Monday, June 19, 2006 |
Charlie Reliford, Your Check's In The Mail: Giants 2, Angels 1
Chone Figgins scored the team's only run on a stolen base following a leadoff walk; that turned into a scoring play, thanks to a blown throw to second that made it into centerfield. But that first inning run was all the Angels got. Defensively, the team actually didn't screw up too much, with even Orlando Cabrera's blown fielding of Randy Winn's high hopping grounder somewhat comprehensible in light of the weird hop it took under his glove. That misplay, not ruled an error by a kindly official scorer, ended up costing the Angels a couple runs. But that one miscue aside, Cabrera played well defensively, as did the rest of the team.
Cain had a no-hitter going for seven and two thirds, but Chone Figgins slapped a single into centerfield to put an end to it. Like everything else wrong with the Angels, they quickly gave up even that meager victory, with Orlando Cabrera popping up to second to end the "threat". At least Mike Napoli, who's coming very close to joining my "on warning" list, got a two-out single to continue the ninth, far too late to do any good.
Kelvim Escobar ended up getting a good amount of mileage from Charlie Reliford's broad strike zone, though he only got four strikeouts; you wonder just how well he would have done against an umpire with a zone that didn't include everything a foot off the plate.
The big question, becoming bigger with each consecutive 0-fer game Kendry Morales has, is whether he's going to start hitting before either (a) Robb Quinlan has to take over at first so he can get a breather, or (b) Casey Kotchman comes back from his rehab start, whenever that might happen. Morales has sunk into a .216 average for the season. He's only two more 0-4 games away from hitting the Mendoza line; worse, of late, he's barely even getting long loud outs, hitting only one ball in today's game out of the infield.
Finally, while I'm not in favor of making changes to make changes, at some point you begin to wonder when they can start thinking about firing Mickey Hatcher. Not that I subscribe to the idea that hitting coaches do anything particularly interesting, but it might prove to be a midseason diversion not unlike the ancient Roman custom of taking Christians to the lions as dinner guests. It's hard to hang this season's offensive woes on Hatcher; there's too many guys in this lineup — McPherson, Morales, and Napoli — who don't have sufficient major league at bats to establish a real level of production yet, Anderson's old and playing through injury, and Figgins is just plain slumping (though I note with some pleasure that he did manage a couple walks in today's game, a most welcome development). That's far too much blame for anyone to heap on Hatcher's plate, much as I might enjoy it. The question really is, why is this team so hacktastic, and why do they score so few runs? The answers should be obvious by now (they don't get on base enough, duh, and this offense falls apart when its average goes below .280); it's systemic, and only a root-and-branch housecleaning will fix it.
: 6/20/2006 04:56:00 AM
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