6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: K-Fraud: Angels 7, Red Sox 5

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Friday, August 17, 2007

K-Fraud: Angels 7, Red Sox 5

It works out that Ervin Santana started off by taunting us with what was, without a doubt, his best game of the season, taking a perfect game into the fifth, broken up by J.D. Drew's one-out single. It did little to slow down Santana, who not only retired the next two batters, but put up another zero frame in the sixth against the Sox' 8-9-1 batters. He stumbled in the seventh by allowing a single to Big Papi and a double to Drew before getting the hook, but — hell. It was so much better than anything we could possibly have hoped for that even the one run he ultimately surrendered (thanks to Mike Lowell's RBI groundout) was nothing more than a scratch.

What transpired next brings to mind the futility of the rote 7th-8th-9th inning roles; with Scot Shields so consistently bad at Fenway, why use him? He loaded the bases (in part by walking two), and so the game went to Frankie — who coughed up his fourth blown save, thanks to a wild pitch and a pair of consecutive doubles to Ortiz and Manny.

Luckily for the Angels, Eric Gagne isn't his old self. Even though Reggie Willits ultimately flied out, he made Gagne throw a mess of pitches (11 from memory), which turned out to be an omen. Casey Kotchman got aboard on a walk, and then Mike Scioscia had Erick Aybar pinch-run for Kotchman. At that exact moment, memories of recent baserunning blunders raced scarily to mind. But instead of disaster, Chone Figgins singled, and Aybar successfully went first-to-third, and got cashed in on an Orlando Cabrera single.

After a number of recent games in which it seemed like Vlad couldn't drive in a nail with a ball peen hammer, he belted a double to cash in both baserunners, giving the Angels a two-run lead they would not relinquish, their first win at Fenway this season. Scioscia liked Ervin's outing so much he's already committed to starting him next week at home. Sometimes these things are just too complicated.

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