There are only so many ways to talk about how awful a team’s offense is before it becomes a stale and frustrating topic. No one wants to hear over and over again how bad something is—they just want it to get better so they can talk about positive things. When that doesn’t happen, though, we’re left with nothing to do but retread over the same somber points.
To wit: The Angels have scored just 57 runs through their first 19 games of the 2016 season. That isn’t just the fewest runs scored of any team in baseball—including 12 teams who have played 16-18 games—it’s also less than half the total the Cubs have scored (119) in just as many games. The offense is averaging a measly three runs per game, which goes a long way to explain why the team is just 4-7 over its last 11 despite its starters allowing two runs or fewer in nine of those games.
If this team wants to think about contention at all into the summer, the offense needs to come to life. Soon.
Game 1: Garrett Richards vs. Ian Kennedy
It’s been a broken record with Garrett Richards through his first four starts of 2016: He’s pitched well enough to win but hasn’t, thanks to minimal run support (i.e. six runs total), and he seems to be one small modification away from getting everything to click. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether Monday night will be the night where the breaks finally go Richards’ way, but the Royals will no doubt be tough.
Ian Kennedy is another guy looking to regain his ace status from years past, but for whom it’s already clicked back into place. Everyone laughed when KC dropped $70 million on the 31-year-old right-hander this winter, but it’s paying off in a big way so far this year. Kennedy has always had a great K/BB ratio but this year has finally been able to pair it with low hit and home-run rates, resulting in a 1.35 ERA through three starts. It’s amazing what can happen when a fly-ball pitcher goes from having the worst outfield defense in baseball behind him to the best.
Game 2: Jered Weaver vs. Edinson Volquez
Jered Weaver returns to the friendly confines of Angel Stadium on Tuesday after trading bad and good starts on the road. He’s still fooling almost no one to the point of a swing-and-miss, but he did locate well enough to elicit a bunch of weak contact in his last start against the White Sox. Weaver isn’t going to strike out many Royals no matter how hard he’s throwing, but he might be able to keep them off balance just so if he can consistently maintain the 82-84 mph he was hitting last week.
Kennedy isn’t the only KC starter pitching like an ace in 2016. Edinson Volquez has yet to allow more than two runs in any of his four starts thus far, and his peripherals have improved across the board. If you needed proof that Ray Searage’s magic works even after guys have left Pittsburgh, Volquez is it. Dude had a career 4.75 ERA in 850 innings over parts of nine seasons heading into 2013. Since then, he owns a 3.19 ERA in just under 418 innings, with more than half of those coming in Kansas City.
Game 3: Nick Tropeano vs. Chris Young
Nick Tropeano has been quietly consistent in his first three starts of 2016, acting as a sort of antithesis to Matt Shoemaker‘s polarizing outings. The 25-year-old might never have the efficiency or overpowering stuff needed to pitch late into games, but he’s shown an ability to reliably get to the sixth while keeping the game close. He’s averaged just 5⅓ per outing in seven starts for the Halos since last September but has a 2.23 ERA in that span.
It looked like Chris Young’s up-in-the-zone magic had finally worn off after three miserable starts to begin 2016, but then he went and fanned 10 Orioles in just six innings his last time out. Young still owns a rough 6.41 ERA, but that’s buoyed by a highly uncharacteristic .339 BABIP. As the extremest of the extreme fly-ball pitchers, Young’s BABIP usually hovers consistently around .250. If anyone’s going to help him bring it back down, it’s this Angels offense.
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