Angels 8 Athletics 7
Original Opening Paragraph:
Gods vs. Men. Pick your mythos. A tale told many times in many ways. In this case, it was told as a baseball game between the Angels (gods) and A’s (men). Of course the Angels were led by their head god Shohei Ohtani who threw his magic at the lowly A’s for 6 innings. He didn’t throw lightning bolts or wield a sword, but his tool of domination was a 5oz round white ball with 108 stitches in red that he hurled at the mere mortals who were powerless against it as it danced around their wood clubs.
I enjoyed the direction I was going there, but then the 4th inning happened. So, maybe it’s my fault for trying to predict Ohtani’s dominate performance over the stinky green A’s. Alas…
The first few innings of this game were pretty uneventful. Ohtani managed an infield hit on a pitch nowhere near the strike zone and Brandon Drury stayed hot with a double in the 2nd.
Example of Ohtani’s early dominance:
Shohei Ohtani (of course) drove in the first run of the game with this RBI double in the 3rd and his second hit of the game:
Brandon Drury, also no mere mortal as of late, stayed smoking hot and smashed this 3 run homer in the 3rd to put the Angels up 5-0.
The first 5 A’s that came to the plate in the 4th all scored and Ohtani gave up his first (and second) home runs of the year and first home run in 79 IP. Perhaps he is a mere mortal after all. The 4th inning was pain. Lots of pain.
Miraculously, Ohtani went from a 36 pitch 4th inning to a 7 pitch 5th inning – quite a HUGE swing that few pitchers could manage. Ohtani went back out for, and finished the 6th.
The Angels took advantage, taking the lead again in the 5th with a WalkRBI and left the 5th frame with a 7-5 lead.
Ohtani on his way to a cycle? (Note – just missed by about 5-10 feet in the 8th!!)
The Angels almost blew the 8-5 lead they had going in to the 8th. Rendon saved the inning with this play:
Ohtani’s JUST MISSED cycle
Angels win, that’s a wrap!
Well, I said they need to go no worse than 5-2 over this seven game stretch, and they barely eked it out. Now the fun starts, but if Ward can heat up a bit, and the bullpen can sort itself out, this can be a really good team.
And very easily could have been 7-0
I think aside from the obvious of figuring out what to do with Suarez and Anderson, it would be really wise to DFA Lamb and carry Soto or Velazquez instead. Our late inning defense needs to improve.
This will be an ongoing problem even when Walsh comes back ( as the lamb finally gets sacrificed) and will force the Angels hand to either option Rengifo or a bullpen pitcher ( which we obviously shouldn’t do considering Perry’s bullpen vacation policy) or replace Phillips with Squid if Squid can play the outfield .. let’s hope the kid doesn’t run out of gas
Heard PTP’s radio commercial for Rotollo Chevrolet earlier.
Does evil Arte force his employees to do these or does Cheap Arte leave PTP no choice to make ends meet?
Only 715 ticket commercials
Urshela solid ✅
Renfroe great ✅
Drury hot ✅
Moore reliable ✅
Estevez good ✅
Now Perry is looking like a genius at the moment. Hopefully his biggest acquisition from last year(Anderson) will be able to join this list soon!!
Last years Fighting Camel underclassman now our Starting Shortstop ✅
what is wrong with the Mariners? I thought last season was just the start of good things for them but they don’t seem to be good at all.
Someone in the 0.000000001% ctpg blows a ton of hot air
You sound disappointed Eric… This is cause to rejoice !!
Rejoice! Rejoice! We have no choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYl6nVr3aSI
Dunno. It’s April. They have the pitching to make playing them miserable if they get it together.
No. They are DOOMED to eternal hell. Their punishment? How about dancing sith and troopers gifs forever and ever!!!
Aww 2002 gif
For anyone interested – here is a strength of schedule analysis. It includes the whole season and the season thus far.
It says what we pretty much know. Scheduling has been easy thus far and will be getting harder. Interesting though to see it fully broken out.
http://powerrankingsguru.com/mlb/strength-of-schedule.php
“Gitch inning?” 🤣
Well hold on there chief. We, uh, “fixed the glitch”
Would love to see Gitch in a meeting with “the Bobs”
It went pretty well.
So you told them you like Mike Bolton?
It was a one run win. This time it counts! Plus we had classical novella hero Rendon. And Loup. Plus Estevez. Am I still supposed to hate him? Mike Moore? Do I still hate him, or was that just the first three games of the season where my hair was supposed to be on fire over him? Nevin. Still a manager. Let’s all sit at home and explain how out of his depth he is…. from our Staples desk chairs. Wise. Still a thing. Arte, still exists. Stupid Perry. Donkey teeth.
Here it comes. The first meaningless challenge of the year. Can the Angels finish April over .500? It’s a must win month. The Brewers say nay. I say they can suck it. The stRangers are lookin around, seeing the waves, taking their eyes off Jesus. I don’t think I’ve watched any Astros games this year but I will emphatically declare they are due for a rash of injuries and if you dispute my claim we will spend 27 comments arguing about it.
Rock on Angels. Rock on over London. Rock on Chicago.
Dear Phillip. Some advice before you hit the road, I packed you a bologna sandwich and an apple.
Estevez is the closer, might not be perfect, best option we have for now.
Check your love for Spicy Cheese Wiz, proceed with caution. Might not be who you hope he is.
Remember the Tucker tucked away “for special use only”. Try him for 2 innings with a lead in the 7th and 8th. Less Loupoop.
Don’t Suarez us to death, don’t need to get rid of him, maybe you just need to hide him for a while and see if he can figure it out.
Don’t send Wise out to the mound talk to pitchers, he’s a fuc% ing cooler, can’t have anything worth saying. All contact with pitchers is done in dugout.
And finally RenGAFo….he’s killing us more than helping. He does Bundy Chunks when it matters most. For now, just forget the blip from last year, it might not be real. Don’t f’en cling to a mistake just because you spent a long time thinking about it.
Safe travels
WE WANTZ MOORE PLEEZ!
Love those City Connects.
It’s a wonder we would ever lose wearing them.
They’re horrible!!
They look like Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour uniforms!
But I thought you liked Ice Cream Frostie?
Awesome! That’s why I like them – never really made the connection. Farrell’s ZOO incoming!
Not feeling the correlation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4zeKJCKsp4
“Let the wookie win”
I think the City Connect jerseys and Randazzo’s hiring are the 2 best things the franchise has done since getting Ohtani.
Drafting Neto – THAT is the key move for some AL Pennants this decade.
I like them. They’re a nice alternate. they are better than our normal “the energy drink for 90s dads” look we generally sport. I still say bring back dark blue and screw the red.
When the City Connects were first revealed I thought they were…meh. But after learning the why behind each part of the jersey they have grown on me.
Never seen that. Awesome – thanks for sharing this!
Beach adjacent.
Anderson, Rengafo and Loup have a 💩 on the back near the bottom.
We lucked out. I really like some of the city connect jerseys. The Royals and Rockies are pretty great. The Nats, D-Bags, White Sox and Marlins were kinda cool too. But We could have ended up with something like The Giants, Cubs, Braves and Astros. Those look like a freshman design class crit winner that took some kid three hours to come up with. Or worse, the Piss Sox or Padres kits that look like someone who hates the team designed them as a cruel joke.
Given the Angels penchant for a total lack of any style coupled with a very Cold Play Vs. Train Vs. Matchbox 20 over all vibe to the team I was expecting something as boring as the Doyers gitz but uglier so I was pretty happy with what we got. They finally had a hat that wasn’t red on red on red so I got one, as promised, and I dig it.
I imagine the Dodgers and Giants both would love a do-over on these jerseys. I think ours and maybe Miami’s are the only ones that could stand the test of time and continue being used indefinitely. The Rockies ones are pretty bold and interesting but I think they’ll age poorly like 90’s basketball and hockey re-brands.
Arizona has a great one “Serpientes” – not quite as good as the Angels but one of the best
That is really cool. I didn’t know about those inspirations either and it does change my thoughts on the vibe. I didn’t like the look initially but had already been warming up to them.
if the Skanks beat Texas tonight we’ll be half a game out.
We might think it’s early but we’ve now played 26. That’s not insignificant. Tomorrow night’s game will put us 1/6th of the way through the season.
Need to concern ourselves more with Houston. Those trash bastards own us and our success and failure will still have to go through them.
Yanks 4-2.
Yeah, but are we REALLY that close to first place? I mean REALLY?
Help me out here, today, was it more important to rest Neto a whole game and take a chance with Rengifo in, especially after his mistake of not stopping a routine groundball, which would have led to a DP, rather than playing Neto for 2-3 innings. Does leaving Rengifo in at the expense of a win make any sense.
They didnt need to bring in Neto in the 8th. The Angels could have also brought Lamb in in the 8th and moved Drury back to 2nd.
Urshela is not a natural shortstop. The ground ball single right before Rennys error probably would have been caught by Neto.
Drury would have moved from 1st to 2nd, Urshela to first, Neto in to short. My point is that Nevin knows he has a weak defense but continues to ignore late inning defensive moves. It’s really baseball 101.
Nevin got lucky when Loupy was in, but saving Estevez was what was needed to finish off the game. Estevez is the closer now, not Q.
I get that but if the angels still wanted to rest Neto and upgrade their defense they could have Brought Lamb in.
Estevez is the closer until his arm falls off.
Go Halos! Let’s keep it up! Would like to see us 10+ games above 500, but to see 2 games above 500 puts a huge grin on my face. 😁
Let’s try 5 games over and see if that is possible… then maybe think about more…
I never thought I would see a game where the opponent scores 7 runs, off a game where Shohei pitched 6 innings, and that opponent is the…..
Oakland A’s!
Baseball is wild!
Well this was pretty special during a bad Shohei off day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roI-UOjco7I
Suck it 2002!
aaaaaah…feels so good
Let’s go Recs!
Shuffle Bot deserves the love!
I love you shufflebot. You’re my best friend.
Ohtani gets the Win!
No cake walk today.
Maybe not, but a win is a win.