Yeah, go ahead and trade for Colon, Feldman or Cahill whenever you’re ready, Jerry. The great Wade LeBlanc experiment appears to be dead on arrival.
As much as we talk about only need six starts from this rotation spot, the Angels can’t afford to have five more starts like this one. That would mean five more guaranteed losses and five more days of guaranteed exhaustion of the bullpen.
Maybe the Angels can try once more to dip into the minors for a solution, but they just saw how realistic it is to have the worst case scenario play out. Why take the chance of seeing it again?
Run Expectancy Rundown
Let’s not blame LeBlanc for everything. After all, it wasn’t his fault that the offense couldn’t do anything. Well, it is probably a little bit his fault since he put them in an early hole and thus put a lot of pressure on the offense to come up with a big inning. Even with that, Kole Calhoun and Erick Aybar were pretty much the entire offense, which has kind of been the case for the last week. Mike Trout had a rough game RE24-wise, but he also made some loud outs, so let’s not panic.
Scioscia tried to avoid Giancarlo Stanton, but he still managed to come up with the crushing blow that really sealed the Angels fate. Christian Yelich was a big part of that as well by getting on base so much to set the table for Stanton.
Starting Pitcher Scores
Just a disaster of a start for LeBlanc. It is hard to imagine him getting the call on Saturday against the A’s. Jarred Cosart was overshadowed by LeBlanc’s awfulness, but he was quite good in this game, just pounding the hell out of the strike zone.
Bullpen Battle
Cory Rasmus was put in a tough spot and made a real mess of it, but you can’t be too mad at a guy for giving up a homer to Stanton. That’s what Stanton does. Mike Morin and Fernando Salas were good in their appearances, but now Morin and Rasmus have both been worked hard again, so there is a decent chance that Rasmus gets demoted for a few days so that they can bring up a fresh arm.
Game Flow
/sad trombone
Halo A-Hole
How appropriate that his headshot is LeBlanc still in a Marlins uniform. He might as well have been playing for them in this game.
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