Ending an arduous stretch of 20 games in 20 days with one of the most frustrating (but deserved) losses of the season probably wasn’t what the Angels had in mind. Painful as Wednesday’s defeat was, though, it shouldn’t keep the team from spending at least some of its cross-country flight to New York feeling good about the last three weeks. An 11–9 record isn’t great, but it’s a heck of a lot better than it could’ve been had the offense not woken up or had Matt Shoemaker continued to nosedive. Sure, the red-hot Astros have gained a game and a half on the Halos in that span, but that’s still better than the three games they’ve gained on the Mariners and A’s. Twice as good, even!
The main point here is that things could be a whole lot worse right now. You just knew the injury bug was going to finally make it’s way through the clubhouse during that 20-game marathon, so emerging from it with only Collin Cowgill and Mike Morin as real casualties is a win. Can you imagine if both Albert Pujols and Erick Aybar had ended up on the DL? That is some darkest timeline stuff right there.
Houston is rolling right now, but it’s difficult to imagine they’ll keep up this pace all year. On this date last season, the Angels were 5.5 games back of a seemingly unstoppable Oakland juggernaut. Remember how that turned out? There’s still plenty of time for the Angels to step up their game. For now, treading water is better than nothing.
Boxscore Breakdowns
Game 3: Rays 6, Angels 5 (F/10)
Series Takeaways
1) Angels Need To Dial It Down On The Bases
Holy TOOTBLAN, Batman! The Angels have always been aggressive on the basepaths under Mike Scioscia, but what they’re doing this season is lunacy.
If you total up the club’s caught stealing numbers (15) along with the rest of the base-running mistakes they’ve made (an MLB-worst 29), you get 44 outs on the bases. In 54 games (!!). Almost every night then, the Angels are needlessly giving the opposition a free out. And this isn’t a free out like a sac bunt, where the run expectancy dips a bit but runners are still in scoring position. No, this is much, much worse. Take Kole Calhoun‘s attempt to take second on his eighth-inning single last night. If he had stayed at first as Albert Pujols made his (equally ill-advised) move to third, there would have been runners on first and third with no outs. This year, the average run expectancy for that scenario is 1.6666 runs. By running into the out at second, creating a runner-on-third, one-out scenario, Calhoun lowered that expectancy by .7670, nearly a full run. Had he been safe at second, it would have increased the run expectancy by merely .2341. That’s just not worth the risk.
Now, I hardly expect the players to know or really even be aware of the run-expectancy matrix. What I do absolutely expect, though, is for the manager and coaches to be cognizant of it, and to build the team’s baserunning philosophy based on it. Handing playing a chart with a bunch of numbers won’t work, obviously, but saying something like, “Hey, team policy is to never take an extra base in a late-and-close game unless the base coach sends you. If you do, you’ll be fined no matter what” is a painfully simple rule and involves zero stat nerd stuff.
On a related note, Gary Disarcina either needs to have his arms stapled to his sides or take a class in physics.
Green is ball. Red is Freese. Guess who won the race. pic.twitter.com/w4fAVB70kY
— Justin Russo (@FlyByKnite) June 4, 2015
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In no game ever has this scenario turned out well for the runner. DiSar needs to learn either the speed of his own players or the arm strength of the opposing ones. Or both, if that’s not too much to ask.
2) Dingers Are Great, But Some OBP Would Be Nice Too
The Halos walloped another seven home runs in the three-game set, bringing their total up to 16 for the week. The recent dinger frenzy, along with 11 doubles and a lone triple, has raised the team’s slugging percentage 25 points in seven days—from .360 to .385. They’re still looking up at league average (.395), but it’s not quite the strain on the neck it was just a week ago.
Where things are still pretty pitiful is in the OBP department, where they sit at a paltry .299 as a team. That number’s gone up as well in the last week—by nine points!—but there are still some very big concerns. Part of the team’s struggles to get on base can be attributed to their .276 BABIP, which is nearly 30 points lower than last year’s mark, but not all of it. It takes more than “it’s just bad luck” to explain why an entire team has turned into Mark Trumbo clones overnight.
Take the team’s walk rate. The Halos have worked free passes in 7.1% of their plate appearances this season—not terrible, but not quite average either. This rate might be fine if the roster was built like Kansas City’s is, but it’s not. Nearly every guy in the Angels’ everyday lineup is supposed to have solid plate discipline. That just about all of them are walking less than ever this season is a big red flag.
In 150-200 plate appearances, you’d expect some level of variation in numbers like these. But to have every guy with above-average plate discipline (other than Calhoun) take a dive? That seems to be more than random variance.
Don Baylor talked a lot this spring about cutting back on the team’s strikeout numbers by attacking pitches earlier in the count and by shortening swings when two strikes rolled around. This attack-early approach has done jack squat to actually curb the team’s strikeouts—19.9% in 2015 vs. 20.1% in 2014—but it might very well be eating away at their walks. The only Angels who are seeing even an average number of pitches per plate appearance (3.81) this season are Mike Trout, Chris Iannetta, Efren Navarro, and David Freese. Everyone else is swinging free and not reaping benefits. Again, most of the team is being way too aggressive. (I’m sensing a theme here.)
3) Cam Bedrosian Is Here To Stay(?)
The Angels have done a pretty terrible job of introducing Cam Bedrosian to the big leagues over the last year. In his first cup of coffee, he was thrust almost immediately into high-leverage duty, which did not go well. Cue the demotion. A month later he was back up and executing in less harrowing situations, only to be optioned back to Triple-A two days later. Another month later he came up again pitched well, this time lasting a week before being demoted a third time. When he came up the fourth time, two weeks later, it seemed for sure like that’d be the final one. Nope. Optioned two days later only to be recalled the next week when rosters expanded. In all, Bedrosian tallied 19.1 IP in five separate big-league stints, never amassing more than six appearances in any one time with the club.
This year it looked like it was going to be more of the same for Bedrock Junior. Cam got a brief shot at the end of April, throwing three scoreless innings in two appearances, but was again back in the minors a week later.
This most recent call-up, though, seems like it has legs. Bedrosian has pitched in six of the team’s last 11 games, with the only blemish coming in his very first outing on May 24, when he was sleep deprived and jet-lagged from a cross-country, red-eye flight the night before. He’s kept the opposition off the scoreboard in the five appearances since, tallying more than three outs in three of those outings.
The fastball still looks to be straight as an arrow, but he seems to have a knack for locating it well (when he’s not overthrowing), which should keep it from traveling 500 feet most of the time. If he can reel in that big, diving curveball some and get more comfortable with his changeup, the sky’s the limit. For now, let’s just cross our fingers he gets to stay in Anaheim.
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