Game Recap 5/2/11: It Had To Be You – Red Sox 9, Angels 5

They say all good things must come to an end, but when it comes to the Angels, the saying actually runs a little longer.  It is more like “all good things must come to an end in Fenway Park.”  To absolutely no one’s surprise, the Red Sox took advantage of Angel blunders and brought Jered Weaver’s dream start to a screeching halt.  It just had to be Boston, didn’t it?

Red Sox 9, Angels 5

For the first time this season, Jered Weaver wasn’t totally dominant and it ended up costing him.  Battling the after-effects of a stomach virus, Weaver still turned in a quality start, but clearly didn’t have his best stuff as he labored through six innings of work.  I suspect in most cities, that effort would have been good enough to put him in winning position, but since this was Boston, it wasn’t.  As has been the case for pretty much the entire Mike Scioscia era, the Angels suffered one brain fart after another with many of them proving costly.

The first big blunder was Maicer Izturis getting thrown out at second on the very first play of the game.  Izturis should have been safe had he not over-slid the base, so you can’t really blame him too much, but it ultimately cost the Angels a run as the next two batters smacked hits of their own.  The real mistake though was Torii Hunter getting too aggressive at the plate that same inning and spoiling any notion of a rally by way of his 11th GIDP of the year.

Torii’s mental mistakes struck again in the sixth inning.  With the Angels losing their lead in the previous half inning, Torii obviously wanted to make something happen after his leadoff double and tried to take third on a grounder to first by Alberto Callaspo.  I think we all know how that ended (NEVER MAKE THE FIRST OUT AT THIRD!!!!!!).

Every team has bad games and makes mistakes, but for whatever reason, the Halos just lose their minds in Beantown and tonight was no different.

Game Notes:

• Seriously, Torii, 11 GIDPs?  It is only May 2nd, how does that happen?!?!  Some guys don’t even hit into that many doubleplays in an entire season.  Some of that is definitely bad luck, but I can’t help but think that a big part of it is Torii trying to do too much at the plate and be a hero instead of just trying to stroke a single back up the middle.
• Can someone please explain to me why Francisco Rodriguez is still on the active roster?  Has he done anything even remotely impressive this year?  I know that Michael Kohn and Kevin Jepsen are still struggling with consistency in the minors, but either one of them would be better than Wolviriguez has shown in his brief time in the bigs this year.
• Speaking of crappy relievers, Hisanori Takahashi has been rightly reduced to a LOOGY, but he isn’t even doing that very well.  He faced three batters and allowed hits to two of them.  One of those hits was a well-hit double to a lefty and the other was to Jason Varitek who was hitting righty, but he can barely hit at all anymore so it almost negates the platoon advantage.
• Vernon Wells hit a homer!!!!  I really want to get excited about that, but Wells always seems to just tease us and never actually get hot.  Call me when he string together a solid week of offensive performance and maybe then I’ll start believing in him.

Halo A-Hole

Leaders need to lead by example, Torii.  It is time to start playing looser and smarter and maybe then the rest of the team will follow your lead and quit choking in Boston.