It’s fun how quickly the narrative can shift for a baseball team in the season’s first few weeks. When the Angels’ current road trip started, there was a lot of hand-wringing about the offense getting off to a slow start yet again and whether the rotation could hold together in its battered state. Four days and three wins later, those concerns have subsided considerably, replaced by plaudits for Mike Trout, Kole Calhoun, and the suddenly robust and effective pitching staff.
That’s not to say those initial worries have disappeared completely. The Angels still have some of the league’s worst numbers offensively—only three home runs!—and the rotation remains held together by a thread, but those concerns become less important when the team manages to win in spite of them. If they can pull out victories while playing at their worst in certain facets of the game, that would seem to bode well for when they eventually start performing up to their potential, or at least to an average level.
Boxscore Breakdowns
Game 1: Angels 4, A’s 1
Game 2: Angels 5, A’s 4
Game 3: Angels 5, A’s 1
Series Takeaways
Simmons Is Maybe Making Too Much Contact?
Andrelton Simmons has always been a high-contact player—his 88% contact rate over the last three years is 21st among qualified players, and his 9.0% strikeout rate is third. This year, though, he’s taken it to another level—through eight games, his contact rate is 94.4% and his strikeout rate is 2.9%. To put it in simpler terms: Of the 54 pitches Simmons has swung at this season, he’s missed only three. Two of those came in Wednesday’s game. His lone strikeout came in his very first plate appearance of the season, when his bat never moved from his shoulder.
A lot of contact can be great, but it isn’t always a good thing. On Tuesday, Simmons saw just five pitches in four plate appearances, dropping his pitches per plate appearance to 2.5—far and away the lowest of any player with at least 25 PA. This seems to indicate he’s swinging at anything and everything near the strike zone, and not necessarily waiting for his pitch. His 40% O-Swing rate, which is 19th in the league, backs this up. If Simmons wants to get better results from his high-contact approach, he might want to see a few more pitches to make sure he’s swinging at the best one.
Greg Mahle Is Here To Stay
Yeah, it was just one inning, but man did Greg Mahle look good on Wednesday. His ability to change arm angles and release points at will is a skill that very few possess and make him a force to be reckoned with. I can’t wait for him to become a late-inning weapon against the likes of Robinson Cano, Prince Fielder, and Colby Rasmus.
His severe side-arm approach will undoubtedly make him more vulnerable to right-handed pitching, but I wouldn’t rule out Mahle picking up a weapon to utilize effectively against righties a la Joe Smith and left-handed batters. He certainly has the right guy around to teach him.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
