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

The bats went on a holiday
In their last game in "L.A."
But they never came back
They never came back
They never came back, they say

The K-K-K's took my Angels away
They took them away
Away from me

I had a feeling that sooner or later Joe Blanton's hard-luck losing streak against the Angels would come to an end, and today's game was it; he pitched pretty well over six innings, giving up only one earned run, while the Angels flailed to get anyone on base; Gary Matthews, Jr.'s first inning reach on an error by shortstop Marco Scutaro followed by a stolen base yielded nothing. Similarly, Casey Kotchman (single) and Maicer Izturis (walk) were stranded by Mike Napoli and Eric Aybar; Orlando Cabrera in the third got left at second by Garret Anderson; and Izturis and Napoli were left in the lurch by Aybar.

So the Angels didn't want for baserunners in the first four innings, but then the news went from bad to dismal as Blanton had a 1-2-3 fifth, finally showing Angel fans what the rest of the league has gotten to see of him. The Angels' only run came in the sixth when GA stroked a single followed by a Casey Kotchman double. An infield single thrown wide to the plate turned into gold for the Angels when Anderson crossed the plate, but that was all they got. Alan Embree came in after Howie Kendrick's strikeout, and in this sheries he looked better than I've seen him in years, throwing 92-93. He got Napoli and Robb Quinlan to both strike out, ending the nascent Halo threat, the last one they mounted in the game.

Those strikeouts were part of a storm of K's that would continue through the balance of the game, with Kiko Calero picking up two in the seventh, Justin Duchscherer one more in the eighth (Howie Kendrick's second in the game), and Huston Street, for whom the scoreboard operators misspelled his given name as "Houston", got two more (Izturis and Quinlan). In his final at-bat, Quinlan went down swinging on three straight pitches. In all, A's pitching whiffed eight Angels, all in the last four innings.

This sudden rash of strikeouts is fairly atypical for the Angels, but it's both annoying and worrisome, partly because the Angels' "offense", such as it is these days, is built on the idea that players may not hit for a ton of power but they do make contact. No player really encapsulates that philosophy as neatly as Howie Kendrick, two times a strikeout victim today, going 0-4. Despite hitting .348 in spring training, he's suddenly turned ice cold (.231) over the last couple of weeks; his homer on Friday was followed by a 2-9 stretch in the rest of the series in which he didn't really get any good swings in, and when he did hit the ball hard, as in the fourth inning today, it was a bullet at a glove.

But if Kendrick is cold, Mike Napoli is somewhere in Siberia, hitting .154 and committing two errors in the series. He looks better defensively than Jeff Mathis did this time last year, this despite a series of bad throws that has encouraged even the likes of A's starting catcher Jason Kendall to successfully run against him. (Napoli's throw beat Kendall to second in today's game, but his throw was high.) It's not like he's in danger of losing his job, but it's bad when Jose Molina looks like an offensive improvement.

Kelvim Escobar's outing was pretty forgettable, handing out nine hits but walking none. The Angels' bullpen in the forms of Darren Oliver (allowed to pitch to righties!) and the suddenly borderline overworked Justin Speier kept down a relatively popgun A's offense for the balance of the game. Scioscia even squeezed an inning of scoreless relief out of Chris Bootcheck, the last man in the bullpen, and his first appearance this year. Bootcheck did what you'd figure, a couple grounders, a flyout, giving up a single, but as these things go, the Angels have had far worse at the back end of their bullpen before.

Recap • ESPN Box

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Finally, I should mention the possibility that the Angels might not play the Cleveland series in Cleveland. Thanks to massive snows there, the Seattle series (which was to include the home opener on Friday) was all but totally postponed, with a doubleheader makeup game scheduled for Monday. With snow forecast through Tuesday and rain beyond that, the Angels might play the series at home, though the possibility is considered remote at this time. Stay tuned.

Update 4/9: The ball wasn't thrown to the plate according to Richard Chen; it's what I remember, but then there were a lot of people standing in front of me at the time. :-)

Labels: angels, athletics, recaps