Angels pitching has been terrible for years and that was evident today. While Dustin May had a rough start for the Dodgers, he could be pulled with confidence that the bullpen could carry the team. The Angels do not have that ability. If the pitching struggles the offense will have to outslug the other team and in this case, that was not going to happen.
Julio Teheran was rough yet again. Maybe he is trying too hard but he threw balls down the middle of the plate. The Bullpen didn’t calm down the Dodgers at all and the game was out of reach pretty fast. Julio Teheran and Matt Andriese gave up 7 of the 8 runs before the 5th and all 8 overall. This duo did not give the team a chance at all.
Anthony Rendon hit a home run, so did Brian Goodwin. So many runs this year have been by the long ball and this team lives and dies with them. Even though they have hit so many, expecting 3 or more per game to win with this pitching staff is not a winning club make.
The Angels are 7-15, a .318 winning percentage. That is on pace for a 19-41 season. It would be the worst season by any team metric in Angels history. Even in a full season this team is so full of holes it was bound to sink and they are evident now.
The trade deadline is August 31st, this team is in no position to win in 2021 as it is now. Giants are next, two at home then 2 in San Francisco. After that is a trip to Oakland for the final games vs the A’s this season.
I want to say thank you to everyone who comes here to Crashing the Pearly Gates. It has been a rough year to start an Angels fan site. Thank you for sticking with us through a bad season for the team as well as a bad year overall in all matters of life. The amount of engagement has been much appreciated and complaining about the team as a community gets us through the day.
Well let me throw my 2 cents in. I think we ignore the trade deadline and start concentrating on the off-season since all trade deadline trades are restricted to pool players and the so called PTBNL. We let Eppler know he’s done at the end off the season, starting my search now by compiling a list of candidates in order to have him in place at the beginning of the off-season. Now I would also play Pujols and Upton the rest of the season to ensure a top 10 draft pick next year
Also maybe Arte sells to A-Rod and J-Lo
Players I hope they move on from:
Ward, Thaiss, Hermosillo, Walsh (talent)
Upton, Pujols (old, probably bad for team energy)
Simmons, Heaney (injury prone)
Middleton (talent plus that Twitter post yikes for morale)
Oh yeah and every bullpen guy that I’ve never heard of before. (Looking at you, Barnes/Mayers/Milner).
Anyone I’m missing? I know Simmons is gonna be the controversial one, but I’d rather just plug Fletch at short and be done with it.
Heaney of someone wants a spot starter. Goodwin or La Stella if you can get something good. Robles or Peña. Cam Bedrosian.
Ahh forgot about our old friend Bedrosian. I agree on Heaney, maybe keep the others depending on the package.
This team needs to play at a 95-win pace until the end of the season to reach .500. The season is over just 1/3 into it. That’s embarrassing. Eppler should be fired now. What’s crazy is they planned on using real games to build Ohtani and Tehran into game shape. I mean seriously? Tehran doesn’t belong on the field it’s obvious Covid took his year. Ohtani lost to the radar gun and they may have further injured hiss elbow. BTW the staff era is now 12/15 and after that first week where batters were trying to get adjusted, Heaney and Canning have now settled into the same pitcher they were last year according to ERA+. Eppler has botched Canning.
I think Eppler goes, but it won’t be until the end of the season, due to Maddon just starting.
So I see the trade chip discussion has begun. Can I throw out Simmons and Bundy? All the obvious names as well, but unfortunately nobody’s taking Upton off our hands.
Teams won’t give a lot of value in return for a shortened season Championship. I doubt any GM will be too active at the deadline only bc this is almost an exhibition season.
They should keep Bundy, the one pitcher they have who actually pitches deep into a game.
This series blowout at home was a statement making series that Billy Eppler has to go.
No excuses anymore for him after four years and having all his draft picks unlike his predecessor. In fact he needs to be relieved before the end of the season if we start to go into a free-fall.
Yes I do believe that Arte should look into hiring former Astro’s GM Jeff Luhnow…….BECAUSE IT WOULD INCENSE THE DODGERS AND THEIR FANS MOST OF ALL!!!
Agreed with all that except ew at Luhnow lol.
A hard NO on Luhnow. Get it, Luh-NO.
Anyway, I do agree that it is time to part ways with Billy. Dylan Bundy is a blind-squirrel acorn. He does not make up for Cahill, the Dark Knight overspending fiasco or all the other shit pitchers. Some good ones mixed in but way too many failures.
LuhnoTICK…..LOL!!
The fact is he’s a damm good GM ( worked for the St Louis Cardinals before going to Houston )
Which means he had to work in a high integrity environment before he went to Houston. No acquiring dirt bags like Bernardo Osuna and no new England Patriot’s like cheating and he’s in.
I still think we can bounce back. We’re better than this. Truthfully though, I’m not sure what the path forward is. I want a WS win AND Trout to in the HoF as a life long Angel. I think there are people capable of figuring out how to have our cake and eat it too, just not in our organization. It truly though could be worse. We could be the Pirates with Nutting.
Agree. It could be worse. In actuality, we don’t need to trade the whole team like some people are calling for…
There is a lot of talent here not named Trout.
Frankly, I feel like this team needs a good kick in the ass; we have lost 6 games by either 1 or 2 runs. That is a lot for this same number of games. Some if that is due to Billy not adequately stocking the bullpen, some of it falls on strategic mistakes, and some of it is the natural consequence of players trying to adapt to a new pitching coach and manager. That last part just takes some time.
But a big part is what I see as a lack of “focused intensity.” I am not talking about head butting the water cooler intensity, but that is sometimes a good thing. Our leader Trout is known to be a laid-back, chill kind of guy. That’s great and all, but it is sometimes necessary to break something in the clubhouse or at least throw shit around. It keeps people on their toes.
Sosh was never the kind to do that, and I think at times that would have helped. I also don’t think Joe is that type. Though I do feel that if after the home Seattle series he went all Billy Martin, that might have had a positive impact. In any case, I am not going to judge Joe too harshly since he literally just got here. He is getting to know his team.
All that said, we need to be a little more intense and not take losing in stride. When you have mellow guys like Ohtani and Trout somebody needs to stir things up. This is what chemistry means — a good, versatile blend of personalities.
We do of course need to add a few quality bullpen arms while we’re at it, and dump Teheran as well. The guy maxes out at 91 mph. But properly used I think Buttrey, Robles and Middleton can be a very effective trio.
Love it, thanks for the detailed and cogent reply!
Wholesale trades should be made for minor leaguers and start a rebuild of sorts. Won’t get much for the bullpen guys but most are waiver wire types.About 3 years ago l started hearing about us wasting Trout and l refused to buy into that. Trading Trout to Yankees could put him in a winning position and bring back serviceable players. This team has lost its vision and lost it’s direction. Unless changes start at the top things will remain the same. lf Trouty wants to stay then be prepared to spend over the cap and to make sacrifices in all levels of management. l hope that Arte does not listen to those that have backed Reagins, Jedi and Eppler. Start the Jettisoning and the trades. BTW as Trout is the best player l have ever seen from the gate l hope he’d want to stay. .
our run differential is better than the Rangers but they’re 10-10 and we’re 7-15. Theoretically it means we’re going to bounce back and win some games.
Cue the nonstop “Eppler has done a really good job in spite of Arte” arguments I have read for 5 straight years in 3, 2, 1….Evidence be damned!
Trout, Fletch, Bundy, Rendon, Goodwin, Simmons. Pretty much the rest is expendable, but who’d want them. Our pitching is the flotsam and jetsam of MLB.
Buttrey and Robles are both actually good. Unfortunately they have been misused a bit and thus have inflated numbers.
How have they been misused? Robles had his velocity abandon him and Buttrey had been struggling with control. Maddon using them in different innings may have changed the outcomes of those games, but not those players’ performances.
My argument would be that bringing a closer in games that are non-save situations IS misusing him. Maddon did this with BOTH Buttrey and Robles and they both performed poorly. In fact, they performed much worse in those non-save situations than they did in the ones with the game on the line. The second time or last time Maddon brought in Robles this way he was okay, but this was after he had been demoted from the closer role.
The definition of “misuse” is “using (something) in the wrong way or for the wrong purpose.”
That applies in this situation.
Relievers are brought in in non-save situations when they haven’t pitched often within the last week in order to get work in for them, so they remain acclimated to in-game pitching. Furthermore, Robles’s velocity was awful, and that’s the reason he was bad. Him pitching a different inning than the 9th has nothing to do with that.
Cause and effect.
Sometimes they are brought in to give them work. Sometimes not. And they are sometimes brought into tie games because the manager thinks that it is important to do so. It is not always one thing. We can argue about Robles’ velocity if you want to; it was down and then it came back. But we can’t say for sure that is why he failed early on. The point still remains that Maddon put them into situations they are not accustomed to and thus were uncomfortable with.
I am not saying this to degrade Maddon. I am a Maddon fan. I like him. But I happen to disagree with him on this particular point. A bad outing for a closer pitching in a non-save situation can hurt his confidence and can be counter-productive. There are just a lot of reasons not to do it. Especially when other options are available. Best not to burn a closer to protect a deficit. And it was not like those guys had gone a long time without work.
Man, what a rough series.
A ton of home runs good. A lot of them solo shots bad.
Not a fun team to watch minus a couple of player.
Looks like we can start the yearly “who do we keep?” list early. And before I hit “post comment” I see Brent has beat me to it.
Ah, I see we’ve reached the annual “Trade everyone not named Trout” part of the season.
Nobody else would want them.
Trade the ownership and trade everyone but Trouty, Fletch, Bundy then start over. If that is to much to ask how about a new GM then.I am getting older now and l do not think l can wait another 18 years for a World Series winner.
Unfortunately, you can’t trade an owner.
It’s bullshit, I know.
Bad year for trades. Nobody will give up serious prospects this year given how everything is crapshoot, unless everything is aligned exactly right–improbable. Other than Goodwin and Heaney, and possibly Simba when he comes back, not many obvious tradeable players whom other teams would give up any value for anyways. It’s a lost cause this year. Let’s just enjoy the occasional good things that happen, however few they might be, and pretend that everything else did not happen.
I am so jealous of the Dodgers
Hard not to be.
first
Why yes, yes you are. Hope we read more from you.
Unlike the Angels.