Boxscore Breakdown #36: Shoe makes positive steps – Angels 6, Orioles 1

First Jered Weaver gets himself right, now Matt Shoemaker looks to be taking steps in a positive direction as he dominated over seven innings in Baltimore. Shoe allowed just three hits and one walk in the unlikely pitching duel with Ubaldo Jimenez.

Naturally, one of the three hits Shoemaker surrendered was a dinger on an absolute meatball up in the zone. So now there is still that little bit of doubt remaining in the back of our minds. On the bright side, the pitch that got clobbered was a splitchange that didn’t split instead of a poorly located fastball which had been plaguing Matt previously. This is progress and it comes just in time to dispel any talk of Shoemaker getting booted to the minors before that talk even really began.

Angels 6, Orioles 1

Run Expectancy Rundown
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1diA5Rub_JTU37Ih93P_njaTUQD_mqEimCV9UcDEjJZo/pubchart” query=”oid=1976391661&format=interactive” width=”623″ height=”389″ /] The Angels eventually scratched out six runs, but make no mistake, this was not a good offensive performance. Yeah, Trout and Freese both went deep, but the Angels’ “big” rally in the seventh came on three infield singles (one of which was actually a misplay by Machado) and a looper by Marc Krauss. There was no offensive outburst there, just an insane amount of BABIP luck.

[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1diA5Rub_JTU37Ih93P_njaTUQD_mqEimCV9UcDEjJZo/pubchart” query=”oid=1154832181&format=interactive” width=”620″ height=”341″ /] Steve Pearce took a break from being a colossal bust in 2015 to launch a cookie up and over the middle into the stands. That was all that happened for the O’s other than the bottom half of their lineup competing with the Angels to be one of the least productive bottom halves of a lineup in baseball.

Starting Pitcher Scores
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1diA5Rub_JTU37Ih93P_njaTUQD_mqEimCV9UcDEjJZo/pubchart” query=”oid=161400381&format=interactive” width=”584″ height=”293″ /] This was vintage 2014 Shoemaker we saw. He pounded the strike zone and missed bats. He needed just 84 pitches to get through seven and probably would’ve gone longer, but I suspect Scioscia wanted to hook him before anything bad happened to damage the confidence that this start just rebuilt. I don’t know what version of Ubaldo Jimenez this was. It was a good version, but I’m confused at him being effective and not walking a bunch of people at the same time.

Bullpen Battle
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1diA5Rub_JTU37Ih93P_njaTUQD_mqEimCV9UcDEjJZo/pubchart” query=”oid=1141913419&format=interactive” width=”620″ height=”315″ /] Perfect work from the Angels bullpen. I can hardly even remember why we were worried about Joe Smith anymore. The Angels pounded the hell out of Zach Britton, which I’m sure will just be chalked up to him “lacking focus” in a non-save situation, which is a pile of crap, but whatever helps him sleep at night, I guess.

Game Flow
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1diA5Rub_JTU37Ih93P_njaTUQD_mqEimCV9UcDEjJZo/pubchart” query=”oid=451609002&format=interactive” width=”619″ height=”316″ /] The Angels looked to be on the slow road to a shutout or one of the super boring scoreless extra innings games before the Pearce homer woke everyone in the ballpark up and actual things started happening on the field. Fortunately, all those things favored the Angels.

Halo Hero

The Beard is back… or at least it is starting to look that way.