Boxscore Breakdown Game #40: Baby’s first walk-off – Angels 6, Rays 5

<![CDATA[Awww, how cute! Mikey made his first walk-off homer. Quick! Someone take a picture and save the bat and ball so we can have them bronzed.

As good as Mike Trout has been in his career, he somehow had never managed to come up with a walk-off hit, much less a walk-off homer. Some of that was just lack of opportunity, but some of it was slowly morphing into a narrative that Trout was somehow “unclutch.” Welp, he’s clutch now, suckers!

Run Expectancy Rundown

Naturally, Trout strikes out twice, but totally saves his day with the walk-off three-run jack. Whether or not he is on his way to being fixed, it is pretty clear that even a broken Trout is still dangerous. Even with Trout plating half the runs himself, a lot of other members of the lineup made big contributions, including Raul Ibanez with a pinch-hit RBI. It is almost like he is made for that role. Poor C.J. Cron ended up on the negative side of the ledger after getting robbed of an RBI single and a two-run homer.

I don’t know who Brandon Guyer is but he hurt the Angels with both his bat and his glove in this one. James Loney and Wil Myers were right behind him. Desmond Jennings and Sean Rodriguez both had pretty tough nights.

Starting Pitcher Scores

Tyler Skaggs wasn’t great in this one. He wasn’t awful as many of the hits he allowed in that rough sixth inning were just barely out of the reach of gloves. Still, Scioscia should’ve known better than to send him back out for the seventh inning. Erik Bedard was annoyingly good but he was pleasantly not durable, leaving with two outs in the sixth to turn the game over to a very leaky Rays bullpen for 3+ innings.

Bullpen Battle

The Angels bullpen did a fine job of keeping the game close, though Kevin Jepsen was more lucky than good in that regard. The Rays bullpen, however, was seemingly going out of their way to blow the game. It was really a miracle that it took until the ninth inning for them to complete the blown game.

Game Flow

This is my favorite graph of the year. The Angels were basically toast entering the ninth inning. Even after they scored a run before Trout came to the dish, their win expectancy was just at 35%. Then the ball flew over the fence and the graph flew to 100%.

Halo Hero

Trout obviously gets this honor thanks to his walk-off dinger but I will thank him to NEVER JUMP ON HOME PLATE IN CELEBRATION AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!]]>