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

I was somewhat surprised to see that this was the fourth time in his career Jered Weaver had given up eight runs, though it does tie a personal worst for innings pitched, getting chased as he did in the fourth after only one out and giving up two runs on a Josh Hamilton double. Let's face it: this is a bad team, though there are things that can be done to rectify it.

• Vernon Wells needs to be cut. Wells has been a .220 hitter since 2010 and provides no actual value defensively (in fact, negative value); last night, he misplayed a ball into a double.
• Bench Pujols. I don't pretend here that Pujols is over, only that this remains within the realm of possibility given the very real decline in unintentional walk rate, a canary in his coal mine of recent suck. Mark Trumbo should be getting more starts in his stead, and this should not be controversial. Trumbo, at least, sounded the right note when he called on the team to play with some attitude, which I esteem to mean better relief pitching, and more offense.

I have little else to contribute here; the bullpen is unlikely to get fixed anytime soon, as last night's outing showed. So far, the team seems fixated on leaving both situations as is, and so the trend of losing two of every three games will likely continue into 162. The Angels just stink, management doesn't seem to care especially, and there's little that can be done. Another long, dull season awaits.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, rangers, recaps, suck

First seen, of course, on Twitter (via @toriihunter48's feed and as retweeted by @mollyknight), but neatly summarized on Hardball Talk: Torii Hunter's alarm went off, which precipitated a police call, which meant the cops came and drew their weapons at him. He had to go upstairs and get his ID to prove he lived in Newport Coast. Man...

Update: Torii clarified that the cops did not have their guns trained on him. So there is that.

Labels: angels, stupid ideas, suck

At this point, the scores almost don't matter. What matters, instead, is a universe in which Mike Napoli can be jettisoned because of some nonsense about "bad hands" from Mike Scioscia, who for some reason still holds a reputation as having the ability to make baseball judgments. Between that and the trade that sent the worst contract in baseball to the Angels, that of Vernon Wells, the Angels front office is long on excuses and exceptionally short on accountability. It's time Arte fired everyone.

Oh, yeah, and Tyler Chatwood left in the third last night. Whatever. It's about time somebody rubbed Scioscia's nose in the fact that pitching can't win if the team can't score runs.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, rangers, recaps, stupid ideas, suck

Nothing you couldn't have seen before. Seriously, Tony Reagins' career suicide.

Labels: angels, suck

So much I could say about tonight's game: wasted opportunities, a team with lots of hustlin' slap-hitters who couldn't. Brandon Wood and Mark Trumbo, who ought to strike fear in the hearts of opposing pitchers, but now only provoke mirth.

And Fernando Rodney to provide the ultimate punchline.

Adding insult to injury, the grill back of home plate changed their menu again! The gal working the stand said it was the fourth time this season, leaving me once again without a favorite dish at the park.

So many reasons to hate this season, and none to think that, even with Kendry next year, they'll contend. Too many holes in too many places. It's just joyless coming to the park. The official attendance was 41,046, but if 30,000 were there I'd eat my Angels cap.

I wonder when they start asking for season ticket renewals.

ESPN Box

Labels: angels, recaps, suck, white sox

Losing a series at home to the worst team in the AL East should be a late wake-up call to Tony Reagins and every single person in the Angels front office that this team has quit. Like it or not, it's time to move everything that isn't nailed down and sell, sell, sell, as though that shouldn't have happened prior to the trade deadline anyway. The Angels will probably have to eat some contracts; Bobby Abreu's unmovable deal looks like one. But Torii Hunter seems a reasonable possibility to get some value in the offseason, as good as he's been, and Jered Weaver as well, who almost certainly won't be coming back after he hits free agency, as all Scott Boras clients eventually do. Speaking of that, I wonder if Kendry Morales is worth shipping out, or better to wait him out? Mmm, plenty of time to figure this stuff out in November, I guess.

ESPN Box

Labels: angels, orioles, recaps, suck

Per Dylan Hernandez; Kershaw will get a five-day suspension, while Shaefer and Torre will get one game each. Torre will serve his suspension tonight, while Kershaw appeals his.

Update: AP via ESPN says both Schaefer and Torre have also received undisclosed fines for their actions. Imagine how pissed both will be if Kershaw decided, all cowboy-like, to plunk Aaron Rowand in the ass.

Labels: dodgers, stupid ideas, suck, suspensions

I have maintained for some time that the Angels season more-or-less ended with Kendry Morales' collapse following his walkoff grand slam on May 29.

As in that game, the Angels were tied in extras going into the ninth, only this time they didn't have a guy who could really threaten the opposition with a big hit. I found myself disagreeing slightly with the Rev's take on this game, i.e. it was principally about Jeff Mathis and his inability to defend behind the plate. (Mathis allowed the first run on an embarrassing wild pitch in the fifth that stopped not three feet behind him.) I'm not happy with Mathis, and find his defense wildly overwrought, at least as publicly espoused by various and sundry from within the organization. A straight WPA analysis shows leadoff man Erick Aybar as the worst culprit, especially for ending the game on a strikeout.

That is, we don't ask more of Brad Ausmus than Brad Ausmus can deliver. The bottom line here is that this is not a very good team, and whether Jeff Mathis delivers or not (and I fall on the side of criticizing his defensive play), the bottom line is that the Angels aren't fielding anything like a good team.

The upcoming road trip promises to be ugly.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, mariners, recaps, suck

I had a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when John Danks knocked out the Angels in order in the top of the first, and then Chicago put up a run in the bottom of the frame; the offense has been awful lately, and sure enough, the Angels didn't even get a base runner until Cory Aldridge (who?) reached on a throwing error by 140-year-old Omar Vizquel. The Angels had to wait until the seventh to even get a man into scoring position, getting consecutive no-outs singles from Reggie Willits and Howie Kendrick, but the Angels failed, once again, to capitalize.

Good lord, this is a bad team.

ESPN Box

Labels: angels, recaps, suck, white sox

The ESPN box score doesn't reflect which godawful reliever blew up this time (it turns out it was Jason Bulger), but does it really matter? I suppose they can take some solace in that at least Brian Stokes will start a rehab assignment with Salt Lake.

ESPN Box

Labels: angels, blue jays, recaps, suck

Jamie Enterprises. "A heart for sports. A mind for business. A voice for the community." Gah.

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Labels: dodgers, stupid ideas, suck

Jered Weaver clearly had very little to work with today in a park where he has generally done fairly well at previously, with a 3.65 ERA. We can quibble about when Scioscia should have yanked him, and maybe things would have been different if Scioscia had let Trevor Bell face Josh Hamilton.

Nevertheless, the game's proximate loser was just one in a long line of failures. The bullpen has been godawful this year, at present the third worst in the league. And I really don't see that changing. So no matter who the Angels brought in, it would have been a crapshoot at best.

It's way too early to be giving up on the season, and I really don't want to be doing that; I've been fooled a lot of times. But the Angels just don't seem to be showing any signs of getting off the mat, or when they do, they execute a pratfall the very next day.

ESPN Box

Labels: angels, rangers, recaps, suck

As I mentioned the other day, the Angels' last stint when they lost seven in a row was in the lost year of 2001, when they did it twice; but neither of those were consecutive series. (They were split over three teams, one of which was a short two-game set.) The last time they lost seven straight as every game of consecutive series was the 1993 team, losing consecutive road sweeps to the Red Sox and Yankees in the midst of a horrific 11-game skid that saw them fall from three games out of the division lead to nine games back; they finished 71-91, 23 games out of the division behind the Chisox.

This year isn't quite that bad, and in fact, there's a bit of a silver lining hiding in that horrible year: on this day in 1993, the Angels were 15-10 with a half game lead in the division. Nonetheless, this year's Angels are proving to have the classic symptoms of a team that's waiting far too long to get their act together. Scott Kazmir, given a four-run first-inning lead, proceeded to gave half of it away in the fourth on the strength of a two-run Victor Martinez homer. He surrendered the lead for good in the fifth, with Victor Martinez tying the game on a bases-loaded double, and between Brian Stokes and the random Matt Palmer, the Angels ended up on the wrong side of an 11-6 score. Kazmir walked enough people to fill a small conference room (five), and of those, only two scored, more luck than anything else.

Of course, the problem I have with all this is that I don't really have any good ideas about how to fix it; and I very much doubt that Mike Scioscia or Tony Reagins do, either. The Kazmir trade, of which I've always been very skeptical, is looking increasingly painful despite Sean Rodriguez' .200/.260/.289 line in the Show this year. Brandon Wood struck out in this game three times, and you just wonder how much longer the organization can stomach his three-pitch whiffs, one of which he seems to include in every single game.

But if the team were functioning acceptably otherwise, this wouldn't be a big problem. However, Kendry Morales went 0-for-5, Torii Hunter 1-for-5; and then all the pitchers in this game save for Fernando Rodney finished it with ERAs north of 6.00. I've been waiting for an explosion from Mike Scioscia, but so far it hasn't happened.

And it's not just the losing, it's the humiliation. The Angels have been outscored by the Red Sox by margins of four or more in three games of the series. This has to stop. If only it could.

ESPN box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, recaps, red sox, suck

Missed this one and the Dodgers' only slightly less humiliating 6-5 loss to the Marlins because I was at a photo shoot (Mother's Day prezy, all my siblings and their kids, plus our pups). Another bad outing by Joe Saunders, an unhelpful error by Brandon "Can't We At Least Try And See If He'll Clear Waivers?" Wood (ha-ha-only-serious), and more craptastic pitching out of the bullpen (Scot Shields again and worse, and Bobby Cassevah showing why his exposure to major league batters needs to be limited for a while).

Observing that both (how it pains me to write that) Angels wins have occurred in Jered Weaver starts, I don't suppose there's any hope the Angels can clone the Weav.

MLB.com recap • ESPN box

Labels: angels, athletics, recaps, suck

And now we'll never hear the end of it from the bandwagoners, who will endlessly repeat what great fans they are while they're drunk at our park yowling "twenty-seven riiiiings" and loutishly starting fights.

Best I can hope for is that all of Posada, Jeter, Pettitte, Matsui, Rivera, and a bunch besides turn into a pumpkin next year. That is one mighty old team out there. The supporting cast up the middle is good but not great.

And now, to the offseason.

ESPN Box

Labels: phillies, postseason, recaps, suck, yankees

The blown calls, irritating as they were (how in the hell do you miss the fact that both Cano and Posada were off the bag, something that was transparent to me up in the thin air, or the CS 2-6 against Nick Swisher in the second that suddenly wasn't?), didn't contribute that much to the loss; no, that was mainly about Kazmir floundering and groping for the strike zone he couldn't find with a flashlight and a GPS. It was about C.C. Sabathia schooling the Angels' offense, with only one real peek at the game in the fifth but none otherwise, and a motheaten Angels pitching staff that finally erupted in a huge, postseason, Technicolor yawn. Pay-Rod finally paid off, missing the cycle by a triple, and the Angels' inability to collect used Indians — i.e. either of Sabathia or Lee — turns around to bite them.

So the bloated zombie corpse of Yankee fandom drunkenly yowled at the long tables tonight, the prospect of more victories in the offing. I have little doubt but that they'll get them. The most overfed, indulged, and spoiled fan base in the country stands one win away from a chance for a 27th title. Consequently, going to the park next year during the Yankees serieses will be even less pleasant than usual, the bandwagon jackasses multiplied by some proximity to their team's latest win.

Bitter? Yes. And I hope to God next year that Sabathia's arm falls off, or ends up in the same sentence as the three words, "Tommy John surgery".

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, postseason, recaps, suck, yankees

I want to give the Angels the benefit of the doubt here, but when the game ends on errors like the Angels made in this one — perhaps mitigated somewhat by the awful playing conditions — it just looks awful for their chances to progress.

Bad umpiring almost all the way around, with an especially horrible call by second base umpire Jerry Layne that erased a double play when Erick Aybar failed to touch second base, or supposedly failed to do so; the video I saw was inconclusive (his left foot never did, but his right foot might have). In any event, we certainly never saw Cano's foot get inspected by the obviously rooting-for-a-Yankees-World-Series-Appearance Fox broadcast team. Simply appalling, all the way around.

ESPN Box

Labels: angels, postseason, recaps, suck, yankees

Angels One-Hit Texas To Take The Series: Angels 5, Rangers 0

And the Angels' series against the Rangers ends, not with a whimper, but a one-hit shutout against a depleted lineup*. It's a satisfying conclusion to a season that may very well not be as happy next year, but ends the 2009 season with the Halos winning the division but nonetheless with a losing 8-10 record against their division rivals.

Despite what I remember, Rangers starter Derek Holland actually had a unremarkable first and second halves of this season; it's just his outstanding April that caught my attention, but he pretty much cratered the rest of the season. Nevertheless, he ends the season tied against the Angels, going 2-2 on the year.

Matt Palmer and four relievers — Darren Oliver, Jose Arredondo, Kevin Jepsen, and Rafael Rodriguez all pitched scoreless, hitless frames, though each of the latter three walked one apiece. It's post-clinch time, as evidenced by Vlad's early exit from the game. Terry Evans and Chris Pettit got more playing time, and Evans even got a hit and an RBI, too.

Four more games and it's the postseason.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

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Dodgers Wait Another Day To Clinch: Padres 5, Dodgers 0

The last five Dodgers struck out, just like yesterday, and another day, another shut-out. Jon Garland got knocked out in the fourth, and as Charley Steiner put it, it's something of a nightmare scenario, though those are pretty limited for the Dodgers, who've already clinched a playoff berth. That's four straight unclinches, for those of you keeping score at home.

ESPN Box • Dodgers recap

Rockies Creep Up On Sleepy Dodgers: Rockies 10, Brewers 6

The Rocks beat the snot out of Jeff Suppan, continuing their late hot play. It's well to remember that they have to win out and the Dodgers have to lose out for their situations to reverse. One Colorado loss tomorrow is all it takes. Get some sleep, boys.

ESPN Box

Phillies Clinch NL East: Phillies 10, Astros 3

Not quite as exciting as the 2007 Phillies and their tie-untie-tie-untie sequence in the very last days of the season, finally beating the Nats while the Marlins crushed the Mets 8-1 in New York, with predictable catcalls. Thanks to a 6-1 Cardinals loss to Cincinnati, the Phils also passed St. Louis for the second-best record in the league, meaning they'll likely draw the Rockies and not the Dodgers in the first round.

ESPN Box

Labels: angels, astros, dodgers, padres, phillies, rangers, recaps, suck

I have nothing intelligible to say about this game other than my usual grumbling about how the team looks simply exhausted after their 50-games-in-52-days stretch; Lackey blew up for four runs in the fifth, immediately after the Angels offense got him a huge 9-2 lead with a six-run fourth. I did not care, however, because Helen rented a suite and we watched the whole thing as a surprise birthday party. Being around friends, some of whom I haven't seen in over a year, and being thoroughly (too, in fact, as I came home with a pounding headache) lubricated with essence of grape, the evening in the seats was far better than the play on the field.

And what the hell happened to Kevin Jepsen, anyway?

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, athletics, recaps, suck

Brian Fuentes needs to no longer be the Angels' closer. Two consecutive infield singles was horrible; the BS call by the home plate umpire in Nick Green's at-bat is unconscionable, but it wouldn't have mattered if Fuentes hadn't sucked in the first place.

That is all, for the moment.

Update, morning after edition: Apparently first base umpire Jeff Kellogg's check swing call earlier in the at-bat was also bogus, as Scioscia complained bitterly to the press afterward:

"What was the count -- 3 and 4, to Green?" Angels manager Mike Scioscia asked a media crowd gathered around his desk in the visitors' clubhouse.

I dunno. But I still blame Fuentes for that.

The sad thing is that it marred multiple comebacks in the face of a foe that the Angels have really had to work to beat in recent years, and all while the Sox were down two of their best hitters. The worst part is the smirking Sawx fans who can't get their heads around the fact that they were given the game. Still, Fuentes had Boston to two out with nobody on and imploded. You just can't do that.

Steve Bisheff reminds us — aside from the things I've had problems with in this game, i.e. Fuentes — that Vlad got drilled in the ribs in this one, and he'll probably be out a few games. But even I'm not sure I want Howie Kendrick in there every day, as his striking out with the bases loaded attested. But then, I look at his monthly splits and he seems to be still doing pretty well overall.

Eastern Sports Propaganda Network Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, recaps, red sox, suck