Boxscore Breakdown #88: Little League – Angels 10, Mariners 3

I took my six-year old and her friend from her T-ball team to this game in an effort to show them what a real baseball game was like. The Mariners apparently didn’t get the memo because a Little League game broke out with the Mariners throwing and kicking the ball all over the place. Now my daughter thinks she can play for the Mariners, which probably isn’t that far from the truth.

More importantly, the Angels won and are now in first place, which is a pretty nice way to wrap up the first half of the season. For all the weirdness that they’ve seen this season, getting to go into the break as the division leader has to be uplifting for them.

Angels 10, Mariners 3

Run Expectancy Rundown
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1tl3T3f5O0N8-TGo8Fsq5v3vpsBoeh2e91SAjmRqnAJk/pubchart” query=”oid=1976391661&format=interactive” width=”623″ height=”389″ /] Erick Aybar could do no wrong. Even when he laid down a sacrifice bunt, it turned into runs. David Freese was inches away from having a great day. He had a ground-rule double that would’ve driven in runs had it not just hopped over the wall. He then had another double that just barely clipped the top of the wall and stayed in play. C.J. Cron remains confusingly hot.

[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1tl3T3f5O0N8-TGo8Fsq5v3vpsBoeh2e91SAjmRqnAJk/pubchart” query=”oid=1154832181&format=interactive” width=”620″ height=”341″ /] Kyle Seager tried to carry the Seattle offense, but no man is that strong. He actually did get a little help from Seth Smith, Austin Jackson and Brad Miller, but Mark Trumbo and Logan Morrison sabotaged a lot of that.

Starting Pitcher Scores
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1tl3T3f5O0N8-TGo8Fsq5v3vpsBoeh2e91SAjmRqnAJk/pubchart” query=”oid=161400381&format=interactive” width=”584″ height=”293″ /] Andrew Heaney was tremendous once again, but the degree of difficulty wasn’t exactly elevated. I can’t tell if Taijuan Walker was good or bad. He missed several bats, but he did give up a lot of well-hit balls, but he also had a living blooper reel playing defense behind him, which makes life difficult for any pitcher.

Bullpen Battle
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1tl3T3f5O0N8-TGo8Fsq5v3vpsBoeh2e91SAjmRqnAJk/pubchart” query=”oid=1141913419&format=interactive” width=”620″ height=”315″ /] Trevor Gott had a rough day and Matt Shoemaker made a surprise cameo in relief. That cameo probably just confirmed that his time in the rotation is done for now. The Seattle bullpen was pretty lousy across the board.

Game Flow
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheets/d/1tl3T3f5O0N8-TGo8Fsq5v3vpsBoeh2e91SAjmRqnAJk/pubchart” query=”oid=451609002&format=interactive” width=”619″ height=”316″ /] The Mariners only made life interesting for Heaney once early on. The game stopped being interesting after the six-run inning for the Halos. That’s when I had to resort to buying cotton candy to try and keep the kids from completely losing interest in what was going on on the field.

Halo Hero

A big game for the offense, yes, but Heaney was dominant and efficient once again.