The Angels, if they won today, would be 2 extra inning losses away from sweeping both Texas and Houston. Not bad for a last place team. Still, that was IF they won today. IF Tyler Anderson pitched well. And did he? What does 8 innings, 1 runs on 6 hits, striking out 4 and walking 2 sound? Even year Anderson continues to be Amazing! It was the deepest any Angels SP had gone in 2024!
Still, it means nothing if no one steps up, and today, the youth movement was very young, and French. Well, not actually French, just Paris hitting his first home run! Pretty neat huh? This long time prospect who was rushed because of injury now with his first MLB home run ever? And in Houston? The first Angel to do such a thing? Not bad kid.
Highlighted Recap
It was a pitching duel, with the closest either team came to scoring was Paris being thrown out at home in the 3rd.
And in the 4th, a Houston home run was actually a double and he did not score either.
But in the 5th, someone finally did score, as Paris hit his first MLB home run in his career!
But Anderson allowed one of those back with a double driving in a run.
Worse, Neto was hurt in the same inning, forcing Paris to SS.
Since that 5th, the game was again a pitcher’s duel. Anderson did his part, ending his day after 8 innings with the 2-1 lead. And the Astros bullpen did theirs, not allowing any more runs against this Angels team. The question was, could the Angels bullpen save this game? They only needed 3 outs against the bottom half of the lineup, surely they could. Right?
Garcia would have to do. Could he do it?
ANGELS WIN!
Upcoming
No Game tomorrow! Thursdays continue to be off days which is getting pretty annoying. Oh well, facing Cleveland in Anaheim is the Los Angeles Angels on Friday. Because names make no sense. Like, seriously, Guardians? They could have been Spiders but noooOoo… They are red and blue too, like, imagine Spider-Man day! It fit so well, but instead they have to be the Guardians of Cleveland, which is such a downgrade when up against the Guardians of the Galaxy, or even those DreamWorks Guardians people in that movie. The one where Jack Frost was a twink instead of a bitter old man like in the Disney Santa Clause 3. How many Millennials thought Santa Claus was spelt Santa Clause because of that Trilogy anyway? It can’t be just me, right? Oh, right, Baseball. Well, the Angels are still in last place, for now. Bummer.
From Jeff Fletcher’s game recap:
I’ll take Wash’s word on this one.
Few days old, don’t remember if this was posted.
NOTES
Infielder Brandon Drury (hamstring) began hitting in the cage on Monday. …
Infielder Michael Stefanic (strained quadriceps) and right-hander Guillo Zuñiga (strained pectoral) are both scheduled to shift their rehab assignments to Triple-A Salt Lake on Tuesday. They had been playing in Arizona. …
Right-hander Sam Bachman (shoulder surgery) is scheduled to throw live batting practice on Tuesday. The Angels are planning to build Bachman up as a starter, so he will need several weeks of rehab outings to get his pitch count up to the point that he could be considered for a spot in the majors. …
Right-hander Chase Silseth (elbow inflammation) was scheduled to throw off a mound on Monday. It would be his third bullpen session since he was injured. He has not faced hitters yet. Like Bachman, Silseth will need several rehab outings to be built up for a starter workload. …
Crossing my fingers on Silseth & Bachman, because our pitching is too thin. One pad of butter on two pieces of toast thin.
Re: Sano. Do we really need him and his 40% K rate?
With Neto & Drury out and Rengifo’s ability to man second over Tucker or Gourmet (who will be sharing short with Paris)?
I would think so. Not sure what happens when the plumber returns in a couple of weeks.
Zuniga threw a scoreless inning of relief yesterday at SL. The Plumber is also back in AAA going 2 for 3 with a sac fly tonight.
Neto injury.
https://www.si.com/mlb/angels/angels-news/angels-news-zach-neto-has-a-little-concern-with-elbow-injury-rks97
Lol, must be this guy’s first time covering the Angels
No worries. MLB teams are worth Billions…..All teams and their owners employ the best medical care money can buy. 😀😀
Big time, MEH
If Paris and Moniak join the under 25 club what will we call them…the 6 ???
The Super Six ???
Whats not to like ? We just finished a 4-2 road trip against perennially difficult divisional foes and the only 2 games we lost were in extra innings..
That a big win in my book.
And we did so without our starting CF, 3B, 2B or their backups, and with some of our pitchers (looking at you Reid) not performing as we know they can.
Good look all round.
Hopefully we don’t go home and shit the bed against the Guardians by losing 2 of 3 or worse getting swept.
Totally unrelated but I’m watching the Philadelphia Brandon Marsh’s kick the snot out of the Rangers– and the Rangers are playing just like they did against us with all the errors and follies. They really stink.
The Phillies have the best record in all of baseball. They’re even 4 games ahead of the Billion Dollar Doyers.
They probably have the best starting pitcher trio in baseball: Zach Wheeler, Aaron Nola and Ranger Suarez.
I would never count the Rangers out.
They are the Champs and have Bochy.
Talk about a manager that gives15WAR.
He gave ALOT more than 15 WAR last year!
Suck it
TrabekHouston!Perhaps Paris in the spring is a good thing.
Go Halos!!
As he plays in the City Of Lights.
Great pitching by Anderson and Garcia. I constantly notice how the coaches are coaching the young ones including Paris. We are getting some player development at the MLB level.
It would be an ice cold, but incredibly wise business decision to move Anderson before his next start if the offer is juicy.
My gawd I’m olde. Kyren Paris sounds like he’s a sophomore in HS. All “kidz” sound like him to me these days. Cute kid. Glad for him. Hope he turns out to be a diamond in the rough on the diamond.
The Astros are ass this year so hard to read too much into the series win. I mean, they are less ass than us but still ass.
The Astros have the talent and bullpen to turn things around and go on a tear. Every loss we can hand them before then makes their climb that much more difficult.
This series and the Rangers series help in the sense that it is soul crushing to find us 25 games out at the All Star break. Six or eight games out is bad, but 25 is downright embarrassing. Somebody needs to beat down the Mariners a little bit.
Absolutely. But also if we win too many games we hurt our draft position.
So one wonders what’s actually best.
On the other hand, if you don’t know how to draft and can’t develop players then the draft position doesn’t matter very much. Maybe the exception would be if you had the number 1 pick overall..
Which is why we should try to get the best draft position possible so that we have a higher chance of hitting with our pick.
if we end up with the worst record we’ll somehow get pick #12. I just watched the Trailblazers, tied for 3rd worst, get pick #7.
THIS is why we need to just not have a minor league farm at all. Trade our draft picks to the Dallas Cowboys for some Whataburger gift cards. Solved.
We are collecting #1 picks – Moniak, Tucker, etc. Might be nice to have one from the beginning – a ‘can’t miss’ – but that could also be hopium talking.
We did. His name is Michael Nelson Trout
Or…. a slightly less pissed at the world version is that, even with the number one pick, even when you’re as good at prospecting as the Braves, chances are good you’ll have a bust…. and your #5 pick will be good.
So it’s never really worth it to tank for picks unless you’re gonna do it for a few years. PLUS…. now the lottery.
PLUS… we’d have to try really hard all year to be as bad as the A’ss and White Sox etc.
Just not much of a real concern.
Fair enough
If You really think this Franchise could ever win the draft Lottery then think again.
We even suck at sucking.
I think there’s a good chance we have a new regime in place by the ‘25 draft.
I think this season will be Arte’s breaking point.
But TrAdition transcends time Mia. Save for a brief Respite in 2002, It really hasn’t mattered who the Owner is or who’s in charge of the baseball operations.
That’s the spirit !!!
I disagree Mia, they don’t have any easy outs in their whole line-up. They showed the Halos in this series that they can score runs-Some MLB people said we caught them on an uptick, I guess they are on a downtick now….
The next two series are against the two best teams in the league right now according to won loss record, and then we play Seattle and Houston again (12 games).
….but the games are at home, fear not, they’ll dominate.
So when does the schedge get easier? November?
Yes, November through February is our peak time.
This is either encouraging or proves our medical staff doesn’t know what the hell they are doing. https://x.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1793385869547606213
Lol. This is exactly the kind of thing we’ve heard about other injuries to our players that turned out to be serious !!
Zach Neto…. out for life with Deadly Killer Poison Elbow Ache
And I thought it was dehydration brought on by the flu.
Naw, just a mild case of open heart elbow surgery.
When I squint my eyes it looks like that says “60-day IL”
The Angels have now won three straight series on the road : Pirates, Rangers, Astros. The next one is in Seattle, so I think it ends there. If they could just start playing like maybe .560 ball at home we could maybe get to a decent record ….
Man, that Anderson. What a piece of shit. Stupid Perry. Cheap Arte.
Only in odd years.
And of course, we have him for 2 of the 3 odd years.
Dude, if he keeps that ERA under three through June…. he’ll e aded and may actually net some OK return.
Dude this whole year is odd.
Is it really odd?
Or, is it trAdition?
I don’t get this take. Sure he has had his best two years in ’22 and ’24 but prior to 2022 he was mid-4s ERA every year with the exception of 1 year with a small sample size.
Just like back to back wins is not a streak, two high-performing even numbered years is not a pattern.
He is going to be our All Star (maybe the only one – who knows).
What happened to Neto?
Elbow soreness apparently.
Crap.
Halos are now 20-30. That far exceeds my expectations based on their injury list.
If we can just finish the season 70-42 from here we can make the playoffs
You’re funny Eric.
It can happen.
We might need that many in the AL West, if it keeps going like this. We are the new Central.
2 extra inning losses from having a 7 game winning streak.
IMAGINE
I ❤️ the Halos. Gonna be rough seas ahead, but this team doesn’t quit.
At least if we play well against our division rivals this year it will be a feather in our cap. We have been so crappy the last fews years against the Astros in particular. To do anything at all you have to be able to beat teams in your division. So far so good, as the Angels start the season 4-2 against the AL West by winning two series’ on the road …
First series win against Houston since 4/20/22
But guess what our overall season record was vs Houston that year ?
It was 5-11.
To beat Houston while only getting 3 hits is impressive.
Pitching wins, as the saying goes…
And that is against their most garbage pitcher, among their other 🗑️🗑️🗑️ players.
heck of a game from Anderson. Always good to beat the astros.
I wonder what his realistic trade value could be.
After today, Anderson is 7th in ERA, close to top 10 in WHIP, and was 4th in WAR before today for starting pitchers. He’s one of the top 10 starters in the league, somewhere between 6-10. Should he continue, he would be of great value to a playoff team.
i don’t necessarily agree, only for the notion that playoff teams really want guys that can strike people out
Maybe so but Ks or not, he is one of the top ten starting pitchers by just about any measure. Also there may not be that many guys available of the same quality and he’s under contract for next year as well. I believe he would be very attractive. There aren’t that many losing teams that have pitchers like that to trade.
As I have said many times here trading very good players at the deadline for scraps (especially if they are under contract for another season or more) is a losing proposition. “Prospects” are by definition unproven. And the fact remains that a very large majority of them don’t pan out.
It just doesn’t benefit the trading team very much to give away your good or great players for scraps. It is one of the myths of baseball that it is really a smart move for your team. Now, if a player is on an expiring contract and has already said he doesn’t plan to stay or re-sign, then that is different. But just getting all excited or hot and bothered about “Oh wow I bet we can get a bunch of prospects for this guy,” no, it is Fools Gold. It just isn’t a great idea and usually for the team giving up the proven player is not a good deal.
We’re talking about trading players who will not be here after next year and should not be figuring in our future plans. You would not trade them unless you thought you were getting value back and when they leave, you get nothing in return.
Anderson WOULD be here next year. If I am not mistake he signed a 3 year deal with us. This is only year 2 of that deal.
The only reasons you trade him is…
He’s not going to still be around when the team is good.
And, if he’s good now and has a second year of team control you get better prospects for him.
Then sad donkey can complain about having the 25 ranked farm instead of the 30th
And unless Arte’s going on a spending spree, I don’t think that next year is that year so he won’t be around when the team is good and historically he has not been good in consecutive years so we should trade at the height of his value.
Not so sure that we can’t be competitive next year. Look at how things shift from season to season. Sometimes it is drastic. The Royals of 2023 finished 56-106.
And guess how they are doing in 2024? Right now they are 32-19 and 2nd in the no longer easy AL Central.
Things can change ALOT in even one season! I would venture to say we have not just a little bit more but ALOT more talent than Kansas City! If they can do it we certainly can do it too !!
And I’d like to have Tyler Anderson around next season when we do our version of the 2024 Royals.
The ‘historic’ nature of your argument is just not true.
ERA:
2017 4.81
2018 4.55
2019 11.76
2020 4.37
2021 4.53
2022 2.57
2023 5.43
2024 2.52
The ‘bad year’ you refer to in 2023 isn’t much of an outlier from the 2017-2021 stretch (2019 being dreadful). It is this year and his All Star Dodger year that are outliers – but nothing suggests an on again off again trend.
If you look at his entire career then yes, your argument would be valid. However, if you take the position that he figured something out with the Dodgers, that he was doing something essentially different, and that last year was simply an aberration, then you could say he’s not that guy any more.
In short, my argument is this: though the season is not over yet, it looks like Tyler Anderson will be or will have been very good 2 of the last 3 years. Could he again revert to 2023 form next year? I suppose. But with 2 out of 3 really good years I’d be willing to take that chance.
Trade. Him. Now.
Maybe a low top ten prospect and another one much further back