C-Rod made his first start at the MLB level. It went well for the rookie. Sure it was a depleted, bad, and very Rangers-y, but still, it was a nice confidence boost at the very least. Well, mostly. While his pitching was good, just 1ER while on the mound, the Angels offense was missing. Again. The team that was built around offense at the expense of pitching was having difficulty scoring vs the Rangers. Instead of slug fests, it was pitching duels now.
Recap
C-Rod Start
The Angels started things off with a quick inning… by the offense. Line outs are not bad but maybe take a few pitches? AT least the Rangers were even more eager to hack, as C-Rod had an even faster 1-2-3 first.
At least runners got on in the 2nd. Not that it amounted to anything. Unfortunately, the Rangers were able to do something with their men on base. It could have been worse, but it was 1-0 Rangers after 2.
The Angels went down quietly in the 3rd, again. At least C-Rod seemed to settle down and kept it a 1 run game.
With the first 2 on in the top of the 4th, things looked up. Back to back groundouts got 2 outs, but also a run scored. Productive outs. Tied game! C-Rod appreciated it and sent down the Rangers in order. Tied after 4.
Besides a Fletcher walk, nothing went right for the Angels in the 5th. Things did go right for the Rangers though, stealing a run by stealing home. 2-1 Rangers.
Angels did not answer back in the 6th. Fortunately, the Rangers did not either. Still 2-1 Rangers after 6.
The offense was being pathetic against the worst team in the AL with yet another no run inning. C-Rod pitching into the 7th, but after 2 hits was pulled. It was a good start, but did not feel like it due to the lack of offense.
Penalized Pen
Mayers had the unenviable situation of runners on the corners no outs. He allowed a sac fly to the first batter. A couple of outs and it was looking well until another hit drove in another run. 4-1 Rangers after 7.
The Angels offense continued to be offensive, not even getting on base. Again. For the 3rd straight inning. Q was in now, and the white flag was waived. It did not matter at this point, game was over. The Rangers wanted this over so did not score, giving Maddon a false sense of security. Still 4-1 Rangers after 8.
9th inning time down 3 runs. Gosselin flied out. Stassi struck out. Marsh flied out. Angels lose to the Rangers.
Upcoming
More games vs the Rangers the next 3 days. What should be easy games will be hard. That is how it has been this year. Do not expect scoring. Please drink responsibly.
Such a pathetic showing by the offense. Right now, there doesn’t seem to be a single hitter in that lineup that is interested in working the count. Ohtani is slumping terribly and that is partly because he has zero protection, teams don’t have to give him much ot hit, especially since he’s not laying off the junk. I’m still frustrated with the Stassi blunder on the double steal. Everyone in the stadium, except for Stassi obviously, could see what was coming before CRod even tossed the pitch.
Beginning to feel like the league has figured out Ohtani. He is cold as ice offensively. Hopefully he pitches well Wed.
Don’t think the league has “figured out Ohtani” as much as it’s natural to see a fall off from incredible production as he has been in June/July… especially with zero protection. Having Trout and/or Walsh hitting behind him early has helped.
Catcher Quero might be another Perry find…..
https://www.milb.com/player/edgar-quero-700337
https://twitter.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1422389994937888791?s=20
How long is this skippers contract?
expires after 2022. ( unless Arte gives him the proverbial clandestine contract extension)
Not sure he’ll be back….rumors are he and several of our coaches are in line to be the next Colonel Sanders in the KFC ad campaign in 2023.
Now that I’m back in town I may go to a game during the next home stand. But for those keeping score, I am 2-0 for SF Giants home games. Now my brother in law wants to buy my kid and I season tickets for good luck. He figures it has to be the energy my kid brings to the game.
farm report…
Top of the 9th Salt Lake City has just taken an 11-10 lead as Gavin Cecchini drove in the tie-breaking run with his 3rd hit of the game. He’s at .390 now. He was hitting .228 for Rocket City, got called up and now this. Slegers started, gave up 5 runs in 4 innings, 8 hits, 3 walks.
Beginning to think that SL is causing our prospects to develop bad habits…
They held on for the 11-10 win. 6 for 13 with risp. Thaiss made it to the park on time and had 2 doubles and a homerun.
Rengifo, Thaiss, Wong & Bemboom all in the starting lineup tonight ,. All premium AAAA players
Does Salt Lake have a humidor? If not, maybe Arte could buy…….oh…never mind.
If they don’t have one, set up a gofundme for that too.
Or unreliable stats…..
Embrace the Tank. We have Sgt. Joe Maddon as the tank commando.. For the remainder of the year, it will be a great audition for the farm system to perform. This is exactly what’s Perry’s recent moves equate to. Better to watch the young talent regardless of the results.
Yup… Perry wasn’t in tear-down mode but he clearly had a plan with the eye on 2022. Had Cobb been healthy he’d probably have moved him at the trade deadline too, but unfortunately no contender will give up much for a short-term rental who may not pitch much in August anyway…
Surprised Raisel Iglesias didn’t move but it’s possible they think he’ll agree to an extension or be able to be re-signed on a multi-year deal. Same with Jose Iglesias. Or maybe the returns offered for those guys were so underwhelming it wasn’t worth the bother.
I was in the 9th row behind the plate tonight in Arlington. Can someone tell Arte to ship their bats? It’s offensive to call their offense an offense. C-Rod pitched a gem. It’s a total shame for him to lose that. His two seemer is nasty (lots of run and sink) and will take him a long way mixed with his slider and curve.
I was in 111, just on the third base side of the batter’s box. CRod looked quite nice, but it was against a lineup that performed better than ours but is still quite bad. But, he can’t control who he pitches against, so overall i think his outing was a positive.
In similar news, the Children’s Crusade didn’t do well, even though it was totally built on Crusaders. Man, how much of the “heart of the order” is left playing on this team? Ohtani? When will this team get it’s facilities fumigated? They almost certainly have an infestation of the injury bug.
Ohtani pitching on Wednesday ($1 hot dog night)… really want to go to that one but not sure about my kids theater practice that day. May have to ::shiver:: pay to see Bundy pitch Thursday since that’s a 1 o’clock game.
A paternity test would be more fun than watching Bundy
Some people like torture.
Can confirm
Maybe Bundy will score four touchdowns in one game?
Thought about going to the game since I live 10 minutes away from the ballpark, but decided to stay home and play X Box. I think I made the right decision
There is a good chance I’ll wind up in the Dallas area since they have stuff like jobs that actually cover the cost of living there and lots of them. One of my dreads though is needing to go to Globe Life to see the Angels. Worse still…. America’s Team. Nothin makes you realize you are truly STUCK IN TEXAS than not wanting to go to Globe Life or Minute Made…. nearest option’s KC…. 9 hours away.
if you do move to Dallas, you’ll appreciate Globle Life in the air in the summer. Food choice is the best around. I sat in a section called the SpeakEasy area. $75 on Stubhub a seat. 9th row right behind the plate. Includes all the food and drink. Craft beers, they also have a complimentary mixed drink of the game, and awesome food choices. Ballpark food plus things like roast beef, sushi, lasagna, etc. The stadium is incredible. I wouldn’t like indoor in California, but the heat can be unbearable here for two months. There’s also plenty of cheap seats too, but I was hoping Ohtani was going to pitch and wanted to watch it behind the dish. Glad I got to see C-Rod. Was really impressed in person.
Oh I’m sure I’ll enjoy it where ever I end up. I’ll especially enjoy living anywhere where I can go to a game and not have to sell my possessions to make rent at the end of the month. While the Rangers suck I’m sure their fans’ lather is at a minimum too. For now I’ll be happy to just make a living where ever I end up as long as it’s not so far north my sad thin California blood freezes.
I’m a teacher and live in a decent house in Grand Prarie and live pretty comfortably. I haven’t been to the new park, but the old one was pretty good
At least the new stadium is indoors… the old park was absolutely BRUTAL to go to games (day and night).
Tonight we equaled the Yanks in hits 3 and runs 1…… something to be proud of.
One less awesome cat though.
Are team is Built for Offense.
How many runs did we score?
Took ya long enough 😂
Nice
You Welcome!
*Arte team
I see people already getting mad at Perry as if this is his fault. Yea some of his contracts haven’t worked out but some have, but the thing is you saying that is EXACTLY what Arte wants you to think.
No one is going to come GM for Arte that is already proven because everyone knows he’s a cheapskate except when it comes to spending the majority of the GM’s payroll on his fantasy baseball/marketing desires.
Perry had to wait out the entire bullpen market until finally we signed Watson and Cishek when it was like literally the day or two before the season started and they hadn’t signed a contract yet. With the resources Arte has, Perry should have been able to go and and have his pick of all the 2nd and 3rd tier relievers, instead Arte can’t up the payroll enough to truly compete when factoring in how much he’s messed it up.
We had an All Star this year that had a tremendous end to last year and he was sitting on the bench on Opening Night because again marketing. Anyone with any f’ing baseball knowledge knew that Walsh is a better hitter against RHP at this stage of their careers but we had to watch Pujols flail away.
Even if Perry by himself was the best GM he wouldn’t win anything, winning baseball requires a HUGE support team, one that Arte is not interested in supporting, the few support staff he does have are so underpaid Shohei finds reasons to give them money.
Advanced scouts, data analysts, minor league scouts. These are all areas it has been mentioned Arte is well behind the curve so to speak. We didn’t need any of that when Scioscia was manager because it was literally all stuck on ipads he didn’t even know they had, but now I doubt the Angels are pulling anywhere near the analysis of say the Dodgers or Astros and Perry is pretty much out there on an island compared to his GM brethren.
Easy way to see how this makes a difference, did you guys see the Angels positing of Marte. He was literally TRYING to hit the ball the other way because we had no one over that and it was clear he could do it all day long. Then he’s one of the best base stealers in baseball right now so you basically just GAVE him doubles. No one in the Angels dugout can f’ing observe what’s happening and make a change?
As long as Arte the cheapskate is owner of this team they are at a nearly deadly handicap. Trout, Ohtani and Rendon playing all at peak level MIGHT squeak them into a WC one year, but color me doubtful of them being able to pull that off.
Perry could have struck early for bullpen help. As there was an abundance of FA relief arms, Perry waited to see what fell. A viable strategy. There were some excellent $1.5M-3.0M arms that Perry whiffed on (see Seattle, SF, Chi and SD). He only signed Watson and Cishek after he cut some arms on the final weekend. If Perry had signed the talented arms vs soft toasters, we’d be in much better shape and right in the thick of it. I am not defending Arte but Perry had his chances. He needs to take the heat.
By my count he spent 3.1 million on 3 relievers in total in the off season. I’m sure some relievers have panned out that wound up getting similar contracts to what Claudio Watson and Cishek got but I don’t think there is anyway you can expect a GM to put together a bullpen on 3.1 million. Now maybe he should have prioritized the bullpen more than the rotation because he did spend a decent amount on Quintana but I think we were all in agreement the rotation was worse than the bullpen. It sure looks like Perry put together the bullpen with payroll right up against the upper limit of what Arte had ok’d.
Seriously, I’m with you. Understand there is some limits and framework that Perry has been ordered to stay within. and that amount is unknown and that is frustrating. I guess my point is that with the limits that Perry had, choosing different arms would have reshaped the season.
Perry became GM during covid. It’s not like he was out scouting these players or doing interviews daily. He was restricted on what he was allowed to do. Given the little time he had to prepare for this season, he definitely gets a pass this year.
Thank balls. It’s about time someone said all of this.
BTW. Most of us are blaming Stassi for the steal of home … Watch Iglesias do a ballet twirl. Had he taken an aggressive step toward the plate directly catch and fire … we get Butt Hold at home.
well….now I’m worried we’ll duplicate that 18-40 finish from 2019.
Very possible the way this team is performing right now
I’d take that outcome at this point… because I don’t think they’ll get that many wins going forward.
I want to lose every game. If you’re going to lose, do it spectacularly
But losing is a disease.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN-aCYVVtyo
“Gently rocking, gently rocking…” towards the bottom of AL standings. As contagious as polio.
Amen. Let’s play a motley collection of guys with multiple years of team control and see what happens, then go get that top 10 draft pick. Right now we are in that 13 range but I think we can beat teams like the the Cubs, Nationals, Tigers and Braves to the good end of the draft.
Does it matter at this point? Let the youngsters get some experience and start planning for next year. After 6 years this team has finally stocked some pitching in the minors.
I’d say we’ve earned it. One more good draft plus, given how unhappy we all seemed with a .500 team, why not just let Trout, Ohtani, Rendon, Upton and Walsh rest? In past years so many have screamed about not letting “other options” play. Let’s do it I say. We can see what true horror looks like, live like a Pirates fan for a couple months, then wake up in March with a pile of young pitchers, whoever “cheap Arte” signs this winter, plus our washed up stars back. See if we can actually enjoy ourselves next season.
I’m f***ing sick of acting like we root for the worst org in baseball. I want to ACTUALLY BE the worst for a few weeks. Let’s go balls to the wall, offer Iglesias an extension, but tell him the added bonus is he doesn’t even need to pitch anymore this year. Burn baby burn!
Watching during the 80’s and the Angels offense reminds me a lot of this team right here. I am in no way impressed by what I am seeing here and I don’t see it improving much. Adell is not going to be the answer.
Adull and Mush
Lets hope it’s not needed……..but if they both suck, great nickname
Just pouring on the pessimism 😎
I waved that at the beginning of May, unfortunately.