Not sure why the Rally Monkey is rocking the pirate garb, but he does have one thing right: It was a sweep for the Halos over the weekend! Sound the alarms, ring the bells, and break out the good china! Maybe that 16 inning win against Cleveland last Wednesday was the turning point in the most historic division comeback in MLB history, eh Scioscia? Or maybe not.
Friday: As if playing 16 innings on Wednesday wasn't enough, the Halos needed 14 to take care of Seattle with the series opener on Friday evening. With the end of 13th inning, sadly for the fans at the park, came the announcement that the Big Bang Fireworks show would be postponed until Saturday. Luckily, most of the crowd left after Fernando Rodney's performance in the 9th. Rodney had a 3-1 lead going into the close out frame, thanks to another nice pitching effort by Jered Weaver (another nice effort that was all for not). José Lopez and Casey Kotchman (which made it hurt all the more) cashed in with back to back RBI doubles in the 9th against Rodney, who had at this point blown 5 saves out of 13 chances. Can we post a job opening for the 2011 close position? Despite taking the strikeout lead back over with a new career high of 211, Weaver wasn't happy after the game. He shouldn't be. He has left 5 of his 8 no decisions this season with a lead. So if our bullpen had anything going for it, he'd be 16-11. Despite the win, it was another kind of low light game for the Halos, scoring on sac flies and squeezes. Erick Aybar had the only multi-hit game, despite it going 14, as he finished 3 for 4. Abreu's walk off was pretty fun, but definitely overshadowed by nights like Callaspo's (1 for 7), Hunter's (0 for 6), and Bourjos' (0 for 4). The Angels grounded into three double plays (two to kill extra inning rallies) and left 12 on base. Defensive specialist Jeff Mathis had 2 errors. On the bright side, the young bullpen didn't allow a hit to Seattle after Rodney coughed it up again. Jeps, Walden, Kohn, and Thompson locked it down, as the Mighty Aussie got his first career win.
Saturday: Ervin was on the mound, so you knew the bats would be hot on a first ever Big Bang Saturday. A 7-4 win would not only clinch the series pitting these two losers together, but also helped El Rosario tie his career high of 16 wins. Halo Nation was happy to see Felix Hernandez get roughed up, even if his five Ks put him back over Jered Weaver by 3 in the MLB K race. Torii Hunter's two run single in the fifth and two run double in the seventh helped to put the M's away, in a game where Speedy Pete went 2 for 3 and Godzilla had a ding dong and two walks. Also, and hold on to your hats for this, Mark Trumbo and Hankie Pankie Conger made their MLB debuts. Both suffered four pitch punchouts in pinch hitting situations. I guess not everyone can hit a jack in their first Major League AB (...Terry Evans). By the way, Fernando Rodney got the save, but to be fair, it was a 0.3 inning save with a 3 run lead. Nice work Fraud-nando.
Sunday: Not in my wildest dreams would I have expected a sweepie sweep from the Angels this weekend, but their Sunday afternoon 3-0 win over Seattle would give me just that. Ol' Danny Boy allowed just 3 hits in his 7 innings of shutout work against the Mariners, and that would be just enough to get the job done. Hideki Matsui would get a RBI on a catcher's interference call in the first, after the Halos loaded the bases, Juan Rivera singled home Mike Napoli in the sixth, and that very same Mike Napoli would hit a towering 395 foot bomb to left center in the eighth to seal the deal. Walrus and Sweat-nando would close the game for Haren with two shutout innings. How did Fernando get two saves in this series after Friday's game? Closers have to have short memories, I guess, and maybe so should us fans. Neither of our big boy callups saw action, but Brandon Wood went 0 for 3 in a reprieve at third base. Bobby Wilson may have gone hitless, but that CERA stat of his just keeps getting better and better.
The Angels now have to go no worse than 6-13 over their final 19 games to avoid producing the worst record in the Mike Scioscia era, which was the painful 2001 75-87 season where they finished 41 games out before winning the World Series on the following campaign.
If you're keeping track of the Halo Triple Crown race, the chances for Torii Hunter are slipping a bit. He'll need to have a powerful final 19 games to pull it off:
Average- .289 (#1)
Homeruns- 21 (#2, -3 of Napoli)
RBI- 78 (#1)
So, the weekend sweep boosted the Angels to 70-73, although the standings look oddly similar. We trail the Rangers by 10 and Oakland by 1.5 with 19 to go until hockey season. In the midst of their longest winning streak (4) since they picked up 6 in a row in early June, the Halos hit the road to John Wayne and fly to Cleveland to take on the all too familiar Indians starting tomorrow afternoon. Scottie "2 Hottie" Kazmir (8-13, 5.98) is looking to surprise us all with another nice start against Josh Tomlin (3-3, 4.18). Think positive, because we're 3-3 against Cleveland this year, and we haven't lost a season series against Drew Carey's boys since 2004. Recent history is on our side.
The only question is: Do you go with "Angels in the Outfield" or "Major League?"
With the bringing up of the 2001 season earlier in the post, I thought it'd be cool to put this 2010 season into perspective. Just how bad have the Angels been compared to other bad seasons since this whole thing started back in 1961?
We'll start by figuring out what we project as a final record. If we finish as weak as we've played all season, we'd finish around 80-82 (yeah, it was 79.3 wins, and I rounded up because I'm a homer). The Rangers are projected to finish 90-72 (I rounded down, again, because I'm a homer), which would leave the Angels at 10 games back in the division. So, let's compare bad seasons in franchise history!
I was born in 1982, so we'll use that as a starting point. Since my birth, the Angels have had 12 seasons worse than this year's projected finish (including our projected strike year finish). So, in those 28 Halo seasons, this season would rank 16th out of 28. So it's certainly one of the bad years for my boys since I've been born, but by no means is it the worst in that period (or even near the bottom), which is a title claimed by three teams (the 70 win teams from 1999, 1996, and 1983). However, that strike year team in 1994 was projected to finish at 66-96, which would have been the worst Angels team since my birth by a big 4 games. In fact, if that 1994 team would have finished that way, they would have been just one win better than the all-time worst Angels team, which was the 1980 incarnation that finished with a 65-95 record. That team finished 6th in the old school AL West, with Jim Fregosi as the manager, Jason Thompson as DH (.317/17/70), and Don Aase as the star pitcher (8-13, 4.06). Tough times back then.
Overall, if the Angels finish this (their 50th) season at the projected 80-82 and 10 games back, it would rank as the 26th best season out of the 50 seasons in Halo history. While there have been 2 other times that the Angels have finished 80-82 (1966 and 1990), they finished well worse than 10 games off the lead in each of those seasons (keep in mind, though, that there were no divisions in 1966, so maybe if there was an AL West back then, it would be a different story). So this season ranks 26th out of the 50 in Halo history; something tells me most Angel fans would have thought it was worse than that. If you're looking for some encouragement, you can take solice in the fact that the year after we went 80-82 the first time, we came out with an improved 84-77 record (1967), and the year after our second 80-82 record we improved slightly to 81-81 (1991). Something positive is on the way in 2011, to be sure, even if it may be just a minor something.
Let's get busy sweeping the Indians, and make this season better than the projected record. Let's scalp 'em!
-- Sent from my Palm Prē
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