The Angels’ playoff hopes have a faint pulse, but it is nice to see that the team isn’t just going to roll over and play dead as they took Toronto to the woodshed and inched themselves just a little bit closer in the wild card race.
With Joel Pineiro taking the mound, this easily could’ve gone south in a hurry. He’s been hit-or-miss (mostly miss) lately and a lousy performance would’ve dealt the Angels a crushing blow to their confidence. But instead, Joel, well, he failed to suck. Which turned out to be good enough because the bats came out hard to back him up. Yay for timely run support!
Now the Angels have the slightest little bit of momentum again. With the Big Three coming up in the rotation, they are set up perfectly to take the next three games to keep putting the pressure on the faltering Red Sox, and maybe even the Rangers too if they ever lose another game.
Game Notes
- Pineiro survived the outing, but I’m still not going to get excited for him. He was plenty hittable and gave up a fair number of flyballs, so he definitely isn’t all the way back. Fortunately, with him set to only make one more start this season, if he can be as good or better that one last time, the dream of winning out the season might actually come true.
- Oh so close! One more homer and Trumbo hits the magical 30-homer mark, which could be big for him for so many reasons. First off, 30 is just a nice round number. Everyone likes round numbers. Next, after 30 is 31, which is the Angel rookie record, currently owned by Tim Salmon, which is nice company to be in. And then there is something I think I saw about the Angels becoming the first team to have a rookie with 30+ homers and 30+ saves, which is novel, if anything. Finally, and most importantly, a home run total of 30 or greater is going to be awfully hard for Rookie of the Year voters to ignore and might even help them overlook his sub-.300 OBP.
- OK, I give up on the whole Garrett Richards as an effective reliever thing. I admit it, I was wrong.
- Vernon Wells continues to make the Blue Jays regret… aw, who am I kidding, they don’t regret trading him. Still, he is having a pretty nice series and even a pretty nice month with a slugging percentage just below .600.
Halo Hero
One more Trum-bomb in eight games. Can he do it?
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