Read that with a Pirate accent this week. As I began writing this the Angels had been dominated by the Pittsburgh Pirates to the tune of 12 runs to 3 through 2 games. As expected, former Angel Andrew Heaney magically turned into prime Clayton Kershaw for his start against his old club.
Really, a lot of pitchers have looked like future Hall of Famers against out boys lately.
That’s not to say it has been all bad. Despite a lack of offense for most of the series, the Angels took 2 out of 3 against a solid Giants team to start the homestand. This leads to the most obvious Highlight of the Week we’ve had in a long time.
Jo Adell had a really great series against SF, going 4 for 10 with 6 total bases. None of those hits were bigger than the one he had to finish the series.
Zach Neto’s late inning heroics salvaged a game against the Pirates which resulted in a 3 and 3 homestand and a team record again of .500
.500 seems about right for this team. The fact we’re underwhelmed by a 3 and 3 homestand because of two losses to the Pirates shows we are starting to believe a bit in these kids. If they can get some support from the veterans, we might be decent.
And as we all know this is a rebuilding team, the highlights don’t need to be from the MLB level. George Klassen is thus far exceeding expectations for Rocket City. Considering many peg him as having the best “stuff” in the Angels farm system those expectations were fairly high. He threw another great game and gives us reason to dream.
I don’t agree that any one pitching prospect is the most important prospect in the Angels system. However, it is critically important that one of Klassen, Caden Dana, or Reid Detmers lives up to their ceiling and at least one of them becomes a middle of the rotation guy. Then we have the group of Silent C, Sam Aldegheri, and Chase Silseth that needs to produce another mid to back end guy. In an ideal world they all pan out but this is baseball and those are reasonable if slightly optimistic.
Kochanowicz did look better in his outing against Pittsburgh than he has most of 2025 but he still coughed up the long ball. Actually, he gave up an extremely long ball. This is one of the furthest hit balls I’ve ever seen at the Big A, steroid era included.
And, yes, I am alluding to Tim Salmon when I phrase it that way.
George Klassen was a trade pickup by Perry last summer. So was Ryan Zeferjahn. This week FanGraphs did a great deep dive on Ryan that is very much worth a read. It gets just nerdy enough to learn some new things but not so technical as to sound like an owner’s manual.
When looking at the rebuild, we have to look at this year’s draft. How much $ will the Angels have to spend on young talent? A lot. Keep in mind that if the team does manage to trade for one of the competitive balance picks, the slot allotment for that pick will be added to their coffers.
Who might the Angels draft at #2? Nolan is doing a good job tracking the names at the top of the draft board.
I have to say I’m really pleased with the way that series is developing. The comment count is rising week by week and Turk’s Teeth pops in with his insight more often than not. College baseball is a ton of fun and I think we are getting more into it as a community.
Winning in Major League Baseball is hard enough. It is even harder when the team owners set up ludicrous travel schedules. By the math, if the Angels game wrapped up about 9:00 Thursday. John Wayne and Long Beach have 10 PM flight cutoffs so they’ll leave LAX at 11 at best, land in Minneapolis at 4:15 AM local time, and get into their hotels around 5 AM Friday. Not ideal for athletic success, but hey a few thousand more folks will line Arte’s pockets tonight and that is what is really important. (I was one of them.)
From around baseball:
The Dodgers gamble on Blake Snell isn’t working out well at the moment. I get it, they have enough money to take the high risk/high reward types and shoot for the reward. But they need to have some reliable cogs for the inevitable blowups and over the years their rotation depth has taken some serious hits in that regard.
Now that we’re about a month in, who are the winners and losers so far?
Should we believe in some teams off to hot starts?
Wrigleyville faithful rejoice, the Cubs just swept the Dodgers and made Ohtani look human.
Shohei’s slump looks like a blip to Joc Pederson, who finally snapped his 0 for 41 skid with a hit against the A’s.
Enjoy your weekend and link what I missed. My Angels team has a big game tomorrow followed by a pizza party. We only have a couple of weeks of games left and I’m already dreading not seeing these smiling faces 3 days a week. On Wednesday we staged a late rally to beat the Pirates thanks largely to a kid who has struggled but worked his butt off getting two hits in the game. Seeing progress, smiles, and friendships made is simply awesome and I’m so happy I took on being their coach.
