Thursday, September 22, 2005

Angels 6; Rangers 5; Lead 2.5

Quick one tonight since I have to get up to go to work tomorrow. This one was sort of unexpected. Once they got down, I expected them to lose, because they were due for one, and the Angels have a tendency to be shut down by pitchers who have no business shutting them down. But as much as we've ripped on Scioscia recently, he played most of the right cards in this one. He went back to Ztu, despite my prediction that he wouldn't, and it didn't end up hurting the team. He got the big hits from pinch hitters Quinlan and Molina (and a hit from Finley, but it wasn't big, since it didn't lead to any runs). He got burned a little by Donnelly, but Christiansen got the lefty, Shields looked terrific in the eighth, and Frankie was great in the ninth, save for a lousy call on what should have been strike three to the lead off hitter, Rod Barajas.

Lackey didn't look particularly sharp, scattering a number of baserunners, although he did have two perfect innings. The last two games have brought returns of the Lackey inning, which may survive the regular season, but could be big trouble in the post-season.

Three game lead in the loss column, and thanks to the Twins, the magic number is nine, same as the White Sox. A executive assistant at work brought in donuts this morning because she was in a good mood after the Sox win last night. I think we're all getting all expense paid trips if they win the World Series.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Big win.