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

In case you couldn't tell, I'm on vacation, visiting friends in the Midwest and mountain states. The blog will necessarily suffer for a few weeks. In the interim, an interesting story by Mark Saxon about the 2012 Angels' bullpen utilization:

For nearly two months now, Angels manager Mike Scioscia has tried a different approach, a more democratic use of his late-inning pitchers that has achieved stunning results. Shortly after Scioscia pulled Jordan Walden from the closer’s role -- and after the arrival of hard thrower Ernesto Frieri -- the Angels bullpen has taken off while spreading the credit liberally.

In the Angels’ first 32 games, the bullpen was 1-6 with a 4.70 ERA and four saves.

In the last 41 games, it is 7-2 with a 1.87 ERA and 13 saves. Angels relievers haven’t allowed a run in nearly a week.

They just have to stay ready from the sixth or seventh inning through the end of the game. There’s not a lot of time to lounge and enjoy a game.

“As soon as the phone rings, four of us get up to take our coats off,” Angels reliever Jason Isringhausen said.

While it hasn't been much discussed, I have to wonder whether the number of warmup pitches has any effect on a reliever's arm. They don't go against innings pitched, but they do count on the odometer.

Labels: angels, meta

A brief note that Dodgers blogger Roberto Baly (of Vin Scully Is My Homeboy) has been hospitalized. Send him your prayers and kind thoughts for a speedy recovery.

Labels: blogs, injuries

The very air is thick with perfection, or nearly so. These days, we swat perfect games aside like mosquitoes in a swamp; we have had two so far this year, Philip Humber against the Mariners and Matt Cain's against the Astros just last Wednesday. And hours ago, Ervin Santana retired the first 20 batters he faced. Justin Upton broke up the perfection with a hard-hit ground ball single up the middle, but that — and a pinch-hit walk to Miguel Montero in the top of the ninth — were all the base runners the Snakes would get; neither advanced. (My friend Kelly Brouse in Cleveland, who never gets to hear Vin Scully call games, was much disturbed that MLB Network kept cutting in to the Angels game, so much so that she cheered on Upton's single so MLBN could get back to the delivery of the Scully. I think it may be a religious experience.)

All of the Angels' scoring came in the first, when Mark Trumbo cleared the bullpen fence to give the team an early — and as it turned out, permanent and final — two-run lead. The team stranded ten runners on the night, which was a testament to Joe Saunders' skill at leaving them elsewhere, or perhaps a comment on the team's weak RISP hitting, take your pick.

Before the game, we had a fine afternoon conversation with the Baseball Prospectus west coast team, headed by Joe Hamrahi, former Register reporter Sam Miller, ex-Dodgers GM Dan Evans, Jason Martinez (of mlbdepthcharts.com), Jason Wojciechowski, and Stephani Bee. After that, Angels AGM Matt Klentak and (I believe) director of baseball operations Justin Hollander came out and discussed their roles in the organization and answered our many questions. It was great fun, and a wonderful opportunity. Joe expressed to me the hope that they're going to do one of these in August for the Dodgers, which will for sure get me out to the park.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, diamondbacks, recaps

I haven't written anything about either team, save for Tuesday's transactions, since Tuesday's win. Following my brief missive, a commenter chided me for being too pessimistic about the Angels offense. I try to take reasonable criticism to heart — this is one reason I farm out my investment decisions. Yesterday's loss to the Diamondbacks certainly didn't prove anything much in one direction or another on that (though I note in passing that Trout is now 1-for-13 with a walk in his last three games).

Dan Haren leaked base runners all night, but the game didn't really get out of hand until the sixth, when he surrendered four more runs on a surreal two-out rally by the Snakes, giving up a three-run homer to Aaron Hill and an RBI double to Ryan Roberts. On the opposite side of the mound, Trevor Cahill mystified the Angels. In fact, Cahill and the Snakes' bullpen gave up three hits, total, in the shutout.

I actually turned off the TV shortly after that, because I got a text from my wife — she was at the game, I was not, owing to my retirement party yesterday at work — indicating that she was leaving the game early. Helen had gone with our mutual friend Rachael and her nephew Gabe. Rachael has had a lot of health problems recently and doesn't have much stamina.

Now, Gabe had wanted to get a ball signed by a major leaguer for some time, and things kept conspiring against us to make that happen. So when I read in Mark Saxon's ESPN chat earlier in the week that the best places to get autographs are either in the player parking lot past the outfield, or by the home dugout after home batting practice, that gave Helen a strategy to pursue for Gabe.

They decamped to the home dugout, and waited. Reliever LaTroy Hawkins approached, but with body language that screamed, "Not. Signing." My wife, wearing her Cubs cap, vanished from the scene on the grounds that Hawkins' time in Chicago was not happy, and so remembrances of that might not be conducive.

As a teenager, Rachael stayed with a family in France, and stays in touch with them to this day. Out of the blue, they called her, and she answered in perfect French, and started conversing. While this was going on, Hawkins averred as to how his son was taking Spanish lessons, but the hard language is French. And just like that — after hearing Rachael's conversation — he signed Gabe's ball. Gabe, politely, responded with a "Merci". For all I know, Hawkins thought he was signing a ball for a French tourist. Awesome.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, diamondbacks, recaps

• The Dodgers and Andre Ethier reached agreement on a 5-year/$85M deal that will keep the left-handed slugger in Dodger Stadium through 2017, with a vesting option for 2018 dependent on plate appearances. Given current industry trends, I don't see this as being terrible — until you see that Ethier is actually going to be paid for his age 31-35 seasons, a fact MSTI railed against before the season started, but is now "okay with it". It didn't seem unreasonable to me, though keep an eye on that knee.
• The Angels have moved Vernon Wells to the 60-day DL, optioned Kole Calhoun to AAA Salt Lake, and called up David Pauley. Pauley was horrible in an earlier stint, so I expect we'll see almost none of him.
• Update: It seems that Jered Weaver is close to starting a rehab assignment, and Bill Plunkett speculates he'll be back in the rotation for the Giants series.

Labels: angels, dodgers, injuries, transactions

If the desperate straits the Angels offense really is in could be more starkly illustrated, I would be hard pressed to come up with a better example than last night. Minus Mike Trout, that would have been a loss, plain and simple. Trout not only drove in two thirds of the team's runs, he walked in the top of the ninth, stole second, and scored the winning run on Albert Pujols' RBI single for the margin of victory. What's pathetic about this is that home plate umpire Sam Holbrook was apparently intent on squeezing both pitchers, and so the Angels managed to load the bases twice with two outs and got exactly nothing out of it. Trout was literally involved in every offensive play in the game.

Both Chris Capuano and Garret Richards were out of the game after five with no decisions, though Richards would have been in line for the win had the bullpen held up. As it was, he gave up a leadoff double to Erick Aybar that Trout knocked in after Josh Lindblom entered the game.

Angels recap • ESPN Box

Labels: angels, dodgers, recaps

• The Angels have called up Hank Conger to replace Bobby Wilson, who goes on the 7-day concussion DL. Conger was sent down due to an elbow strain, and only just last week was allowed to play again.

  Update: Mark Saxon says Chris Iannetta should be back in a couple weeks. Also, fouling my contention that Scioscia doesn't trust Conger behind the dish, he will get the start tonight.

• Javy Guerra had knee surgery this morning and is expected back in 4-6 weeks. I haven't been able to find out yet who gets the callup to replace him on the 25-man roster.

Labels: angels, dodgers, injuries, transactions

The lesson of the Rangers series ended Sunday was supposed to be that the Angels, written off by many (this space included) for dead at the end of April, were actually capable of competing in the AL West. This lowly goal seems like underachieving given the team payroll and the number of injured or malingerers on it, not to mention the dubious start of one Albert Pujols. But the state of the Angels' starting pitching has been little commented on, and Ervin Santana needs most taking out behind the shed and horsewhipping. The team has lost nine of his twelve starts, and last night's catastrophe was not much different from four of his other games in which he gave up five or more runs this year. He has only notched five quality starts this year, 42% of his total and the lowest rate since his 2007 campaign. Is he injured? Or just apathetic? However it is, it looks increasingly like the team will elect to buy him out for his 2013 team option, should this keep up.

The lone bright spots in this game were Kendrys Morales' two home runs, and a 4-for-4 night from Mike Trout that included a wonderful bunt single that rolled until it nestled against the third base bag. Trouty ended the game with a .338 average, leading all rookies, and would be sixth in the AL if he had the at-bats to qualify. It begins to pain me to see him do so well in the face of such sustained mediocrity, or worse, from other factions of the team.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, mariners, recaps

Fascinating piece at Call To The Pen about Ernesto Frieri's control. Excerpt:

There are two changes in Frieri’s game that could be leading to him being more effective despite being even wilder than before. Frieri is throwing his two-seamer over twice as much as he did with San Diego and surprisingly this hasn’t been off-set by a reduction in his four-seamer, but instead he’s reduced his slider usage by over half, according to Pitch f/x. His slider was never an effective pitch with the Padres, but he’s throwing it one MPH faster with the Angels, and this uptick in speed, coupled with his light use of the pitch has caused it to be more effective.

Labels: angels

The win Friday — glorious and fully unexpected as it was, given the Angels' wretched futility earlier in the year — was nothing compared to the insanity of yesterday's game. If there has been a game — not just this season, but at any time in my Angels fandom — where the Angels capitalized on such a combination of bad defense and umpire blown calls, I cannot recall it.

The headline bill was one of a star pitching matchup, with the Rangers' young ace Yu Darvish pitted against their former ace and current Angel C.J. Wilson. (I once harbored hopes that the Angels or Dodgers might sign Darvish as a Japanese amateur. Fat chance.) For the first five innings this held true, but things took a weird turn in the sixth, when leadoff man Albert Pujols hit what looked for the world like a routine pop out to first baseman Mike Napoli. Only, Napoli lost the ball in the lights, or something, because the ball dropped untouched by either him or right fielder Nelson Cruz, only a dozen or two feet away. Pujols then alertly ran to second, converting the break into a two-base error. Two batters later, Mark Trumbo bounced to third, and Adrian Beltre dropped the ball out of his glove, giving Trumbo the base, allowing Pujols to score.

The Rangers got that gift run back in the top of the seventh in a fairly conventional way, with Jordan Walden loading the bases, and Bobby Cassevah allowing Nelson Cruz to score on David Murphy's sac fly with one out. Walden really begins to call for a AAA stint except for the fact that the Angels have few better options right now.

But then to the truly weird parts of this game. In the bottom of the seventh, Erick Aybar reached on what was judged a bunt single to Darvish, but IMO could have equally have been an error; it seemed to me Darvish just utterly failed to field his position. Either way, it sparked a rally that Bobby Wilson did his best to squelch immediately by striking out bunting to give up an out for no reason.

But that brought up Mike Trout. In case you missed Jeff Nelson's excellent piece in SB Nation recently, Mike Trout is like a video game in "god mode", i.e. the state where you can do anything to your opponent and he can do nothing in response. Trout reached in the most Mike Trout possible way — an infield single to shortstop Elvis Andrus, but really, it was more like

Trout: bounces out to short
Andrus: Wow, that Trout guy is really fast. Say, what's this white, round thing in my hand?

Because you know, Mike Trout is just so good he warps the nature of time and space around him. This, as it turns out, is a helpful property to have if you are a baseball player, because it also works on umpires. As it happens, Andrus thought there was a runner's interference call on Aybar, and so held on to the ball instead of throwing to first. "I learned something tonight," Andrus said, but after it was too late.

Trouty eventually made it to third on Alberto Callaspo's unexpected RBI single, and then Kendrys Morales hit a liner to medium right. Cruz fielded the ball, threw a dart back to home plate — and Trout tagged and scored. At least, that's the official version of events, because Rangers catcher Yorvit Torrealba was quite certain he had tagged out Trout in a close play at the plate. Home plate umpire Tim McClelland almost immediately ejected him for arguing, which led to a fairly laughable situation because Torrealba didn't realize he had been tossed. So Torrealba continued to vent, Donald Duck-like, with Ron Washington coming over to plead his case in vain.

The Angels gave one back in the eighth thanks in part to a dumb throw by Torii Hunter that ended up in the dugout and scored Elvis Andrus, but outside of a nail-biting ninth (the Rangers loaded the bases for the second time, but failed to score), that was the game — which ended on Josh Hamilton's swinging strikeout. The radio guys mentioned that Hamilton was holding his elbow in the dugout after his prior at bat; perhaps a check swing took something out of him? If he's injured to affect his swing in today's game, I wouldn't object...

Update: As 60ft6in mentions in the comments, Pujols swiped third in the sixth, which proved critical, as Beltre's double-clutch allowed him to score. The Rangers now have allowed 26 unearned runs in their last 29 games; as Buster Olney tweeted, the 1998 Yankees allowed 37 all year.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, rangers, recaps