Angels 11 Tigers 3
The big news on Friday came long before the first pitch was thrown by Alex Cobb. Shohei Ohtani was going to be participating in the 2021 Home Run Derby.
Unbelievably hype and about freaking time if you ask me, but this news would overshadow a message that the Halos put out later this evening: the team would be hosting its own derby tonight.
The bottom of the 5th really kicked off with a raucous one-out bang from the performing Luis Rengifo.
Not to be outdone, Shohei Ohtani would follow up his verbal announcement with a physical one with Justin Upton on first. “Laser beam” does not even begin to describe his 20th long ball.
In addition to being the first Japanese-born player to make it to the Derby as well as the first pitcher to participate, tonight marked the first time a player ever had 70+ strikeouts as a pitcher and 20 home runs in the same season. This is not exactly surprising, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun to keep track of.
A walk from Taylor Ward (who also went 3-4 with 3 RBIs on the night right after last night’s heroic Grand Slam) preceded yet another legendary Jared Walsh bat flip.
And while this didn’t happen in the 5th inning, I would be gravely remiss to not include what happened when Ohtani batted later in the evening.
Despite the laugher this would turn into, it was yet another duel of the starters for the first 4 innings. Alex Cobb proved that he could settle down and find his groove in spite of an incredibly shaky start, twirling 5.2 on 111 pitches with a single unearned run.
Counterpart Jose Ureña looked mostly solid until his 5th inning batting practice session. A Kean Wong slice and Taylor Ward drive sent into the left field corner accounted for 2 RBIs, but were all they team could put together until the fated fifth.
Not to be left out of the story would be a man who did not hit a home run and did not drive in a run until the game was already safely put away. J-Up continued to show us why he is batting where he is as he got on base 4 of the 5 times he came to the plate tonight. A leadoff excuse-me automatic double wouldn’t lead to much, but Upton scored 3 times, being one of the most key contributors to the Angels’ 11th June win.
Going into tonight, Justin Upton had the third highest wRC+ (167) of all leadoff men in baseball with at least 90 plate appearances with his .309/.406/.568/.974 slash, following only Jesse Winker and Ronald Acuña Jr. In fact, after his performance tonight, it seems very likely that he will pass Acuña. Imagine being told prior to the start of the season that the 33-and-a-half year-old would be in any way comparable to the Braves stud.
Tomorrow, Angels ace(?) southpaw Patrick Sandoval starts against Wily Peralta who will be making his first start in a good minute. It’s not the A’s though, so are we allowed to be optimistic in the wake of an 8th consecutive win against non-California teams?
Rendon back in the lineup tonight. Get hot, Tony!
He’s got to catch up to UPton
We keep beating up on tomato cans and we stay afloat. Tomato Cans was a old school boxing lingo term for bad training level fighters used for sparring only ( like the late Burgess Meredith talking to Rocky Balboa ). Of course many CTPG’s members see it as a huge ray of false hope……I’m not one of them! I know who’s really good when I see it, and so does Billy Beane. 💪 👈
I’ll post this again here since it applies:
2002 – once again I think you are off the mark. I went back to the 2002 Angels regular season (99 wins) and checked the W/L record by team.
Guess how many winning teams the Angels had a winning record against in the 2002 regular season? ZERO.
The 2002 Angels lost season series to (1) the RedSox (2) the Twins, (3) the Yanks, (4) Oakland, (5) the Mariners and (6) the Cardinals.
They split the season series with the Dodgers and White Sox.
But they feasted on sub-.500 teams like Baltimore, Detroit, KC, Tampa Bay, Texas and Toronto. 100% of the teams the 2002 Angels had a winning record against were sub-.500.
Again ZERO is the number of season series the Angels won against winning teams.
So – what does that tell us. You can win nearly 100 games by taking care of business against losing clubs and they try to stay as close as possible against winning clubs.
That is reason for some optimism this season.
To piggyback this a bit the Angels are 16-8 in the last 24. 14-3 against non Oakland teams.
Billy Beane Sucks!
Can’t win a World Series.
Cuz his shit don’t work in playoffs.
What shit is that BTW?
They’re a small market team that can’t afford big money FA signings in the off season and really can’t afford doing a July trading deal either without hurting their ability to compete in the future most of the time. The Florida Marlins dismantled both of their WS Championship teams right after winning it all. What do you expect them to do, win it 3 yrs in a row?
They can afford whoever they want. It’s just that the owner is a cheap asshole.
Another businessman and not a fan.
Seriously 2002? That was a paraphrase of a quote from Billy Beane that he gave Michael Lewis when he wrote this book called “Money Ball” you might want to actually read books about sports history and the people that shaped it . Then you might actually be able to make a relevant point here.
Neither has the TB D-Rays
What has Dayton Moore done since the 2014 and 2015 seasons in KC?
They suck right now and have two 100 loss seasons since those two yrs.
The Royals are the only true small market team to win it all since the 1991 Minnesota Twins. Andrew Friedman didn’t win it all until he got to the Dodgers. Actually the best Oakland A’s teams under Billy Beane were the 2000 and 2001 teams when he had Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada plus their Big 3 starters ( Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder ), but the Yankees had a better bullpen, the best ever in Mariano Rivera. The A’s are a cash poor team who needs a better stadium than the Alameda Coliseum which is the last ridiculous still surviving 1970’s style multipurpose venue and a ownership group with deeper pockets. Can’t see why teams don’t do what the Dodgers did and put together a group of big investors ( actually I can see why because the current majority owner would lose power if that were the case…..RIGHT ARTE!! ).
TB Ray’s have won a WS since 2008 when they became a MLB team and were last in a WS last year.
Oakland As haven’t won a WS since 1989 and the last time they were on one was 1990.
The AZ D-Backs won it all in the least amount of time ( 2001 WS champions in only their 4th year of existence and they haven’t been anywhere near as good since. ) eclipsing the 1969 Mets……Yer Poynte?
Does Billy Beane suck because he stayed in Oakland when he could’ve went to Boston just like Andrew Friedman going to the Dodgers. BTW they were already winning before he got there. Here’s a fact you and other BB hater’s might not know is that those A’s teams with Canseco and McGwire had MLB’s highest team payroll at the time. How many titles would BB have if just he took the Red Sox offer and ran? Maybe he just enjoys the challenge of trying to keep a low budget team competitive which is more than I can say about our owner with his 10th highest revenue earning and 7th highest team payroll which is allocated to mostly just 4 players. I have no doubt if he just dropped ties with Oakland and went elsewhere with a deeper pockets owner and a better shiny new stadium you’d think differently about him.
You should go and find your happy place
Did Ralph Kramdem, Frank Barone, Arthur Spooner, or Archie Bunker have a happy place?
Ha! 😆
Faria cut loose and signed with the D-Backs. That’s too bad, I liked Jeff’s interview with him back in ST. Seems like a real good guy. Was hoping to see him up but walks and homers plagued him. Not unlike…the big club.
Final take: another Perry bullpen arm acquisition bit the dust.
10th rd pick…..of TB in 2011 ( see a pattern here, LOL!!! )
27 yrs old, yep no Billy Eppler one yr magic this time.
Two Angels cut this year signed with the D Backs. Noe just got called up
https://twitter.com/Collin_McHugh/status/1406328161361563649?s=20
I saw that. But, like everyone else he offers no alternative solutions.
Did MLB outlaw rosin , sweat and sunscreen too or just the goop?
Fascinating shit. Strong and smart leadership would help…….. But, no.
All of it. You can’t expect the umpires to figure out what is which can we.
From the first part of that, it seems like the ball was different when he came up (2006) and when he needed to use sunscreen/rosin in a return (2013). Did they change the ball then? Did they remove an aspect pitchers needed to effectively pitch?
Was last night announced attendance figure of 22,734 a wake up call for Arte?
Considering:
You would think with things opening up that the stadium would be packed. Tonight should be another tell tale event with Saturday Night fireworks. In just now looking at Stub Hub , theres a lot of really good reasonably priced tickets available throughout the stadium. Maybe Angel fans have finally had enough and even just attaining mediocrity isn’t acceptable anymore.
Some people had already made plans.
Disney can’t be that full yet, and the nighttime flow from that park was a good percentage of his customers.
Maybe people are just not ready to go out into the wild yet. Do you have a stub from last night’s game?
A very respectable win, very nice game all-around!
I LOVED the offense exploding, but we are still the same deeply flawed team on the pitching side and the inevitable losing streak and losing is still on the way. It troubles me deeply that Moreno, and now Minisian, have allowed this to happen.
Well the next 3 teams we play are above .500, so we will see.
Well watching all the fans celebrating coming out of Staple’s Center last night after the miraculous Clippers comeback victory made me very envious. Must be nice to finally have a owner who cares about winning ( I think we inherited one of Donald Sterling’s disciples! ). Definitely sucks doesn’t it? 😢 😖 💩 👎
Plus I’m a Lakers fan and dislike Leonard and the Clippers. I wish them bad luck moving forward.
Totally agree. I don’t like this Clipper team at all. PG and KL are d-heads. Bad move getting PG while giving up Alexander, Galanari and a boat load of picks. Rivaled the Lakers overpay for AD.
Sterling never would take his crap organization and move to Anaheim or another venue.
Why exactly do you say that KL is a “d-head?” Just curious.
While he has extreme basketball skills, the respect for the game and fellow teammates is subpar.
Don’t know where you are getting that he “doesn’t respect the game.” As for the other stuff; I know alot of his teammates in Toronto loved him, and are still friends with him.
It is clear that Kawaii is not the best leader there is (at least he is not vocal etc) but that does not make him a “d-head.” He seems like a pretty chill dude to me.
He’s making it up. Same as about 90% of the stuff that gets typed out on this board that has to do with the thoughts, mental ability, grit, emotion, motivations, effort levels, sports IQ, intentions, chemistry, magic dragons, respectfulness, “baseballness”, friendliness and what not of all the near complete strangers people here seem to think they know jack shit about.
For all we know KL is a saint, the player who wants to win most in all the world of sports is actually Brian Hoyer and David Fletcher is a murdering psychopath. We mostly make shit up off blurb interviews, SM posts, and photos.
In the case of KL, him having almost none of those things can be disturbing to people who need to have an opinion. Personally I love the fact that guys like Leonard, Trout, Walsh, Fletcher, Rendon etc know how to keep their own mind and just play well.
It’s the NBA.
Can’t really use the same process for MLB or NFL or you’ll never win.
Unless you get a lottery pick most of the time it’s meaningless. Nikola Jokic just won the NBA MVP ( the first second rd pick ever to win it ).
Congratulations after 50 years, the Clips finally made it to their first Western Conference finals. I think They were way more interesting when they were the Buffalo Braves
Somewhere right now, Michael Olowokandi and Benoit Benjamin are smiling.
Congrats Clips, you mouth breathing perpetual losing embarrassment of American professional sports.
https://images.app.goo.gl/JyqRW2EWnQa2WrYFA
I wonder if she married him for his money?
I don’t think they were ever married.
They weren’t . Just another side squeeze for the Donald . Shelly Sterling his wife of many years us another piece of work . She would wait for these relationships to foment and then sue the bimbo as part of the Sterling marital trust to return the gifts and assets that Donald had showered the William with . It was a very effective strategy that paid off time and time again .
Hey, I really think they DO deserve props. Not for their ignominious history but for their present achievement.
They just beat the best team in the Western Conference (Utah Jazz) who are very well coached and can shoot the lights out, and did so after having fallen behind 0-2 in the series.
In addition they won the last two games including yesterday’s clincher without Kawaii who many consider the best all-around player in the game (for me it is a toss up between him and LeBron).
This is a VERY deep and good team folks. They also have Jerry West on their side which does not hurt.
Watch out for the Clippers. Even WITHOUT Kawaii they could win it all….
My money is on them Clipper’ing in the conference final……..always bet the streak to continue.
Even Jerry West, one of greatest, check that, greatest GM ever, in any major league sport, can’t stop the eventual Clpper’ing from happening.
If they do lose, which is possible, I don’t think it will be from “Clippering.” Phoenix is also a very good team. Similar to the Clippers they are an underrated sqaud and play surprisingly good defense. Both these teams play great defense in fact.
I am expecting a 7 game series, or 6 at shortest. If the Suns move on it will be because they earned it and not the Clippers giving it to them. But I’ve got my money on the Clippers (even though I am a huge Chris Paul fan). 😉
The definition of “Clipper’ing” covers all possible losing scenarios. Including losing to a better team.
$1 on The Suns winning the series.
This H & S protocol issue with CP3 is a big deal. This maybe the break the Clippers needed to sneak into the finals.
The Suns have been playing lights out and have handled the Clippers well all year but not having CP3 for a portion of this series could be a difference maker.
Enough of this protocol, the State is open. Let freedom ring and may god bless the Suns.
Agree that the presence/absence of CP3 is huge. In short, his availability or lack thereof will probably make the difference. As you say, he is still mired in the NBA Health and Safety Protocol and would have to log a negative test today and then another tomorrow in order to be eligible to play in Game 1. In short, it is very likely he won’t play tomorrow.
He might miss one game, and he might miss two games, but it appears he will be back in the series. I am a big Paul fan and know how much he brings to the table, but people don’t realize how deep and good this Clippers team is.
I mentioned Jerry West earlier, and you can be certain that West had alot to do with the construction of the current roster, even though he is not the GM by title. With all of the injuries happening now in the NBA depth becomes that much more important.
You shitty fLaker fans are to us Clipper fans what Dodger fans are to Angels fans.
Petty and hateful for no reason. You can’t let us enjoy our one small achievement without getting a whole complex about it smh
It’s striking how similar the fanbases are
Agree. There are alot of similarites between Dodgers and Lakers fans, in fact, quite frequently they are the same people !
I personally think that in general Dodgers fans are worse (more hateful), but overall you make a good point.
That’s just the way it is. – Bruce Hornsby
“It’s striking how similar the fanbases are”
They are mostly the same people.
Yep. I made that point above.
Missed that…..And you are correct, of the Two, Doyer fan are worse.
I think the Golden State Warriors is closer to the Angels than the Clippers.
Even though they stated in Philly they were San Francisco then Golden State Warriors. Like our Angels that went from LA to California both 1st were a California city before claiming the whole State. Both teams sucked and both teams found the promise land.
And like the Angels after 2002 the Warriors have started to fade
The Warriors won a Championship in the mid 70’s with Rick Barry.
They also won 3 titles in their glory run compared to our one title. If we’d had a better manager in 2004, 2005 or 2009 and 2012 we could have been the Warriors of MLB. We should have at least 3 WS trophies with all that talent we had and all the opportunities…
with all that talent we had and all the opportunities…
Sounds a lot like the day after we lose and are talking about the lobsters
Yeah, it is a lot like LOBsters.
Wow I’ve never been compared to a Dodger fan before . I’m in shock. Is there a treatment ?
Just Shock Treatment!
2002 – once again I think you are off the mark. I went back to the 2002 Angels regular season (99 wins) and checked the W/L record by team.
Guess how many winning teams the Angels had a winning record against in the 2002 regular season? ZERO.
The 2002 Angels lost season series to (1) the RedSox (2) the Twins, (3) the Yanks, (4) Oakland, (5) the Mariners and (6) the Cardinals.
They split the season series with the Dodgers and White Sox.
But they feasted on sub-.500 teams like Baltimore, Detroit, KC, Tampa Bay, Texas and Toronto. 100% of the teams the 2002 Angels had a winning record against were sub-.500.
Again ZERO is the number of season series the Angels won against winning teams.
So – what does that tell us. You can win nearly 100 games by taking care of business against losing clubs and they try to stay as close as possible against winning clubs.
That is reason for some optimism this season.
Actually, Ballmer reminds me of Arte. Super rich and very excited new owner of the B grade team in LA spends like a sailor from day one and can’t quite put a winner together….
Big difference: Balmer knows how to surround himself with quality people and then get the hell out of the way!!
Yeah. We can tell because of all those trips to the NBA Finals. Ballmer, like many NBA owners, is actually super hands on and involved with the players and roster building. His teams just tend to fizzle…. but maybe not so this year.
I think you are jumping the gun a little. Arte has been in the game ALOT longer than Balmer. It is more than a little unfair to suggest that his level of fizzling out in the playoffs is comparable to Arte’s ; it isn’t. Let’s see how far they go this year.
I was a Clipper fan back when they had Sam Cassell and Elton Brand and through the years with Chris Paul, Griffin and DeAndre Jordan so know a llittle about this franchise…. A huge difference between the Sterling years and the Balmer teams is that the behind the scenes stuff was a total mess back then, but now there is competent leadership.
What you say about Balmer is true as regards the tertiary stuff, the branding, uniforms, mascots, new arena plans, marketing etc.Balmer does not interfere in the player personnel stuff the way that Arte does, not even close. Is he involved? Sure. But there is a big difference between being in the room when the discussions are had and telling the General Manager and President of Basketball Operations what is going to happen.
I can say with a pretty high level of certainty that Balmer is not telling Lawrence Frank, Michael Winger and Jerry West who to sign or trade. So, no, Balmer is not like Arte. He does want to win. Passionately. That is true, but that is praiseworty, not something to criticize or condemn. Having an owner that truly wants to win is a blessing. The key is that said owner understands where his knowledge is limited and is able to delegate key roster decisions and management to his GM and operations staff. We all know that ARTE does not do that. Balmer does.
Yes you can’t he even tell he’s there
Ha ha. Like I said, he’s passionate about wanting to win.
That does not mean he dictates roster moves however.
BTW Noe Ramirez is on the roster for the Diamondbacks, selected from Reno. Good luck-
This was a good win and a fun game to watch.
As Sho becomes more dominant, I start to fantasize about Trout in this lineup. Maybe they will start a little friendly competition bringing out the best in both of them.
Which one starts to go bald?
Trout already has. Which is why he sports the mohawk with his receding hair line
That is not a receding hairline, it is just his expanding neck.
So his head is getting fatter?
He is evolving to be more streamlined – increase his baserunning.
It’s also why whenever you see him in the dugout during games, he has his cap off. Wearing a cap for hours and hours every day promotes baldness.
Wearing a hat won’t cause you to go bald, no reputable scientific research suggests that plays a role in hair loss. If it was true, lots of baseball, hockey, football player would all be bald or balding. For example, Terry Bradshaw, QB for the Steelers. His baldness is not because wore a football helmet for decades, he’s the son of one of our founding fathers Benjamin Franklin. It’s mostly genetic.
Lana – was that sarcasm?
If not – do you have a source for the ‘hat promotes baldness’ comment?
I have no source. I stand corrected. I thought I’d read that. It seems to me many ball players have receding hairlines and since Trout’s started receding, I noticed he stopped wearing his cap in the dugout.
That was a pretty dammed amazing display of Bashtastic Baseball. Cobb looked really good as the game went on. Nice way to get back to .500. Now if we could just beat an actual winning team once in a while.
Alex be like, I See You!
Good game
Imagine the sleepless nights Jedi has knowing Ohtani picked the Angels. It’s got to hurt, big time.
Yeah something like this
It’s still just as hilarious as it was the first time.
Somebody described Shohei as the “Japanese Baseball Jesus.”
Very enjoyable two in a row.
One more sleep and Shufflebot will magically come out of hiding….
That felt good
I’m gonna amuse myself by seeing what mlb.com has to say about Ohtani
Chicks dig the long ball.
Other than the leak in the pen and making a mess, the hitting and corn on the Cobb pitching was Tony the Tiger GRRRRRRRReat!
I thought “hmmm…when was the last time we were even *at* .500 after 70 games?” Well it wasn’t as long ago as I thought and it brought back some bad memories. Just two years ago, when we had Brad Ausmus as a manager (! wow that a long time ago but it really wasn’t) we were 54-49 and now I remember us thinking we had a good chance. And then we finished 18-41 the rest of the way. Ouch! But this year we’re going to do it! We’re going to be winners of some kind.
Amen Brother.