Game Recap 7/31/12: Sweep City!!! – Angels 6 Rangers 2

Yeah I know it may seem too early to start throwing out the word sweep, but is it really???

I don’t feel this way.

With the way the Angels have been playing this series I see the Angels having an incredibly good shot at sweeping the Rangers this series. The Angels have been outplaying the Rangers on every level. What the Rangers do to the Angels is finally being done back to them in great fashion, especially in Arlington. The Angels are hitting like the Rangers while the Rangers have been going through an ugly breakdown as of recently. The fans have even resorted to boo’ing their star player, Josh Hamilton. The pitching is breaking down and it’s getting ugly with the Rangers, almost like it was for the Angels in April, and the Angels decided to come around to Arlington at the perfect time.

A win tomorrow and the Angels will steamroll through the Rangers, but with the win this evening we can sleep happily tonight.

Angels 6 Rangers 2 

Game Recap

• It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that tonight was going to be an Angel victory, if anything this could have been the only realistic looking win against the Rangers aside from the C.J Wilson start since Garrett Richards and Ervin Santana were slated for the other two starts. Jered Weaver did something he struggled to do earlier in the season, get a strong quality start in Arlington. Weaver’s last start in Texas ended with 8 earned runs, but tonight? 6 innings of two run ball, in an extreme hitters park. Now the Angels are only 3 games behind the Rangers, and with a possible sweep laying ahead the Angels might be in the best striking position they’ve been in all year. One game behind the Rangers, a beaten team struggling to hold on the division, with not only the Angels but the Athletics bearing down hard on them. Sounds to me like the pressure could be getting to the Rangers, in not today then someday soon.

• Mike Trout and Albert Pujols. Again. These two guys have been feeding off of each other all season, Pujols gets to hit with Trout on base for him the majority of the time while Trout has legitimate batting threat, probably the most legitimate batting threat of the last decade, batting right behind him. Doesn’t hurt that an always strong Torii Hunter is the number 2 hitter in that deadly little combination. Mike Trout went deep for the 2nd game in a row against the Rangers, both being 2 run shots, while scoring another run on top of that. Some people on this team can’t let the rookie have the spotlight all the time, like Albert Pujols, who hit 2 home runs in today’s game. It looks like the Angels hitters are loving Arlington right now, they’re playing like the Rangers better then the Rangers. 

• I’ll admit, I was kind of wrong about Jepsen coming into the season. I refuse to take full responsibility for what I said because Jepsen has only been so good for a short stretch of time, just a little over a month. Jepsen has made himself known for hiding his wild inconsistencies for a short time before losing is for a while. I want to think he’s gotten over his problems, but I’m going to need more time before making any official judgements on Jepsen.

• Everything Dipoto has touched this season has become gold. Isringhausen is making a legitimate set-up man in the absence of Scott Downs, the man has had himself a sub 3 ERA for the season so far. If he can step it up and move on from a sweep-up role into something more important the Angels might be able to plug the Downs injury for a while. I know it really hurts the team to lose a strong lefty pitcher out of the ‘pen, especially with our only other option being Takahashi; but if another guy can step it up in his absence, even if it is a righty, it will ease some of that pain.

Halo Hero

I love this picture. 

So much.

I just needed an excuse to throw this somewhere into the recap. Thanks for hitting those two home runs big guy