If ever there was a time for the Angels offense to wake the hell up, this is it. The team was fortunate to scrounge a few low-scoring wins from the Indians, Orioles, White Sox this month, but cannot expect that to happen against the high-powered Blue Jays.
This series has all the makings of a ships-passing-in-the-night encounter, but where one of the ships doesn’t actually pass because it capsized when someone accidentally dropped anchor. Toronto is 16–4 in its last 20 games, and is averaging 5.2 runs per game in that span; Anaheim, meanwhile, is 8–12 in its last 20 and averaging just 2.9 runs per game. If all continues as is, this series will be a bloody disaster. The Angels will be obliterated by cannon fire while the Blue Jays sail into the postseason riding the gale-force winds created by the swings of their dinger armada.
If the Angels want to have any chance of winning this series, or at least not get swept, they’ve gotta remember how to hit with runners in scoring position. The club is an unfathomable 22-for-132 (.167) in RISP situations this month, and 10-for-83 (.120) in their last 11 contests. That the club won three of four from the White Sox is a cotdamn miracle when you consider they were 2-for-21 with RISP in the series. That kind of “production” isn’t gonna fly when Josh Donaldson, Troy Tulowitzki, and Jose Bautista are blasting holes in the marine layer with impunity, so the Halos have to figure out a way to overcome their RISP aversion. At this point, offerings to any and all gods are being accepted.
Game 1: Hector Santiago vs. David Price
This game has disaster written all over it. David Price has been nails for the Jays since coming over at the trade deadline, posting a 1.61 ERA and a nearly 5-to-1 K/BB ratio in three starts. If he’s able to do that against the potent lineups of the Yankees and Twins, I’m not sure I want to know what’s in store for the Angels on Friday. Sure, they beat Price earlier in the year, but that was before the team seemingly decided it didn’t want to hit lefty pitching anymore.
For all the talk about needing a strong lefty bat to balance the lineup vs right-handed pitching, it’s been southpaws that have given the Angels the most trouble the past few months. The team’s .672 OPS vs LHP is now the second-worst mark in the American League, and nearly 150 points (!) worse than the Blue Jays’ league-leading mark of .815, which does not portend good things for Hector Santiago.
Santiago has come back to earth a bit since the All-Star break, but he’s still sporting a sub-3.00 ERA and is coming off a strong seven innings against the first-place Royals. Hector managed to hold his own against the Jays in May—at Rogers Centre, no less!—but boy does this look like an awful matchup on paper. A team that slaughters lefties and likes hitting dingers going up against the most extreme fly-ball lefty in baseball? No thank you.
Game 2: Andrew Heaney vs. Marco Estrada
Oh look, another lefty starter to pit against the righty-heavy Blue Jays offense. How fortunate…
Any team might find a way to hold the Jays’ offense at bay for a night or two, but trotting lefties out to the mound on consecutive days does not seem the optimal way to do so. The Angels are the victims of an unceasing August schedule here, with no off day in the past two weeks, so it’s not like they could really shuffle their arms around. C’est la vie.
Heaney remains the team’s most reliable arm, but he hasn’t been quite as crisp lately as he was in his first six starts. Some of that is simply the normal ebb and flow of performance—some days you have it, some days you don’t—but with a young pitcher it’s worth wondering if fatigue is becoming a factor as well. Between Triple-A and Anaheim, Heaney’s now at 141.1 IP on the year, which is about 25 innings shy of his (career-high) total from 2014 and right about the point last season when his performance started to dip. There aren’t any glaring red flags right now to make this a big concern—his velocity and release point are holding steady—but it is something to keep an eye on, especially if the Halos remain in postseason contention.
Marco Estrada has probably been Toronto’s best starter this season (non-Price division), which is pretty impressive when you consider he spent the first month of the season as the club’s longman out of the ‘pen. Estrada has been close to unhittable on multiple occasions this season, thanks in large part to his .236 BABIP-against.
How a fly-ball pitcher like Estrada finds success in a park like Rogers Centre is beyond me, especially with his sub-par walk rate and a career-worst strikeout rate, but whatever he’s doing is working. I wouldn’t bank on it lasting, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he one-hits the Angels either.
Game 3: Garrett Richards vs. R.A. Dickey
Garrett Richards was a ground-ball machine against the White Sox on Tuesday, getting 18 grounders to just four balls in the air over seven innings of work. I don’t know what Richards did to get the Chicago lineup to hit everything into the earth, but let’s hope he can channel it again on Sunday against the homer-happy Jays. Richards has been pretty good about keeping the ball in the park this season (0.8 HR/9), but nowhere near where he was last year (an MLB-best 0.3 HR/9). He doesn’t need to lead the league in homer stinginess every year to be an effective starter, but being that guy for a night would certainly help with Toronto in town.
R.A. Dickey was on a bit of a roll prior to his last start, putting together a 1.64 ERA over 49.1 IP in seven starts. The stretch briefly brought his ERA under 4.00, but a five-run outing in his most recent start pushed it back up. The Angels have to hope that Dickey takes the mound again Sunday and not the guy who dominated in July and who tossed a complete game against them in May—his first CG since June 2013.
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