Yet another night when the Angel offense delivers more than enough to win. Yet another night when the bullpen can’t hold on to a huge a lead. Rafael Rodriguez, Jose Arredondo, and Brian Fuentes combined for six earned runs in two innings, and blew a five run lead. This is starting to get ridiculous.
Jered Weaver shook off a tough first inning in which he allowed four runs. He followed it up with five scoreless frames, and left with a lead that he had to think was safe. But after a solid seventh inning, Rodriguez ran into trouble, and started the snowball that became four run eighth for the Yankees, with the runs evenly split between Rodriguez and Arredondo. Brian Fuentes entered in the ninth and failed to retire any of the four batters he faced. A walk and three singles later, the Yankees finished the comeback and celebrated a 10-9 victory.
The Angels got offense from almost everyone. Robb Quinlan was the only Angel who failed to reach base. Erick Aybar and Gary Matthews each had three hits. Matthews added four RBIs, three coming on a bases loaded triple in the sixth inning. Jeff Mathis drove in three runs, two with a single and one with a squeeze bunt. But yet again, their effort was undone by baseball’s worst bullpen.
Thoughts on the game:
A lot of people were happy to let Francisco Rodriguez leave. His numbers would be the best in this bullpen by far. The haters will point toward his post season struggles as justification for letting him leave. Well, good news. The Angels probably won’t have to worry about post-season failures this year.
The Angels drew 7 walks. That’s gotta be close to a record for this decade. And they still lost.
This is the sixth game in which the Angels have scored 8 or more runs. They ‘ve lost four of those games. That’s pathetic.
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