6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: The Feel-Good/Feel-Bad Win: Angels 5, Orioles 2

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Tuesday, September 05, 2006

The Feel-Good/Feel-Bad Win: Angels 5, Orioles 2

The obvious high point of tonight's game was Adam Kennedy's three-run walkoff blast, amplified by a 5-4 Texas victory over Oakland that found the Angels five and a half back of the A's. Yet, looking back, so much went wrong that the finale was hardly assured at any point:

In the bottom of the second with men on first and second and one out, Adam Kennedy GIDP'd.
In the bottom of the third, the Angels got men on second and third with one out and Cabrera and Vlad up — and got a strikeout and a groundout for their troubles.
In the top of the seventh, Curtis Pride's late positioning and poor footwork left him unable to return the ball quickly to the infield, making it possible for catcher Ramon Hernandez to turn what could have been a long single into a double. Pride made the same mistake in the top of the fourth with Kevin Millar; fortunately, neither instance (directly) resulted in a scoring run, as Lackey was able to strike out David Newhan in the fourth, and threw out Hernandez at third on Brandon Fahey's sac bunt attempt in the seventh. (Of course, Lackey got himself right back into trouble in the seventh, giving up a single to Brian Roberts and an RBI single to Nick Markakis.)
In the bottom of the seventh, the Angels loaded the bases with two out — and Izturis got caught off the bag to end the inning.
Scot Shields once again proved he needs a few days off by allowing a leadoff double to Jay Gibbons, whom Ramon Hernandez cashed in two batters later.
Mirroring the annoying situation in the third, the Angels squandered another bases loaded situation, this time with one out in the bottom of the ninth and again, Orlando Cabrera and Vlad at bat; Cabrera popped out, and Vlad grounded out to first. In fact, Erick Aybar, brought in as a pinch-runner for Darin Erstad, nearly ended the inning on a throw-behind play.

In other words, in order to get to the feel-good part of the win, you had to sit through an awful lot of unclutch hitting where the Angels couldn't push across the winning run, another example of Shields needing a day off, and questionable defense.

But it wasn't all horrors defensively; Chone Figgins, moved to left in the top of the eighth, quickly proved useful there as he caught a Kevin Millar sinking line drive and threw a bullet to the infield to prevent pinch-runner Jeff Fiorentino from advancing to third. It wasn't successful in the end, as he did eventually score, but Figgy's D came to the fore again in the tenth: with David Newhan on second and Ramon Hernandez on first, Brian Roberts hit a single to medium left. Figgins threw a strike to the plate and cut down David Newhan by about three steps to end the inning. It wasn't even close, and it just deflated the O's.

Probably the other thing that ought to be mentioned here is that while Chone Figgins has a hard time bunting (he got one down successfully in the top of the third, though), Reggie Willits bunted for a hit twice, the second one in the tenth inning in one of those comical wait-wait-wait-oops moments as the ball rolled fair and fair and fair and died with the pitcher standing over it as Willits easily scampered to first.

So the win is a win, and yay. Ironically enough, the final score was rallies with the Rally Monkey going, zero, and Monkeyless rallies, one, so the scoreboard operators may be a jinx this year. I keep hoping for more homers from somebody, anybody, and that Juan Rivera's hand gets well soon. In the meantime, I have some musical suggestions for Oakland. At least the boys look like they're planning on making it interesting down the stretch.

ESPN Box • Recap

// posted by Rob @ 11:54 PM link // 0 comments