sister got a rabbit as a pet at some point, and my mother-in-law was having a conversation with their neighbor, saying as to what a mess the rabbit made, and the bad smell, and on and on.

Looking at the horse and the huge amounts of feed it consumed, the neighbor replied, "I'll trade you my horse for your rabbit, straight up."

The point of this, of course, is that no matter how lame-brained Mike Scioscia may occaisionally appear — and it really isn't all that often in the grand scheme of things — there are a dozen worse than him, and maybe hundreds. Some of them have the keys to large-market teams, even, which simply serves to multiply the mental whiplash when they make an appallingly stupid in-game move.

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To the game. The broadcast crew keeps mentioning how anxious Kotchman looks at the plate, and I tend to agree; he was 0-2 on nearly every at bat:

Inn. Count  Results
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T2    0-2   Struck out swinging
T4    0-0   Popped out on first pitch
T6    0-2   G4
T8    0-2   G5

Now in some fairness, his at bat in the eighth required Eric Chavez to move some, so it's not as though he didn't get good wood on the ball all afternoon. Something's wrong here, and so far, it doesn't seem to be showing any signs of going away.

But if the Angels suffered because of Kotch's failure to get any hits with RISP (he stranded a pair), the A's were hurt even more because of Mark Ellis's failure to do the same; he left five behind, this amazingly, at the top of the order.

The Angels got another bomb off GA's bat, this on an inside pitch in the top of the fourth, doing something they rarely do of late: hit for power. It ended up over the right field fence, almost exactly the same place last night's bomb ended up. In the fifth, a Molina single followed up by a hit-and-run with Kennedy at the plate worked perfectly, as Kennedy snuck a double under the outstretched glove of Milton Bradley in right; though Bradley looked bad on the play, in fact he did well to hold AK to a double.

One of the game's minor disappointments happened later in the fifth. With Vlad reaching on a fielder's choice, the play went down at the plate. Figgins tried to hook his arm around Kendall's leg, but the overhead cameras showed Figgins never did touch the bag, despite his attempt to sell it later on. It turned out the run wasn't needed to win, but you gets 'em any way you can.

Oakland did all their scoring in the bottom half of the fifth, loading up the bases on a line-drive single, a walk, and an infield single. Weaver struck out Mark Ellis, but left a belt-high slider that didn't break over the plate for Nick Swisher, who took him out of the park. After Kotsay's single, it began to look like Weaver wouldn't even get five innings in; but he induced a popup from Eric Chavez to end the inning.

Figgins made a couple brilliant plays, the most notable one coming in the seventh when he had to pick Kendall's slow grounder that normally would have been the shortstop's. On a dead run, he picked up the ball and launched it to first to make the out. He also made a Jeterescent catch of Mark Ellis's foul ball over the camera wells that nearly turned into a double play when he got the ball back to AK a bit high and offline.

Finally, Frankie's save, and Ken Macha's response. It surprised me that Macha didn't yank Marco Scutaro or Jay Payton for Frank Thomas; after all, he would have started the inning with no or one out and a man on instead of two outs and nobody on, as happened. K-Rod didn't seem that interested in pitching to Thomas, giving him a four-pitch intentional/unintentional walk. But he came right back, slamming the door on the prospect of a 4-4 day from Dan Johnson. A good game from the Halos, who never suffered from any managerial incompetence; no horse here.

ESPN Box • Recap