LA Angels Weekends News Crash: Road Warriors

Memorial Day weekend is upon us. Before getting to baseball it is paramount we thank those who paid the ultimate sacrifice so we can spend our weekends wrapped in the cloak of freedom, playing baseball and enjoying our families. If anybody in your life has paid this sacrifice our hearts go out to you.

And now to our regular programming…

Raise your hand if you predicted the Angels would head to Texas and win series against both the defending World Series champs and the team that has had a stranglehold on the division for nearly a decade. Yeah, me neither.

But win back to back series is exactly what the Angels did for the first time this season.

Let the kids play? Yes! Kyren Paris delivered the big blow Wednesday. His first MLB home run. Look at the million dollar smile on the kid’s face. This was a really enjoyable moment as an Angels fan.

As much as I’d love for that to be the highlight of the week, I have to go with Tyler Anderson’s dominant 8 inning performance.

Anderson is truly pitching masterfully this season. He’s mixing speeds and locations, getting weak contact, and parlaying those quick outs into longer outings. He neither racked up strikeouts (4 on the day) nor lit up the radar gun but he did what really matters: 8 IP, 1 ER, 6 hits, 4 K’s, 2 BB. On the day Anderson threw 95 pitches, or about 12 per inning.

Back to those kids, they carried the team to a win over Houston on Monday night. Four Angels age 25 or younger hit a home run in that game. If we are looking/hoping for a core to emerge this season Monday was a great day.

Unfortunately one of those kids, Zach Neto, left Wednesday’s game with elbow soreness. He’s dealt with elbow issues since youth so hopefully this isn’t bad.

Not only playing well when healthy but showing up and talking to the media? Anthony Rendon is full of surprises in 2024. In that link above Rendon talked about his slowly healing hamstring injury. He’s still out for a long time.

Now the Angels head home where they have been dreadful. On the road, they are a .500 team. At home, the wheels fall off.

6-16 is the worst home record in the league. I can grant them a pretty tough home schedule thus far, but that is horrid. If the Angels continue this pace they’ll go 22-59 at the Big A this year.

Turning that home record around won’t get any easier this homestand and the very tough Cleveland Guardians and New York Yankees come to town.

The Yankees currently feature young star Juan Soto and a $300 million payroll. Their owner Hal Steinbrenner called the Yanks payroll “unsustainable” while discussing a potential Soto extension.

When the Yankees care about payroll, things are wrong in the baseball world. I’ve written about and linked the impending cable TV fallout for half of the league. The Yanks aren’t a part of Diamond Sports but if they are starting to count dollars, it isn’t a good sign for the rest of the league.

Some notable teams have gotten off to slow start and the trade deadline might be chock full of stars.

The Baltimore Orioles were swept for the first time in 107 series. That is a pretty impressive streak.

Baltimore was swept by the Cardinals, who feature prominently in the trade deadline piece. Uncharacteristically the Cardinals are disappointing at the MLB level and have an uninspiring farm system.

Conference tournaments are kicking off across college baseball. I’ve been watching the SEC tournament both for fun and to scout potential draft picks. Here is that schedule.

UC Irvine wraps up the year with a three game home set against CSU, Northridge. The Anteaters are ranked highly enough they could host a Regional in the NCAA tourney if they hold onto the spot.

Enjoy the games and stick around for some draft coverage. Cookmeister outlined some players to watch and I took a look at college arms we could select in the first round.

I’ll be publishing pieces on college position players and players who might make good picks later in the draft.

Let’s all welcome aboard the first CtPG intern Nolan Jess. He’ll be writing more post games and writing pieces that allow him to find his niche in the sports world as he prepares to major in sports broadcasting.

Enjoy your weekend but also remember why we have Monday off work. My son’s league takes Saturday off so we have our final game of the season on Wednesday. It has been another great season of spending time with my son, watching him smile and make friends and improve on the field. To say I love him beyond words is an understatement and I’m so thankful for this time with him.

L