Saturday, July 01, 2006 |
Colletti's Headache: Angels 9, Dodgers 2
The day before in Tampa Bay, the catcher whose talent was mislabled by a certain journalistic malpractictioner as "a figment of former GM Paul DePodesta's imagination" went 2-4 with a walk and two runs scored in a 11-1 blowout of the Nationals. That is to say, in small samples, Colletti has been skunked twice in two days on an ill-conceived trade.
In the wake of the trade, Mike Emeigh said that keeping line drives down is essentially a skill because those pitchers who can't do so get removed from the pool of major leagues quickly. He seems, so far, to be right about the second part, anyway, and so we await Jae Seo's appearance in Tampa Bay's domed stadium to see how many anti-migraine tablets Ned Colletti will need to down before he can get some sleep at night.
As for the Angels, Mark Erickson Hendrickson was exactly the tonic their slumping bats needed, as they whacked away with the kind of merry glee the Dodgers did yesterday against the shoulder-stricken Colón. Four Angels — including the freakishly talented Mike Napoli — had multi-hit afternoons, Naps' including the first multi-homer game of his career, with a bonus walk to complete the three-true-outcomesness of his day.
No game recap would be complete without at least a brief mention of Garret Anderson's 2,000th career hit. As pleasant a fact as that might be for Angels fans to contemplate, it should have come a heck of a lot sooner than it did, delayed as it was by injury and decline. Though GA got two hits in today's game, it bespeaks the kind of year he's had to mention that it also was his first multi-hit game since the June 16 game against the Padres.
For Kelvim Escobar, the day could hardly have gone better. He looked for all the world like his usual 2004-2005 self, fanning opposing batters seemingly at will, going deep into the game. Brendan Donnelly's embarrassing outing, loading the bases and ultimately requiring the services of Scot Shields in what should have been a blowout laugher, was perilously close to the point of making another DFA look like a good idea. Yet, he still has an ERA over a run lower than that of the man who came in to close the game out, Kevin Gregg. I expect Gregg will still be on the roster in 2007, and Donnelly won't; but the fact that either of these characters still wears an Angels jersey at work tells you that Bill Stoneman's running out of ideas for the bullpen. His terrific stretch of pulling rabbits out of the relief hat seems to have ended a couple years back, as attested to by the presence of J.C. Romero, Hector Carrasco, and formerly, Esteban Yan.
http://www.minorleagueball.com/story/2006/6/27/125339/279
: 7/02/2006 08:38:00 AM
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