Something almost resembling real baseball is back, baby! With it comes homers, headaches, hype, heartache, and history. On Opening Day of 2020, Angels fans experienced all of the above in rapid succession.
After both teams held the black ribbon in a pre-game show of support for equality, Andrew Heaney and Frankie Montas assumed the bump and began to duel in promising fashion. Andrew Heaney in particular was electric, allowing only 2 hits in 4.2 innings pitched with 6 strikeouts. His counterpart, to his credit, also only allowed 1 run and punched out 5, but struggled with high pitch counts and was forced out even earlier.
Of course, the Angels roster is full of pitchers that no one knows the names of, as is tradition. We will likely see some gems in the rough, but 7 relievers used in one game leaves a lot of room to find the odd bramble bush instead. Noe Ramirez was ineffectively wild but also lucky, Buttrey would blow a lead and surrender the go-ahead run, and Robles lost command after being forced to try and plow through a second inning of work.
But that probably isn’t as fair as it could be. After all, the offense left the bases loaded twice before extra innings and had a LOB total of 24 after drawing 6 walks and accruing 7 knocks. Jason Castro tried to save the game by re-tying things up at 3, a perfectly respectable number of runs allowed for the whole team up to that point, but opportunities were wasted from the very first inning. And then there were the multiple baserunning miscalculations and outright mistakes.
In the end, this season has a smaller allotment of excuses to dish out to every team. It’s already July, and time has somehow already slipped away.
On the other hand, baseball is finally back.
Anyone concerned yet about Ty Buttrey?
Don’t know if Upton would have made a difference but taking him out right before his spot in the order in the 10th sure was suspect
I thought it was a good move by Madden to put Hermosillo in left as a defensive replacement in the 8th to protect the lead. Buttrey completely botched it which put us in that situation. But at the time the move made sense.
CJ Cron and Kole Calhoun both hit HRs yesterday. I wonder what the TV ratings for 2020 Opening Day games were compared to the 2019 ratings.
I had a hard time following the game thread once it got large.
Big game today. We can’t afford to have a mine shaft gap.
Semien started the 10th on second base, moved to third on Robles’ wild pitch, and then scored on the grand slam Olsen hit off of Milner. My question is, which Angel pitcher gets credited for the earned run Semien scored? Or does no one take a hit to their ERA since Semien was the free runner to start off one of the extra innings?
It is an unearned run charged to Robles.
In tERA, it is an earned run, sort of. One-fourth of that earned run is assigned to Robles for letting Semien advance to third, and one-fourth of that run is charged to Milner for letting him advance to home. The first half of that run either doesn’t exist or is credited to the MLB rule book.
So many runners left on base (mainly Albert & Justin), opportunities missed. I can see where the 3 batter limit with pitchers will become a real problem as it was last night with Noe and Buttrey having a bad night with command. But the worst part for me was having to watch the Oakland feed on tv because of blackout rule on mlb.
Hoby Milner impresses in Angels debut.
Goodwin proved what was known all day long by everyone but the GM, Goodwin is a journeyman LF at best. He caught lightning in a bottle in ’19. Two throws that a High School RF’er could have done better. Not Goodwin’s “bad”, but the teams “Bad”. Not advocating that Kole should have been resigned at 14 per, but 2 runs do not score with Kole in RF. If you pick up a pitching staff for your pen from waiver wire and you get one decent one per season, why keep going back to what does not work? Last night was a waiver wire bullpen.
I hope Madden is a coach who insists on his players respecting the fundamentals of the game and tells them that when a player is involved in a rundown between second and third like Ohtani was, the runner on first has to make it to second base instead of sitting on first just watching the rundown like Walsh did. Assume the player in the rundown is going to be out and take the extra base!
The game was exciting at least. Who knew we had shaky pitching going in to the season?? Also, yes, Robles lost control and is partially responsible but to saddle him with 100% of the loss (stats wise) is silly when Milner came in and threw a 77MPH meatball to Olson. Ouch.
Anbody here at CTPG happen to have Dave Dombrowski’s #?
PREFERABLY ON SPEED DIAL!!!
I already miss Kole. Goodwin had one baserunning gaffe, and misplayed two balls out in RF..
Jo- keep hitting the batting cage every day….
If your starter only makes it 4.1 innings, you probably won’t win a lot of games. You might eek out a few, but eventually you will destroy your bull pen.
I swear this felt like a game from 2019.
It is still 2019……with just a killer virus thrown in too.
Dare I say it……..buttercupped on Opening Day…..
Losing Opening Day?
The bullpen must uphold TrAdition ya know….
Great community participation in the game thread!
In terms of the actual game, oof. That was a weak offensive performance. Without Rendon, and with the walking dead of a forty-something Pujols chasing vanity stats, hard to imagine a 30 win team. Nice debut from Castro, though.
Win or lose, glad to have baseball back and see our boys in red!!
Sigh