I keep waiting for some kind of sign that the Angels offense is going to turn things around. Not that they’ll suddenly be a top-to-bottom wrecking crew like the Blue Jays or Cubs, but that they’ll at least stop looking like far and away the worst offense in baseball. Every time they look like they might be waking up, though, they immediately go back to flailing around and generally sucking. Mike Trout used to seemingly be able to bring the team to life through sheer will and determination, but even a 4-for-4 night from Trout can’t make the team competitive anymore. All of which is to say: I think I’m done waiting now—this team is officially toast.
This team is non-competitive so frequently that it’s just not fun to watch anymore. In 28 games this month, the Angels have allowed opposing starters to rack up a whopping 21 quality starts. As you’d expect, the team is a woeful 5–16 in those starts, and would be winless in those games but for the grace of their own starting pitching. Lest you think this is merely some fluke stretch of incompetence against opposing starters, the Angels were also on the receiving end of 21 quality starts in May, and are the owners of an AL-worst 78 quality starts-against on the year. For reasons that I fail to comprehend, the Halos have had better numbers against relievers than all but a few other teams—and their OPS swing of nearly +40 vs. RP is almost the exact opposite of the league norm—the problem is they just can’t ever get to the bullpen. Unless David Freese returns to the lineup this week and immediately channels his World Series MVP self, this isn’t going to change.
And don’t expect the turn in the calendar to mean the team can just automatically hit the reset button and put August behind them. First of all, no one even owns calendars anymore, so it’s not as though they can ‘X’ out the final days of the month and tear August off the wall like some movie montage. Second, this tailspin hasn’t been limited to the confines of the Gregorian calendar to this point, so it’s unlikely it’ll start now. The tanking started way back on July 23, when the team closed out the month with a 1–7 stretch. That’s now been extended to 11–25, dropping the Angels all the way to .500 for the first time since June 26.
Any MLB team has the capability of going on a strong run over a 30-game stretch, but expecting it from a club that’s posted a collective sub-.690 OPS in three of the season’s five months seems like some extremely wishful thinking. Even in a low run-scoring environment, expecting a team to win while averaging fewer than three runs a game is delusional. I’ll keep watching, because it’s still baseball, but my rooting interests are now shifted. The postseason “spoiler” may not be a real thing, but that doesn’t mean we can’t pretend it is in order to take our minds off a disappointing season and the massive changes likely coming this winter.
Boxscore Breakdowns
Series Takeaways
The Trouble With “Staying Positive”
At what point do players spot believing themselves when they talk about “staying positive” in the midst of a stretch of poor play? I wrote a bit following the last series about how the team’s frustrations seemed to be boiling over in a non-constructive manner, and that was in a series they won. I can’t imagine what kind of internal seething is going on now, after blowing two more late leads and having even the friggin’ sun work against them.
We often gripe about the trite clichés that athletes espouse daily, but more often than not they really believe them, or at least some aspect of them. When it comes to things like “we know we’re a good team” and “we just have to stay positive,” there’s gotta be a point when that truly becomes the lip service it always seems to be. There’s no way someone can continue believing those things after weeks of things simply getting worse and worse, can there? This stretch of ineptitude has to be taking its toll on the team psyche, and at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up having some influence on Mike Scioscia’s decision of whether or not to exercise his contract opt-out this winter. No one wants to work in a toxic environment if they don’t have to.
C.J. Cron Is … Reliable?
I’ll be the first to admit I probably wrote C.J. Cron off too quickly when he struggled out of the gate this season. I’m still hesitant to believe he’s anything more than a replacement-level player, but I also can’t just ignore that he’s been the club’s most reliable offensive player over the last 50 games or so. Cron is batting .336/.376/.568 in 157 plate appearances since July 1, and hasn’t gone hitless in consecutive starts since before Trout’s wrist injury. He went 4-for-10 in Cleveland over the weekend.
His walk rate is as awful as its ever been, but he’s really been the only guy making contact on a consistent basis over the last month. He might swing at everything under the sun, but at least he’s hitting the damn ball. His overall production on the year (113 OPS+) is now right in line with his numbers from last season (111), which is more than you can say for the rest of the Angels lineup sans Trout.
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