TB defeat Angels 8-3

Bachman Implodes, Angels Get Buried

There are bad innings and then there are Sam Bachman bad innings. Sunday afternoon at the Big A, the Angels got the latter. Going in to the top of the 8^th the score was 3-3. By the time the Angels came to bat in the bottom half, the game was 8-3. The man responsible for the carnage was Bachman, who got the ball with a chance to keep the Angels in it and proceeded to turn a tie game into a lopsided catastrophe.

How It Unraveled

Grayson Rodriguez set the tone from the first pitch: two walks, a hit batter, three hits and two earned runs in 2.1 innings before getting pulled. He came in with a 8.10 ERA and did absolutely nothing to change it for the better. When your starter can’t get out of the third inning and walked or hit nearly as many batters as he’s retired, you’re asking your bullpen to do too much.

Brent Suter kept the Angels breathing through the sixth and seventh: two clean innings, with a key double play to kill the only real threat. But the Angels burned through their only effective arm too early, and when they turned to Bachman in the eighth, everything fell apart quickly.

Top of the 8th: Mullins walked then stole second, his second of the afternoon. Caminero hit a 2-run home run to left (374 feet) making the score 5-3. That alone was a back-breaker. But Bachman wasn’t done pitching. Palacios doubled. Feduccia singled him in. Then Mesa Jr., who had been quiet all day, unloaded on a fastball and sent it 406 feet to right center for another 2-run home run. 8-3. Five runs in one inning. Bachman faced nine batters, retired four of them, gave up four hits, walked two, and surrendered a pair of home runs. Ugly doesn’t cover it.

Angels Offense

Guzman RBI single in the bottom of the 2nd drove in Adell and gave the Angels a 1-0 lead.

https://www.mlb.com/angels/video/casey-legumina-in-play-run-s-to-denzer-guzman?partnerId=web_video-playback-page_video-share

Walton’s solo home run in the fifth was the biggest swing of the game and the moment that briefly made this feel like a contest.

Adell with a RBI single, went 2-3 with a BB and HBP.

Trout was a ghost until a seventh-inning double that went nowhere. Neto was 0-for-5. Madrigal was 0-for-3 and grounded into a double play. The Angels went 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position and left 10 men on base. They had their chances and didn’t take them. In the bottom of the 8th inning Adell was HBP, Schanuel walked, Guzman flied out, Madrigal walked to load the bases then Mancini and Peraza struck out. You have to take advantage when the other team continues to gift you baserunners. The Angels did not. They went down quietly in the bottom of the 9th too.

Logan Porter Footnote

He’s still back there behind the plate, doing his best with what he has. Cedric Mullins stole second on him twice today, both times without much of a throw. That’s not a character flaw, Porter is here because Rivero is getting hamate surgery and the Angels had nobody else. He signed a minor league deal six days ago. He hadn’t played a Triple-A game for this organization. Mullins knew it and ran accordingly. Sometimes the story tells itself.