6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: Mr. Inconsistent Gets A Win: Angels 9, Oakland 5

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Monday, September 03, 2007

Mr. Inconsistent Gets A Win: Angels 9, Oakland 5

Somewhere, Stephen Smith is cackling about Santana and a DROP DEAD performance; maybe the reports indicating a flaw in Santana's delivery were true. Or maybe the fact that the A's are the second-worst offense in the league had something to do with it. No matter, because Scioscia came out on the right side of this risk/reward gamble, and Santana pitched six and a third innings of scoreless ball. Sure, he walked more than he struck out — something I doubt you'll see many of his fervid supporters mention— but there were also encouraging signs, too, like his neat recovery from Orlando Cabrera's error fielding Kurt Suzuki's grounder in the fifth. Santana then retired the next two batters, and that was that.

The Angels just crushed Chad Gaudin, chasing him after seven runs, six earned, over five innings, a pretty awful line that he previously had only burped up in the hitter-friendly confines of Texas. Matthews and Mathis both homered off him, Mathis for a two-run shot, and Anderson took reliever Colby Lewis deep in the seventh.

That insurance run — and Orlando Cabrera's scoring fielder's choice groundout in the sixth — proved fairly important later on, as Rich Thompson gave up homers to Shannon Stewart and Mike Piazza, both on belt-high meatballs over the middle of the plate. (Piazza this year seems to have a real taste for Angels pitching, as 4 of 7 home runs this year have come against the Halos.) Jason Bulger, called in to replace Thompson, hardly did better, giving up a hit, a walk, and an RBI single while making only one out, necessitating the insertion of Justin Speier to save a game that should never have gotten even that close.

Speier himself looked for a time like he might need some help in the ninth, and in fact at one point Frankie started warming up after Speier gave up an infield single that he unwisely threw away, and then coughed up a more conventional single. But Speier buckled down and finished the job, including a strikeout of the whifftastic Jack Cust. For a team that's suffering a confidence crisis with its bullpen, it wasn't encouraging that two of the guys who might be expected to provide some help themselves needed bailing out against a lousy offensive club. A win, yes, but geesh, could somebody please pitch in relief?

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