The Angels lost again, this time vs the Rays. Q was great at first but a bad third inning torpedoed the chance to win. But the real hurting one was Anthony Rendon who left after hitting a ball off his knee. He couldn’t walk under his own power. This team is cursed.
Recap
Q had a quick first inning, giving us hope that he was going to have a good day. Ohtani looked healthy, scoring a double on a ball up the middle. Then he got caught stealing third. No runs.
Q had another easy inning and the offense got Upton to second but couldn’t get him in.
Then the third happened. The wheels fell off, 4 runs allowed, just hard contact, as Q was pitching in the strikezone and the Rays smacked him around. It looked like he may be hurt and trainers were called, but he wasn’t hurt and made it through the inning. Suzuki smacked a double but was left there. No runs again.
Q gave up a home run to make it 5-0 Rays. He lasted 3 1/3 innings with 2 strikeouts and 6 hits allowed to go with those 5 runs. James Hoyt made his Angel debut to finish the 4th. The Angels did nothing on their half again.
Hoyt pitched a bit into the 5th before Sandoval took over. They stopped the bleeding by allowing no runs again. But, the hitters still couldn’t do anything vs Glasnow.
Sandoval escaped the 6th with 2 walks with no more damage. Then, after 19 innings without scoring a run, the Angels bats woke up. Ohtani hit a two run blast to center. Rendon got his first home run vs TB. It was now 5-3 Rays.
Sandoval pitched into the 7th but was pulled after a hit for Junior Guerra. For his part, Guerra didn’t allow a hit or a run and the offense was back out there. It went well, except for the part where Pujols ran into an out. Still 5-3 Rays.
The 8th was still Guerra and he did his job getting the offense right back out there after another scoreless inning. Well the offense did indeed go back out there and did worse than not score. They got hurt. Rendon hit one right off his knee and left the game. Also they didn’t score.
The closer Iglesias came in and gave up a two run home run because it wasn’t a save situation. Also Pujols played 3B because it was a stupid inning. 7-3 Rays. The Angels didn’t score again and Pujols gidp to end the game.
Hurt again
Anthony Rendon couldn’t walk off on his own power. He is hurt yet again. The injury luck on the team is terrible. Peña should be here soon. It’s how this works right?
The Angels fall to 13-14 on the year. They face the Rays tomorrow. Same bad time, same bad channel.
Bummer of a game. I had zero reaction to the game-ending play. Pretty much the highlight of ten years so I’m numb to that now.
Slight correction. Q had 9 Ks tonight, not just 2. Maddon mentioned that in the video, and it does put a different spin on his outing.
Why? He just plan sucks so what do strikeouts do to make his pitching less painful? Cobb sucks and has more K’s, but it hasn’t made him better.
Going 3 and 1/3 with 2Ks implies to me he couldn’t throw strikes, or dominate batters. 3 1/3 innings with 9Ks? That means that some of his stuff was working (more than the last few starts) even if he got roughed up in the 4th (and part of that was a flukey hit off Fletch’s outstretched arm).
Sure, I don’t want to say Q is great. But this was an improvement over the earlier starts and that portends better (if not well) moving forward. I would love for him to pitch decently and keep us in the game. Wouldn’t you?
Deciding a pitcher ‘just plain sucks’ means what anyway? We should cut him? And start whom? Sandoval? Barria? Waiver Wire? (or are we ready with the Detmers experiment even though we just sent him to AA?).
This team just seems to repel good 2nd hand veteran pitchers unlike Mr Beane up in Oakland ( Mike Minor, Mike Fiers over the past few seasons ).
Lance Lynn was there for the taking. 😫 😪 😠
The thing is that no one knows which recycled pitcher will do well, and which will forget how to pitch/throw out their arm/lose the will to play the game. There are always a few success stories out there – Lynn, Verlander, etc. At the same time, there are the David Price’s, the Chris Archers, and our home town crew of Matt Harvey, Trevor Cahill, Julio Teheran, and now (maybe – super small sample size), Quintana. Dylan Bundy seems to have worked. It is always a gamble.
So, the White Sox landed Lynn, the Braves signed Smyly, and we traded for Raisel – all at about the same time. Some of those worked, some – well, not so much.
Angels say x-rays are negative for Rendon, and are calling it a contusion and he’s listed as day-to-day. That’s a load off our minds!
Except: We Angels fans have cracked this code. We’re all amateur crytographers, but we’ve had so much experience with this stuff we’re getting pretty good at it.
Here’s what the Angels org have said REALLY means, once it’s been decoded:
Rendon will have some surgery at some point and should be back by Opening Day, 2023.
Fowler had a “contusion” at first too…
I’m positive that “contusion” has given Rendon the Bubonic Plague.
The Angels medical staff can fix the Bubonic Plague with leeches.
They’ll forget a few leeches, call it a day and bleed him to death like George Washington.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ
It means he caught a new strain of Covid variant! 😯
Reports now saying X-rays were negative. I slowed it down and stopped at the moment of contact. It’s to the inside – not square on the kneecap. We may have gotten lucky.
In watching the replays – it’s not right on the patella. I’m going to guess it’s just a bruise.
It’s a mere fleshwound
first of all, that is a painful photo of Rendon. Man….
ok, so when Albert left StL he had the 33rd highest batting average of all time, right where Boggs, Carew and Honus Wagner ended up. Now he’s tied for 239th.
Albert’s LAA totals, .256/.311/.447 with an OPS of .759. That .759, if it were for his career, would put him just slightly behind Jacoby Ellsbury, 817th best ever. Hahaha….his StL numbers would put him 6th all-time. As it is, his great StL career means he’s only dropped to 46th in total.
Can you say Steroids? I know there is no prove and how can I accuse Albert of that? Just look at his old pictures and look at the numbers and look at when he was great and when Steroids made player’s great and how they overlap.
I didn’t see Willie Mays in his final years as a Met. Heard about them, how he was barely a shadow of his former great self.
Well, now I know what that looks like x10. Watching a former baseball god not be able to run, stretch to dig a ball, move laterally more than one foot trying to field a ball and rolling into double play after double play, it’s plain sad.
Mo Vernon Rendon.
#theHaloWay
Ouch.
https://twitter.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1389454691470397442
Sounds like a season ending injury to me.
Yep. We know what happens when the Angels organization tells fans that a players injury is nothing to worry about.
Yep 2022.
https://twitter.com/FabianArdaya/status/1389455845386190852?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
I know, lol. We’ll hear tomorrow : “We were mistaken in our original assessment. It turns out there is a very small fracture. But it will require significant time to heal.”
It’s just dehydration
A microfracture that could only be detected through a dye injected MRI, originally misdiagnosed as the flu
I’m going to stay hopeful that it’s only a deep bruise. Rendon was able to walk off the field which is something.
That said, it does remind me a lot of the Yelich injury from 2019. I think he missed 6 months.
Guarantee this is going to be a broken patella (hoping for a reverse jinx-fingers crossed)
I’ll take the other side. Didn’t hit him square. More in the side. So I’ll go with bad bruise.
When Angels owner Arte Moreno was asked to comment about the decade long search for starting pitching the team has struggled with he is said to have commented:
“We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!”
We just can’t get out of our own damn way.
that’s a joke, right? You made that up, I hope. The sad part is that it’s believable.
What the hell does that even mean? “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.”
Arte is the biggest bull-shitter. We should be like Man-United fans and storm team headquarters (in this case Angels Stadium). Demand that Arte sell the team. We want a revolution !!!
Jack, i’m worried that you think this is a real quote…
Like I said, Arte is the master bull-shitter. Possible he has been playing the fans all along.
Mia, you’ve been an Angels fan long enough to know that one can never doubt the depths to which team leadership can sink.
I’m laughing because I’m thinking of a yogi berra Aflac commercial from that quote
Are Ned Flanders parents part of our 4 person scouting staff????
I’m still getting my 3M souls every year, what’s the problem that you’re asking about? 😫
It’s just insane how one year deals have not worked for our pitchers even once? There has to be a correlation. I’m just not sure why it never is the case. Cobb, Quintana and Iglesias have been good for most of their careers. Kinda shocking tbh
Cobb and Quintana are done. We all knew that when they were signed in the off-season. We could have gone after Kluber, but noooooo. We have to get shit pitchers and pray that they will magically be good.
Kluber sucked for the last 2 years. No way we were going to sign him. It would have been 3 straight years of sucking if he was dumb enough to join this team.
Okay, you say that, but was Cobb a better solution? Or Quintana? At least Kluber has a high upside if he did recover his form, being a Cy Young caliber pitcher. Neither Cobb nor Quintana were ever that good.
whereas Quintana’s last good year was 5 years ago and Cobb’s was 4 years ago.
We signed Matt Harvey when *his* last good year was 4 years previous, Tim Lincecum when his was 5 years previous.
Then there’s Bundy, who’d never had what you can call a good year before 2020.
Now I’m wondering how many years we’ve signed Perry for.
And had he’d been great we damm sure wouldn’t have got him either! 😆
They do for Oakland, just not us! 😆
Of the free agent pitchers available, Quintana was projected by Fangraphs for 1.8 fWAR. Pitchers projected for 1.8+ fWAR:
Bauer (we were never getting into that, it seems)
Smyly (got 1/$11M, not doing so hot)
Morton (East Coast)
Minor (2/$18M, slightly below serviceable)
Paxton (1/$8.5M, severely injured)
Kluber (the big miss that has been discussed)
Odorizzi (3/$23.5M, a mess at the moment)
DeSclafani (1/$5M, pitching really well, a miss, agreed in mid-December)
Ray (1/$8M, pitching okay, prob should’ve kicked the tires around on him)
Archer (1/$6.5M, not going so well)
I count Smyly Morton Minor Paxton Kluber Odorizzi DeSclafani Ray Archer as legitimate targets. I would rather have DeSclafani, Ray, or Kluber for sure over Quintana. Quintana has probably been hurt by negative variation, and the other pitchers on this list aren’t that much better than he is, if they are. Any normal front office without extra information probably hits on ~30% of these guys. It’s an unfortunate situation to be in, we haven’t been successful, and it sucks. Odds are that we should have more hits than we have had over the years. But it’s not out of the realm of possibility that we’ve just been extremely unlucky.
Lance Lynn? How did the CWS get him? No way we were getting Blake Snell either. BTW we had a shot at Dallas Keuchel ( $18M a year for 3 yrs…….$3M less a year than Justin Upton makes 😫 ).
Was specifically talking about FA signings. Keuchel was signed prior to 2020.
The White Sox traded for Lynn (for two arms) from the Rangers, who were basically selling anything of value.
tonight we’ve hit 1/6th of the season. So Trout will hit .410 and Ohtani will hit 54 HRs. Unfortunately Bundy will be 0-18. And Q will make 24 more starts
Eric:
When Trout singled in the 8th I thought of you. 1-3 w/a walk.
.410 now.
Nap Lajoie seems unrealistic; I’ve wanted to see a guy hit .400 my entire lifetime, and I’m an old dude like you. I remember Carew going .388. I remember George Brett entering September 1980 over .400. He kept it up to the 19th but then got cold and ended at .390.
Tony Gwynn’s .394 in 1994 was my last real thrill along these lines.
Now there’s the shift, more Ks, and the Angels count on MNT going yard WAY more than was ever asked of Carew, Gwynn and Brett. It doesn’t look likely at all. But man, would it be the coolest thing ever if he could do it. He’s got the speed to beat out infield hits. He’s adjusted his swing to pull more and seemingly hit more singles and doubles with two strikes.
Will a guy ever hit safely in 57 straight games? Man, I don’t see it. I think .400 would happen first. And I don’t think we’re going to get it. It’s not the same game.
While it is true that Trout has superhuman speed those other guys didn’t possess he also strikes out a lot more than Carew or Gwynn. While I would love it I just don’t see it happening.
If he could reach a personal best and hit somewhere in the .350’s that would be spectacular!
Erstad’s .355 in 2000 is the Angels season mark. Remember that year? 240 hits.
Yea, the Ks and pressure to hit HRs means that probably .356 is the mark we could legitimately hope for.
Is there anyone in the game today who could conceivably hit .400? Lemahieu?
Of course I remember Erstad’s 2000 campaign. He was incredible defensively also. He and GA were my favorite Angels at that time.
As for Trout potentially eclipsing Erstad’s mark, it is possible that could be the only thing holding our interest the last few weeks of the season …
Well…we still have things to look forward to.
Like…umm…hold on…gimme time don’t rush me…
…Like finding out how bad Rendon’s injury is?
Gonna be an extremely uphill climb. Keep Quintana and Sandoval in the pen, go to a 5-man rotation, and hope someone emerges at 3rd. Play Stassi more.
If I was him I would be having the time of my life right about now, funk soul brutha
In THIS division we can’t even keep up right now. Where is the passion and drive? I’m really confused, I was told this was our year. ( I suppose I might have said that).
It is not lack of passion. These guys do have passion, believe me.
This team has had alot of unexplainable bad luck going back to the death of Adenhart. Recently of course we went through the death of Skaggs (who was coming into his own as a starter) and have had a well known slew of elbow and shoulder injuries to our starting pitchers over the last few years….
But this is not about a lack of passion. There are organizational issues to be sure, but that does not mean there is a lack of effort or commitment by the players on the field.
I agree. If Rendon fractured his patella tonight that would be terribly unlucky to the point of a curse.
I sure as heck don’t see the passion. I see a 41 year old being allowed to play for himself. Trying to make himself look good by pulling a fast one on the bases in a situation that didn’t call for it. Swinging at a 2-0 pitch in the 9th when the pitcher had been wild and his run still didn’t mean anything. They sure as heck aren’t playing as a team. The fact that Albert is even playing has to be tremendously hard for the players that are contributing because they have to know it shows a commitment to selling the most jerseys and not to winning.
We’ve already addressed Albert’s folies and all agreed that he has been making stupid plays. No question. Perhaps we could even say he has been “selfish” though I am not sure that is the word I would use.
You seem to focus your wrath on Albert, which is your prerogative. He has certainly given people good reason to criticize him. But even if everything you say about Pujols is true, does that mean we should vilify the whole team?
I think not.
Mike Trout’s work habits have been noted and praised by many sports journalists and teammates. And I would hardly question the commitment and passion of a David Fletcher. If there were an Angel who lacked passion in recent memory I think it would have to be Josh Hamilton, and he was excoriated by a large number of Angel fans (including me !!) for said lack of passion.
It is just not that common in professional sports to find this lack of commitment and passion. It is so hard to make it to the Major Leagues and further, to STAY there that those who lack commitment and passion are not likely to last long.
NEEDZ MOAR ERSTAD