Angels 9; Indians 3

The Angels hit the century mark with their winning percentage at an even .600 as they took the rubber game against the Indians in an afternoon tilt. John Lackey continued to round into form, tossing seven innings and allowing one run while striking out eight. 70 of his 113 pitches went for strikes, and he allowed only three hits, though he did walk four hitters. The Indians learned before the game that reigning Cy Young winner Cliff Lee had been dealt to the Phillies, and they played as if they’d just lost their best friend.

The Angels got off to a fast start against Indians starter Aaron Laffey. The pushed across two runs in the first inning on RBI singles from Kendry Morales and Howie Kendrick. The Indians cut the lead in half with a run in the fourth, but the Angels broke the game open with a five run fifth inning. The first six Angels to hit in the inning reached base, thanks in part to Luis Valbuena’s drop of Juan Rivera’s popup to second base. Again, Morales and Kendrick provided the big hits, combining to drive in three runs in the inning. The Angels finished their onslaught with Kendrick’s homer in the seventh inning.

Darren Oliver pitched a perfect eighth. Shane Loux closed the game out after Bobby Mosebach struggled, allowing two meaningless runs in the ninth.

Thoughts on the game:

• Howie Kendrick had himself a day. He went 3-4 with five RBI and a home run. He’s now hitting .377 with 14 RBIs in July. Just another example of a Angel who has caught fire this month.
• John Lackey is starting to put it together at the right time for both the Angels and himself. The more he pitches like this into August and September, the more money he makes next season. The question is from whom he’ll be drawing a paycheck.
• Combined with the Rangers’ loss to Detroit, the Angels lead is back to 3.5 games, and Seattle is now 7.5 games back. They shouldn’t be counted out yet, but one gets the feeling the Rangers gave the Angels their best shot, and they may not have enough the tank to make another run.

Angels 7; Indians 6

The Angels overcame another shaky start, needed to come from behind yet again, and survived a second straight awful performance from Brian Fuentes to end their two game losing streak.

Jered Weaver turned in a mediocre outing, but gave the Angels a chance to win. He struggled with his control, needing over 100 pitches (nearly half out of the strike zone) for five innings of work in which he allowed four runs on four hits while walking three. Matt Palmer provided three excellent innings of relief and picked up the win in the process.

In the third inning, the Angels strung together five straight hits, leading to three runs. They may have had more if Chone Figgins hadn’t been eliminated at the plate trying to score from first base on Erick Aybar’s double. The Indians tied the game in the fourth inning, and took a one run lead on Jhonny Peralta’s solo shot in the fifth. The Angels finally caught up and pulled ahead with a four run eighth inning. Juan Rivera’s RBI single tied the game, but things looked bleak when Mike Napoli grounded into a double play. But after Indians reliever Tony Sipp walked the next two hitters, loading the bases, Gary Matthews Jr. delivered a three run double.

Brian Fuentes took the ball in the ninth and failed to record an out, his second straight awful outing. Jason Bulger relieved Fuentes with the bases loaded, and induced a grounder to first from Victor Martinez which led to a brilliant 3-6-1 double play, pulling the Indians to within one. Bulger got Peralta to ground to short to end the game.

Thoughts on the game:

• Give a lot of credit to Mike Scioscia for finally realizing that his closer wasn’t going to get it done and giving the ball to someone else. Bulger came into an impossible situation and got two ground balls to end the game. After two straight losses, the Angels really needed this one.
• Erick Aybar had two more hits. He’s having an unbelievable month. He’s hitting 439/465/598 for July, and he’s pulled his season numbers to 318/357/433, good for an OPS+ of 105, which is terrific for a shortstop of his defensive caliber. In the absence of Torii Hunter and Vlad, the slack has been more than adequately picked up by Aybar and Kendry Morales. This is a really fun offensive team to watch.
• Joe Saunders, Ervin Santana, and Jered Weaver aren’t doing anything to convince Tony Reagins that the Angels don’t need to add a starter. But the replacement may be Sean O’Sullivan, who has looked solid at the major league level, and just pitched a no-hitter against Sacramento in AAA last night.

Angels turn the tables on Indians....and me

I'd love to say the previous post was reverse psychology, but I was actually pretty convinced that the Angels were going to lose tonight. Of course, I became convinced sometime last night, but that's another story.

As mentioned before, I missed the top of the first because I was at the Michael Penn show. He was at Schuba's, and I assume he was promoting his new compilation CD. And he played with the Last Town Chorus, which is essentially made up of Megan Hickey and whoever she brings along to play with her. And she's very attractive, and really cool (we had a nice chat after the show). It's not too often you see a woman on slide guitar, and she really makes it sing. Very glad I made it to the opening set. But I digress.

Anyway, Jered looked fairly solid, if not completely sharp for the following five innings, holding the Indians at bay, even though he may have needed a Houdini routine in the sixth inning.

Moseley entered from there to keep the Tribe down in the top of the seventh before Kendry Morales, replacing the heretofore worthless Shea Hillenbrand, provided the fireworks, crushing a pitch into the right field seats, tying the game at two. Following another excellent inning from Moseley (2 IP, 1H, only 16 pitches), Gary Matthews provided the winning margin in the bottom of the eighth, even though FSN may not have wanted you to see it. Frankie worked a 1-2-3 ninth for the save, and temporary stem to the bleeding.

I'll gladly take the win, and it keeps the Angels above .500. But there's still not a whole lot to get excited about. On the plus side, they pounded out 11 hits, including a double from Kotchman. Perhaps more exciting than the Morales home run was the simple fact that he was in the lineup over Hillenbrand. It's a start.

Moseley dropped his ERA to 1.77 and earned his first win. The longer the offense continues to flounder, the more you have to think that Moseley's future is in another uniform. You can say what you will about his ceiling, but he's proving he can get major league hitters out, and he can do it as a starter or as a reliever.

Enjoy the victory, but this team is going to have to start scoring more than three runs per game if they hope to go on the type of May or June run that opens up a lead in the division that holds up the rest of the way.

Here's LTC doing David Bowie's Modern Love.

Indians something; Angels less than the Indians also something, for now

Just walked in the door after returning from the Michael Penn concert. Flipped on the TV and saw that the Angels gave up two runs in the top of the first.

At least it was nice of them to go ahead and lose tonight's game early. Now I've got time to do some cleaning, watch something else, etc.

It's unbelievable how much this team sucks.

Update: Will wonders never cease? Kendry Morales with an absolute bomb to right field and the game is tied. That's two more runs than I expected them to score.

This team is awful

Bottom of the third inning, and from the swings they're getting against Cliff Lee, we may very well be in for a no-hitter tonight. I'm serious.

Fourth inning, now 3-0 Indians, and the game is officially over. See you tomorrow night.

Eighth inning. 3-1. Scioscia officially gives up on this game and brings in Darren Oliver.

Physioc just mentioned that, with Speier on the DL, Carrasco will pitch in more high pressure situations in the next two weeks. Umm, don't you have to be able to score enough runs to get a lead before you can be in a high pressure situation? I don't think Pipo will be in too many high pressure situations in the next two weeks.

It wasn't a fluke, folks. The Royals didn't get lucky to take two of four games from the Angels. This team is honestly no better than the Kansas City Royals. They're that bad.

Someday....

Maybe someday a manager will come along who, having spent the vast majority of his (or her - hey, it's the future we're talking about) life in baseball, can recognize when a pitcher clearly doesn't have major league quality stuff/control, and is man (or woman) enough to realize his (or her) mistake after one hitter.

Maybe when that day comes, we'll be spared the atrocity that was the bottom of the eighth inning of today's game, where Scot Shields couldn't find the strike zone until he was facing Travis Hafner with two runners (whom he had walked) on base. One swing, and a one run lead was a two run deficit. But hey, at least he finally threw a strike.

Angels 4; Indians 1

Didn't make it to Milwaukee last night. Snow. Lots of it. It's actually a really easy drive when the weather is OK. I play golf a few times per year about a half hour from Milwaukee, so it seems like your close to home not long after leaving the stadium. Kinda like driving from Pasadena to Temecula. But when a 90 minute drive becomes a four hour drive, it's not quite as inviting.

That doesn't mean Tuesday night's game didn't have an affect on me, though. I was still so tired from Tuesday that I fell asleep for the last two innings or so, but by that time, the Angels had done most of their damage, and Saunders was about ready to turn it over to the lights out guys in the bullpen.

Saunders had some trouble finding the strike zone, but for the most part was excellent, making me look like an idiot for putting him on my bench this week. He walked four, but only allowed four hits and one run, a solo homer to Jhonny Peralta who did his part to help the Angels with an error out at short. Saunders also struck out five.

The top of the order did a little damage tonight, pounding out six hits, while HGHMJ scored twice. But it was Mike Napoli's RBI triple that held up for the winning RBI, and few pitches later he came home on a Jake Westbrook wild pitch. A little station to station ball accounted for the fourth run, with Cabrera singling home Matthews. Shields and Frankie closed the door from there.

I'm getting the feeling that we can see more out of this team, but it's still early. With all the expectations, you'd like to see them go on an early season run that opens up the type of real estate between them and second place, the type that takes those teams a long time to crawl back from. I think they have it in them.

Mosely takes the mound today, and serves as a reminder that Bart and Jered Weaver are on the mend. Weaver especially had a terrific outing last night. The lineup will look a little different in a month, and this team should only get stronger.

Angels 6; Indians 7

My second trip to Milwaukee and my first trip to Miller Park. You've really got to hand it to Milwaukee. On basically one day's notice, for two teams that aren't even in their league, they drew more people than the A's drew for a home game against the 2005 World Champions. But I don't need to remind any of you that A's "fans" suck.

I'm very glad that I had purchased and printed my tickets out earlier in the day. As it was, it took us a while to get into the parking lot, and we missed most of the first inning. Had we stood in the walk-up line, we wouldn't have gotten into the game until the third or fourth inning.

As we were walking to our seats, we were interviewed by Erin Toner of Milwaukee's NPR station for a national story. Unfortunately, it sounds like we ended up on the cutting room floor. They played the story on Morning Edition and they only used interviews with Indians fans. My friend was right. We should have told them we had flown in that day from LA. A lot more compelling than an interview with someone who drove up from Chicago.

We had seats (as you can see from the pictures in the post below) down the third base line. Started in row 25, but met up with Josh from Pearly Gates who was in the same section in row 9, and we sat with him for pretty much the entire game. All tickets were $10, and parking was only $8. The stadium was nice and warm. I hear the concessions lines were pretty long, but I never left my seat, so I can't give a first hand account. Still, on short notice, the Brewers did a pretty good job of throwing this together. I was pretty sure I was going to try to get to tonight's game as well, but with the snow (they're supposed to get 4 inches or so up there), it's not worth the four hour drive that it will become.

Santana clearly didn't have it. He couldn't throw strikes, and the ones he did throw got tagged for two long home runs. The Angels had Darren Oliver up in the fourth before Santana got out of the inning, and followed that up with two runs to get back into the game. At that point I mentioned to someone that they probably ought to take Santana out, because he was likely to give those runs back, and sure enough, he conspired with Pipo to do just that, with Pipo giving up a sac fly and a two out, two run double before getting out of the inning.

Still, the Angels worked their way back into the game, with two runs in the eighth and a run in the ninth. They had the tying run on first base, and Howie Kendrick coming to the plate. Speculating from the stands, Erick Aybar never even entered my mind. I thought for sure they would use Willits or Murphy to pinch run in that spot, but I'm assuming the idea was to move Kendrick to first and Aybar to second if they had tied the game. And seriously, standing there, Jose and I went back and forth over how bad of a baserunner Aybar was. He's fast, but he's not a good baserunner, and he's not a good base stealer by any means.

So what happens with a fast guy on first and a hot hitter at the plate? Aybar goes and gets thrown out to end the game for the second time in a week. It was quite possibly one of the dumbest ways to end a game I've ever seen. At least when Frankie dropped the ball a couple of years ago, it was lazy, but it was a mistake. This, on the other hand, was simply an awful, awful decision, and the blame is shared equally between Aybar and Scioscia. Scioscia should have been smart enough to give Aybar the red light, and Aybar should have been smart enough to just say no to the green light.

Other than Howie's 4-4 night and GA's 3-5, the other bright spot was Chris Bootcheck. 1.2 IP, no hits, a walk, and a strikeout. I'll take that from the fifth or sixth reliever every time. Props to Darren Oliver who got Travis Hafner looking in a tough spot as well.

It really was a fun evening, despite the douchebags sitting in front of us for the last few innings. I enjoyed Miller Park, and it was kind of neat to finally attend a game indoors. First time I've ever been in a dome, or at least a retractable roof stadium with it's roof closed. Sight lines could be a tiny bit better, but otherwise it was a really nice park, and it was super easy to get out of the parking lot after the game ended. I wouldn't mind getting up there for another game sometime this season.

In other news, Brendan Donnelly is still kind of a bad ass, and Jose Guillen is still a cocksucker. Donnelly struck out the piece of shit on three pitches, then grabbed his crotch, which set Guillen off. Guillen got run, and Donnelly plunked the next batter. I love baseball.

Pics from Miller Park

Game one of the three game set between the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the Cleveland Indians of Milwaukee.

Santana

Sausages

Bootcheck

Off to Milwaukee

Just bought two tickets for tonight's game. Third base line. Section 126, row 25. $11 per. Not too bad. I've only been to Milwaukee once, and it wasn't a particularly memorable experience (just stopped for dinner before heading over to Madison).

How often do you get a chance to see two American League teams play in a National League ballpark?