After sweeping the A’s, all the Angels had to do was keep pace with them and they’d be assured the AL West title. This isn’t exactly what they had in mind though. Or at least I hope not.
Houston isn’t good, but they aren’t a pushover anymore. Still, getting mini-swept by them is a thing that shouldn’t have happened. Scoring a combined four runs in the two games definitely shouldn’t have happened either. I wouldn’t go so far as to call these two losses major cause for concern so much as a wake-up call.
Sweeping the A’s might’ve inspired a false sense of confidence, but they actually have some real issues they need to address. We saw the big issue on Tuesday, that being C.J. Wilson, and then saw the other big issue, the sputtering offense, on Wednesday. They’ve got 24 games to clean things up and hope that they don’t foul up the division lead in the process.
Run Expectancy Rundown
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Oh, right. In the euphoria of the Oakland sweep I kinda forgot that the Angels offense has been pretty sluggish since the All-Star break. After getting four-hit, I remember now. Thanks for the reminder, Collin McHugh. On the bright side, Kole Calhoun looks to have snapped out of his slump. That’s pretty much it. Everyone else sucked.
Starting Pitcher Scores
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A short but solid outing for Jered Weaver, which is kind of becoming the norm for him in the post-ace portion of his career. On the other side, Collin McHugh baffled Angel hitters for the third time this season. He’s been on fire lately, so I guess that eases a little bit of the pain, but only a little bit.
Bullpen Battle
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Jason Grilli inheriting a runner and then getting three outs on five pitches is impressive. It would’ve been more impressive had one of the outs not been a sac bunt though. Fernando Salas followed that up by having his scoreless streak come crashing to a halt.
For the Astros, the bullpen once again forgot that they were supposed to be garbage. That was unfortunate.
Game Flow
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The Angels had chances in the first and third, but only got one run out of them. After that, there wasn’t much that got going. The Astros weren’t exactly a house of fire either, but they cashed in their limited scoring chances.
Halo A-Hole
This is one where is seems unfair to blame just one person, but Albert had the worst day of all the people having very bad days.
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