Thursday, May 17, 2007 |
Angels Take Out The Wash: Angels 7, Mariners 3
But as I said yesterday, King Felix is only one king, and since the Mariners aren't much for letting him pitch every day, it limits their chances. Not that Bartolo Colon was anything like perfect; his command had its problems, walking three and only striking out one. That might not be so surprising, considering the M's are dead last in team strikeouts this year, underwhiffing the Angels by 37 K's (167 for the M's as a team this year), but Bart often enough missed wildly off the plate.
Vlad went deep in the first against Wash, and of course Reggie Willits was there for him to drive in. Willits just keeps getting on base, which reminded me of an exchange during the latest Kevin Goldstein chat:
jaymoff (Salem, OR): Is Reggie Willits a long-term option for the Halos? He plays great defense . . . much better than Garrett and his ability to get on base is exactly what the Angels need as many of their guys lack in this department.In the meantime, he has this funny way of not making outs, in this game, going 3-3 with a walk and a successful sacrifice bunt. I need to grab all the pitch data for games in which he's appeared and see where they're pitching him, because so far they don't seem to have exploited any weaknesses, at least, not so you could tell.Kevin Goldstein: I don't see him as a long-term solution, just because I think he's more of a .270 hitter in the end. The OBP then sits in the very good .360-.380 range, but with zero power becomes more of a very good extra outfielder as opposed to an every day guy.
(Update: Reggie Willits reminded me of a Top 40 Angel who had a similar profile, Albie Pearson. It's amazing even today how silently good Pearson was, with much of his value tied up in his batting average and OBP. If you normalize both players using B-Ref's "Neutralize Stats" link, you'll see that Pearson slugged over his OBP only a couple times... Willits so far has an otherworldly .449 OBP. If he can keep that up (famous last words), he's, yeah, immensely valuable.)
Shea Hillenbrand picked up a couple hits, both singles, and drove in a pair of runs on the first with the bases loaded and two out, exactly the sort of circumstance that's tailor made for him to ground out meekly to second. He didn't, and so will probably earn more playing time, unfortunately. Mike DiGiovanna's piece in the Times made it clear that Scioscia's going to stick with Hillenbrand, who hasn't done anything to annoy the team so far:
"We evaluate the team constantly, and if there are options that make you better now and in the future, we'll look at them," Scioscia said. "But I'm still confident that Shea's upside is our best option, and our goal is to see if Shea can be the player we think he can be. Shea swinging the bat to his potential is something this team needs."That's likely a rehash of the failed Steve Finley Experiment, with the difference that this time the old, fading player is only on a one year deal.
Labels: angels, mariners, recaps
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