Game Recap 7/21/11: That’s How It’s Done

In you’re faces Texas Rangers, the Angels can win ball games in more than one way. While you simply rely on offense to bring home your wins we can pull em home with our arms AND our bats. Last night was a testimony to how good this offense can be, while today was all about our pitching, which quickly proving to be the dominant rotation in the AL West, if not the whole AL. 

Angels 1 Rangers 0 

I haven’t seen the Angels pull together this many 1-0 wins in a while, mostly because of the blowpen. Ever since Fernando Rodney went on the DL this team has been winning a lot of close games, now whether that be coincidence or correlation I’m not too sure, but I know that he is too much of a burden on this team to carry him any further. It’s become obvious that he has no place left on this team, he won’t be closing out games and Downs has firmly entrenched himself as the go to set up man. Right now we have found a formula that is working, working great at that, and Sosh has been tinkering with the formula for the longest time. The last thing I want to see is Fernando Rodney come back and screw all of that up.

Game Notes

• I didn’t watch today’s game in it’s entirety, so I can’t say for sure whether it was a stale or exciting pitchers duel, but it was a pitchers duel nonetheless. The last two games in this series has gone exactly how I predicted they would, yesterday with the offensive overdrive and today with the tense pitchers duel. C.J Wilson dominated the Angels as I expected, though he couldn’t come up with the win due to sloppy defense on the part of Endy Chavez and bad pitch control. Weaver wove through the Rangers, as always, and came up with a HUGE victory today. The climb to the top may be a long one, but with players of Weavers caliber on this team it won’t be a hard one. 
• The offensive explosion from last night didn’t carry over to today, the offense fizzled our as fast as they caught fire. The only real offense this team displayed, if you can call it offense, was a double by Maicer Izturis. Other then that Mark Trumbo came away with a single, which makes the Total Base count 3 for today. I’d be disappointed, but I can’t bring myself to be knowing that this is what C.J Wilson does to the Angels everytime he faces them. As big of a game that this was for this team, not very many noteworthy things happened, it was rather uneventful. That’s Angels baseball for you.

Halo Hero

 
Without Endy Chavez and his critical error that put the Angels on top 1-0 this victory would have never happened. This game would have turned into just another extra innings nightmare, a nightmare the Angels don’t need to experience for at least another week. Thanks for gift-wrapping this one for us champ, well be sure to send a thank you card for your efforts sometime in October.