Rocked: Angels 1; Rockies 11

Just the Angels' luck that they happen to hit the Rockies in the midst of winning 17 of 18, with two more games to go. This was a night where almost everything went wrong for the Angels. The good news is that you may as well have everything go wrong on the same night. No use spreading that stuff around.

Matt Palmer suffered his first loss of his Angels career, and quite frankly, he was due for it. It looked like it was going to be another typical Palmer start: struggle early, settle in and dominate, and wait for the bats to come through. He gave up three runs in the second inning on three singles, two walks, and two wild pitches. He responded by retiring the next nine hitters in order, and appeared to be on the right track. But in the fifth inning, after retiring the leadoff hitter, he allowed a single, a walk, and three run homer from Brad Hawpe, and the game was essentially over at that point.

The Angels offense wasn't much better. They mustered only three hits off of starter Aaron Cook. One off the bat of Kendry Morales left the yard, briefly giving the Angels hope at 3-1, his 12th homer of the season. It was also the Angels' final hit of the game. They managed just two baserunners over the final five innings.

The bullpen was once again the bullpen that we've grown tired of seeing this year. Rich Thompson, Rafael Rodriguez, and Jason Bulger combined to allow five runs in 4.1 innings.

Thoughts on the game:

• Not much to say really. Every facet of the Angels performance was worthy of defeat. The Rockies are hot, of course, but they didn't need to be to win this game.
• Since taking over the full time second base job, Maicer Izturis is hitting 333/429/600. That sounds great, but in those nine games he has 10 hits, and seven of them came in two games.
• Kendry Morales isn't putting up all-star numbers at first base, but he hasn't been bad, and I think he's been pretty much what the Angels expected. He's also been remarkably consistent, hovering around his current line of 272/322/515 for much of the season. I'd like to see the ISO OBP increase, but the power number (12 homers, 20 doubles) are solid.