It is Opening Day! The start of the season, when Optimism is at an all year high, before any losses can pile up. In the Windy City, Yusei Kikuchi took the mound against the White Sox, the worst team in baseball in 2024.
How did our most expensive FA acquisition do? Kikuchi went 6 innings, giving up 3 runs on 5 hits, striking out 5 and walking none. Was that worth the money? It is a quality start. But it was against the White Sox. THE WHITE SOX.
How about hitting? How did they do? Taylor, Nolan, Logan, and Jo all had 1 hit each. That was it. And Ward’s double was the only extra base hit. Add a walk by Trout and Moncada each and that was all they could muster. Against a pitcher making his 5th career start. Yeesh.
Highlighted Recap
The White Sox immediately hit Mike Trout in the hand in the first inning, angering everyone and casing mass panic. Fortunately, he stayed in the game, his giant batting gloves keeping him safe.
What wasn’t safe was our optimism, as Kikuchi allowed 3 runs in the 2nd inning, one on a solo shot
And then a 2 run double
The Angels stayed very quiet all game, until the top of the 8th, when they loaded the bases with 2 outs, only for Soler to strike out swinging at ball 4.
Any good highlights at all? Well, uh, Ryan Johnson made his MLB debut and got a strikeout.
And allowed a 3 run home run in the 8th
Make that 2 home runs
We may have seen a pitcher break in his first MLB game. Way to go Angels. You Ruined Johnson.
Logan homed with 2 outs in the 9th to avoid the shutout though. So that’s a silver lining.
Anyway, Angels lose badly, I need a drink.
Upcoming
No game tomorrow, we have 2 this weekend though, in the morning. Yay~
I am not shocked that this team seems to be not very good. I am shocked at how shocked some folks seem to be about it.
“I’m NOT shocked. I’m just….”
OK. Then suck it up man. We all saw this coming. We are finally there. We have been bitching like we were this bad since about 2010 and now we no longer need to fake it till we make it. Some of us have been needing to be right about how bad things are since Halos Heaven.
OK. We did it folks. We’re finally gonna be a “longsuffering” fan base. You’ve been taking credit for being one for a long time. It’s kind of exciting to finally be here for realz.
Let’s win some game!
Gas lighting the fan base after that performance is not the move.
Not actually knowing but gaslight means but throwing it around like a a hello kitty pillow is?
I mean I expect 100 loss bad but damn, that was an exceptionally craptastic start.
Washington makes me miss Nevin.
Somebody on here, I think it was Gitch, said it would be about 6 weeks before things got this dark on here, but here we are after the 1st game. ďťż đ ďťż
It is always like this when we lose opening day. You have to wait for the first win for things to calm down.
Happens every year.
You would think after losing the last 11 out of 12 opening days we’d get used to it by now but today was pathetic
You would think!
In a week or two no one will remember if we won Opening Day or not.
well when you’ve lost 11 out of the last 12 its actually easier to remember that we lost on opening day.
ďťż đ ďťżďťż đ ďťż
TouchĂŠ
But why should it calm down ? All those folks who express concern after a bad loss or two turned out to be right. The hopeful or optimistic people were the ones who were wrong …. Looks the same to me here …The writing is on the wall.
Nah. Not six weeks. But this dark is just normal piss bitch dark. We’ve got to get deeper into the rain forest, Mr Kurtz deep. Where we start espousing all kinds of bullshit about what is going on in various players minds. where, if Arte buys a sandwich, there is some dark and evil purpose behind it. Where we get so granular about our cheapness complaints that it’s clear to many of us that the Angels have the worst shoe laces in baseball. We need a pile of useless old men diagnosing what is wrong with every player after every game. Mercilessly picking at every prospects at bat. Their double chins wiggling as they mumble about disgrace and a lack of grit. We need to hate every guy we pick in the draft for one reason or another…. which is what Arte wants. It was his plan to tank the draft and save money for a gold statue of himself….
The madness is only beginning Mr Marlow.
That is Colonel Kurtz to you. Respect the rank.
Apparently I chose wisely by skipping the entire offseason.
The best outcome is for the kids to develop positively and for Trout to stay healthy & rake. This will allow Trout the option of staying or agree to a trade to a contender. Dealerâs choice is cool with me.
Back to MMA
Nah, he’s Colonel Kurtz in the movie…. I’m book nerding on this one.
Apropos of nothing, âFight Clubâ the movie is superior to the book.
For the first time since opening day of 2023 the White Sox are above .500
Thanks Arte.
Arenât they on a 4 game win streak? Lulz
Good game, but blame of the game is soler. Momentum killer with bad ab’s in the most clutch positions.
Mike Trout sitting Courtside for the Lakers and Bulls maybe the closet he gets to a win all weekend.
Well never mind he jinxed that too.
Horrible ending to that game ….I can’t believe Lakers lost — they led by 5 points with only 13 seconds to play. But in fairness to them they fought back to take the lead with 3.3 seconds only to see the Bulls get the luckiest shot of the century from 46 feet out ..
You got to guard the shooter even if it he is at half court.
Did LeBron go up to Mike and say hello ?
Good thing he doesn’t take any of this stuff too seriously.
Way to destroy one your organizations top pitching prospects in his
Major LeagueProfessional debut. Way to tell your team you gave up in the 8th inning by bringing a position player to pitch when you have an off day tomorrow and 7 guys fully rested down there.Ok here’s my bold prediction for 2025:
Manager MoRon Washington wont last through the All Star break.
One can only hope that happens.
I wish, but he’s here all year imo. The whole staff is built by him so my guess is it happens in the off season along with the people he brought in. All this turnover is never good either way.
Yeah, I just can’t wrap my head around his decisions today. Early dementia is the only excuse I can come up with.
I really didnât expect such strong emotions in the post game.
We know what this team is. We have a few fun pieces to dream about but most of it is shit.
But itâs 1/162, so the law says we must pretend the sky is falling.
Back at it Saturday. Excited to see Soriano pitch!
Nice comments Mia. Until proven otherwise, it is safe to say runs will be hard to come by. So yes, no surprise today. The pitching was ok except for one bad inning by a rookie. Move on to Saturday.
And one more bad defensive play by a butcher.
https://x.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1905363854785191999
They can be 2 – 1 after Soriano and jack dominate their starts and 1 – 0 wins.
Good thing that you’re a Dodgers fan.
BE MORE ANGER! VALIDATE MY FEELZ! WE HAVEN’T WON ALL SEASON!
Keep on drafting catchers who can’t catch and 15 reliever type guys with their 55mph fastball and sign them to whatever CA’s minimum wage law is…
I don’t care about spelling and grammar
Plus, that embarrassing itching just won’t go away.
GUEST WRECK!
Some dude on the Doyers just hit an oppo HR
Made Tom Hanks leap out of his seat!
Who?
You got something against America’s Dad?
Really? My dad never wore a dress.
(well not that I know of)
Well the Angels will not win a game this season. Hopefully they got all there losing out of the way and will win the whole “f**king” thing.
All the ridicule is deserved after that performance.
A positive takeaway from the game ..
“One super-duper, small sample size positive: Nolan Schanuel’s bat speed on his single was 85.7 mph. His highest (tracked) bat speed on a ball in play from 2024 was 79.5 mph.
The league average bat speed is 71.5 mph.
There were 107,712 balls in play last season. In only 354 of those, the bater had a bat speed at 85.7 mph or higher. That’s in the 99.67th percentile.”
https://x.com/BeyondTheHalo/status/1905402150374834308?t=YzkkgF42NulfmouD7j7fpg&s=19
Is that gold? Or a kernel of corn? Either way, I’ll take it!
Who had Game 1 for âwhatâs the first game the team will use a position player to pitch in the 2025 season?â
So I just realized today that Perry actually gave Newman a 2 year deal? May I ask why? Like the guy is a NRI level of player. Giving him 2 years? Like is Perry getting a kickback from him agent? That’s like all I can think of to give a player like Newman 2 years especially when he’s over 30 already.
2nd year is a club option
that they can buy out for a whopping $250K. Newman wasn’t signed to start he was signed to backup shortstop . he is the least of this teams problems
Did you look at his Bref…. and his contract value….?
I can hardly watch the current Angels, much less keep up on Gameday. Itâs so bad Iâve started watching 1998 VHS games on YouTube. Yeah, the uniforms are awful, but they were in contention in the West through mid-Sept. I like to see my old favorite Angels playing for that team. I think they tried harder. Iâm even good with Physioc (itâs Berman on the Wed. Night ESPN games that really grates). I liked Terry Collins. The Big Ed looked good. They beat the Yankees a lot that year. Sure, the Texas juicers won, but they scrapped real hard that year with injuries and pitching problems. Not sure this team could do that. Maybe they will. Weâll see. Itâs a long season. Done. Thanks from a seldom poster.
The periwinkle days! You’re spot on. Those teams weren’t very good, but we’re entertaining and at least gave you some hope as a fan. Black days….
so yeah, it’s easy to say we’re overreacting to one game but it was a very embarrassing loss to the worst team in baseball, the team that should have had the worst percentage in over 100 years except they swept us to end 2024 and now handled us in every aspect today. If we had lost 3-2 or 4-2 or something like that we’d be disappointed but today feels crushing.
The effort was lifeless and non competitive, although it was a quality start for Kikuchi. maybe the worst managed and coached game I’ve ever seen.
Overacting, EIP? Statistics show we’re on a pace to lose162 games.
That was a TRULY bad game…. like if I tried to describe a bad game ysterday it would have been this thing they pooped out today.
This was a tough day all around, no hitting and bad pitching, at least we still have this weekend to watch NCAA BB.
Putting a position player in to pitch on a 1-0 count on Opening Day is one of my most embarrassing moments in my time as an Angels fan
You mean EmPerrassing?
But I do remember you and a foul ball though.
Thereâs alternate timeline where I make that catch and we win 8 straight AL West titles
I thought and felt the same way. Clown show. There is nothing top notch about this organization, from top to bottom.
Especially it’s fans.
Everytime I think we’ve bottomed out, we ger rock bottom-ier.
đ đ đ đ
its flat out disrespectful. I’m ashamed of Washington as our manager. For a guy who stood up for Rendon way more than he should have, why in the world did he do Johnson that dirty?
Why? You didn’t do anything.
I can be dramatic if I want to
That’s true…. with flare even if the stage demands it.
Wash is done he’s 600 yrs old like George Custer every day out there. Hire Jayce Tingler tomorrow or we’ll lose 100 games by the end of April.
Nicky Fân Lopez
0.1 innings 1 BB 0 Runs.
0.00era
That bothered me the most, admitting weakness. I’m so done with this GM.