Boxscore Breakdown #136: Taking it easy – Angels 7, Rangers 0

For the first time in weeks, the Angels had themselves a nice, easy win. From wire-to-wire, the Angels owned every aspect of the game and didn’t experience even a single moment of “uh oh, here we go.” There was no threat of a starter allowing a big inning. There was no barely avoided bullpen meltdown. There was no defensive gaffe that put the Angels on the precipice of seeing their lead disappear. It was the Angels’ biggest margin of victory since July 21st, when they also won 7-0.

Angels 7, Rangers 0

Run Expectancy Rundown
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1-W4gDAc5KZagd9-ciAeJCzimnq4Z2EoPtmcYPYhXxuY/pubchart” query=”oid=1976391661&format=interactive” width=”623″ height=”389″ /] Yay! Mike Trout hit a homer! The drought is over! No, not that drought. California still has no water, but they do have Trout homers again. The actual big producer in this game was Taylor Featherston, who was clearly trying to atone for his costly misplay in the previous game. Even when he did something bad like getting caught stealing it resulted in a run scoring. This might seriously have been Featherston’s career-best day. David Freese hit some too, so that’s another thing that Angels have going for them.

[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1-W4gDAc5KZagd9-ciAeJCzimnq4Z2EoPtmcYPYhXxuY/pubchart” query=”oid=1154832181&format=interactive” width=”620″ height=”341″ /] Rougned Odor and Shin-Soo Choo had the two hits, everyone else just walked a lot. Adrian Beltre was once again the big rally killer.

Starting Pitcher Scores
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1-W4gDAc5KZagd9-ciAeJCzimnq4Z2EoPtmcYPYhXxuY/pubchart” query=”oid=161400381&format=interactive” width=”584″ height=”293″ /] Hector Santiago obviously struggled with the walk, but he did do a good job of inducing a lot of soft contact (35.7%) in the game. It wasn’t pretty, but we’ll take it. Colby Lewis pitched poorly in the Big A, as per usual.

Bullpen Battle
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1-W4gDAc5KZagd9-ciAeJCzimnq4Z2EoPtmcYPYhXxuY/pubchart” query=”oid=1141913419&format=interactive” width=”620″ height=”315″ /] Nice work from some of the lesser members of the Angels bullpen. The Texas reliever also prevented this one from becoming a laugher.

Game Flow
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1-W4gDAc5KZagd9-ciAeJCzimnq4Z2EoPtmcYPYhXxuY/pubchart” query=”oid=451609002&format=interactive” width=”619″ height=”316″ /] It took two innings to get going, but once they did, it was a nice easy coast to victory.

Halo Hero

He didn’t have the biggest day on offense, but he set the tone early and the lesser players followed his lead.