Game Rewind: Foiled Again – Rangers 8, Angels 5

The Angels came into the game planning on stealing first place from the Rangers only to be foiled.  They would have gotten away with it too if not for that meddling fifth inning!

John Lackey was cruising right along until two outs in the fifth inning and that is when the wheels came off.  Michael Young beat out an infield single (allegedly) to start the rally and a mere seven batters later Lackey was storming off to the showers with his team trailing 6-3.  The Halos made a few valiant attempts at starting up a comeback but chose instead to leave the bases juiced not once but twice.  Perhaps they should’ve saved all that great RISP hitting from the night before for this game.

Now the Angels and Rangers are once again locked in a tie at the top of the AL West and the Angels are left wondering what they have to do make these pesky Rangers go away.  My suggestion: exchange their team doctor for the doctor that was treating Michael Jackson at the time of his death (too soon?).

Good News:

• Juan Rivera continues to rake like an All-Star, it is a shame that nobody was on base for his two home runs.  On the other hand, Frank Francisco has to be having nightmares of Rivera right now as Juan has three dingers in six career at-bats versus Francisco.  Ownage.
• Kendry Morales with his first steal of the year!  Sure he needed a wild pitch at the same time to make it happen, but good for Bam-Bam.  Now, why the Halos ceased stealing bases after the third inning is an entirely different matter.

Bad News:

• Good job, Scioscia.  Your insistence on having Vlad stumble around in the field just when he was starting to hit again has now resulted in him getting hurt… again.  He was barely even doing anything and he managed to tweak his knee and is now day-to-day.
• Ack!  The Matt Palmer bullpen experiment didn’t go so well tonight.  I still have high hopes for Palmer since he has so much movement on his fastball, but his starts have shown that he can often take a few innings to find his command which obviously doesn’t translate well to relief work.
• With how bad the Halo bullpen has been this year, seeing Darren O’Day out there with a microscopic ERA for the Rangers is pretty hard to watch.

Halo Hero:

• John Lackey

Just when you think Big John is back to his dominant self, he forgets that you need three outs to get out of an inning instead of two.  How he fell apart so quickly is beyond me, but clearly Lackey still has a ways to go before being declared fully 100% of his pre-injury self.