Julio Teheran made his Angels debut tonight with a 60 pitch limit. When I saw that number would be his pitch limit, my comment in the writer chat was: “60 pitches for Teheran? Ugh. This could be a scary night.” The reason, of course, is the Angels Bullpen has been flat out awful this season.
For his part, Teheran pitched pretty well, but Joe Maddon pulled him in the 3rd inning at 52 pitches with 2 outs and runners at the corners. Ryan Buchter was the first man up because Maddon would rather play to the lefty/lefty matchup than let Teheran try to finish the inning. The result was predictable and it took Buchter only 3 pitches to give up a 3 run homer to Kyle Seager.
The Angels opened up the scoring with a Max Stassi home run in the 3rd inning. That smash was his 3rd of the season, and at the time made him the club HR leader (along with Albert Pujols).
David Fletcher hit his 2nd home run in the 6th and Mike Trout had to answer back. Who hasn’t heard all the talk that David Fletcher just might give Trout a run for the AL MVP award?? Not anymore folks. Mike Trout followed Fletcher with a home run of his own and later smashed a 3 run homer in the 8th, pulling the Angels within 1 run. This was Trout’s 27th home run at T Mobile Park and his 19th multi homer game of his career.
Justin Upton was 0 for 3 with 3 Ks and Anthony Rendon continues to struggle with a .148 AVG.
Losing a 1 run game when you have an impressive show of firepower is pretty depressing. The Angels need to figure out their bullpen – and fast.
So was the minimum for relief pitchers suppose to be 3 batters or 3 runs? I don’t think Maddon has figured that one out yet
Blowpen, blowpen! Get your blowpen here!
Having some fun here, DB’s over Asstros 14-7 as Kole goes 5-2-2-3 with an inside the park HR. After game the Trashcan Gnome is hitting.145, that just brings a smile to my face…….Milwaukee won a game 1-0 on the first hit in the career of Mike Mathias………Clevenger leads the Indians to a 2-0 win…… Here is the new norm Miami Marlins took 2 games in Baltimore, one as the home team and one as the away team. Oh and both were 7 inning games. 2020 strange, so no surprise…….Yanks and Phils do the same home/away deal in Citizens Bank Park. The difference was they split although the Judge tried his best to win it for the Yankees with a 3 run bomb in the bottom of the 7th…….Oh and there was a PPD game between Balt. vs NYY, just 2020 strange…..
Nobody would fault Maddon if Teheran blew that 3rd inning himself. The over-managing (pitch limit 10 pitches away or not) is just soul-crushing to watch.
Maddon: Bullpen as Arte: Hiring
Those #3-4-5 hitters are the reincarnation of the famed “murderers’ row”…..if the ‘murderers’ row” were legendary because of their ineptitude
Adell looked lost out there.
I’d rather have Adell playing every day and learning than Upton out there wasting at bats.
Totally agree. Stunting Adell’s development in Long Beach only makes 2021 more likely to follow 2020 level of frustration.
Take the lumps and learn the tough lessons now in the fake season and prioritize the 162 next year.
I agree, but he may also be better suited to LF and let Goodwin man RF. Ward, Upton, Pujols can ride the pine and fight for the leftover scraps.
The most frustrating thing for me is, taking the starters out with 2 outs just for one of the many scrubs to come in and shit the bed. On the Seager HR, let Julio finish! You bring in a lefty to give up a 3 run bomb!! Smh
Do we really get to watch Albert til he hits 700?
2020 isn’t a total wash……Alex Curry is around at least.
for 30 games?
Basically, if we had starters that could get through 5 innings, and not have a bullpen pitch 6 innings EVERY game, we’d be in first place. Cool.
Tonight was tough bc it’s one the Angels should have won. 2 misplayed balls by the rook led to 3 runs and that was the ballgame. It’s going to happen with a young player. But there is no excuse for Upton who does not even appear to care about his suckiness.
Jedi Coup!
Jerry Dipoto……In 2017 he acquired Marco Gonzalez for OF Tyler O’Neil.
Zack Greinke, Marco Gonzales…..not bad eh?
A whole season of Albert desperately flying open on every swing just so that he can hit the occasional 348′ home run is just too much to expect from even the most loyal fans. Will he ever hit over .175 again? I don’t think .200 is even a reasonable benchmark for him at this point.
Can we stop wasting Dad Trout’s prime?
He’s on the path to be our Ernie Banks or Carl Yastrzemski and I hate that
At this point he’s not just on the path but he’s on lap 2 now
Really starting to think those cubs fans I’ve talked to who said they won that WS not because of but in spite of Maddon May be onto something.
Small sample size but he’s been bad.
I didn’t think he was this bad, but I definitely vaguely remember some suspect moves in the ’16 World Series.
I’m a broken record but that WS was the worst managerial performance I’ve ever seen. Every single lever Maddon pulled seemed to backfire with the bullpen and then his insane lineup would bail him out.
Baseball manager’s don’t matter……..GM’s and players do.
This is why all the Sosh hate was so frustrating. In the big picture, he just didn’t matter.
Upton, pujols, and rendon 0 – 11. Nice.
Rendon .148. Hmm….
But Trout. Hey! .323, 1.131 OPS. I’ll focus on that tonight.
Ohtani back in the lineup tomorrow, I hear.
He’s just adjusting to AL pitching!
yeah where have I seen a 30 year old player get paid by us before .. hmm
This seems…familiar.
Singing along with Weezer, “Say it ain’t so…”
It shouldn’t. When Pujols plummeted, he saw a loss in power and a huge drop in walk rate, accompanied by a gradual decline in AVG and BABIP. In contrast, Rendon’s walk rate has more than doubled (despite his terrible average, he has a .395 OBP) and unsustainably astronomical drop in BABIP (about 50% of his career average).
Some of that won’t recover, because Rendon no longer has Juan Soto hitting behind him so pitchers are free to pitch around him and let him walk. However, it is more likely than not that Rendon will have a resurgence in BABIP. We should probably be hoping for 2016 numbers rather than 2017-2019, but it is absolutely not time to start comparing him to other failed contracts.
Definitely was not referring to the Rendon contract. I think that will be a big success.
My profuse apologies. I made a poor assumption because I had just finished reading Eric_in_Portland’s post about Rendon’s poor average. In retrospect, since your comment is sorted below that, it means you posted your comment first. Thus, it should have been obvious that you weren’t talking about Rendon.