Game Rewind: Five Alive – Angels 8, Giants 1

Johnny Five is Alive!

And so is the Angels’ winning streak which now sits at five, their longest winning streak of the season.

Not only that, the Angels are making it look easy.  Their offense is on fire with a different player making big contributions every night.  Tonight it was Mike Napoli going 4-for-5 with 3 RBIs and Mighty Maicer Izturis driving in 2 runs while scoring 3.  The not normally so dynamic duo led an Angel rout of Jonathan “I Should Really Be a Reliever” Sanchez, chasing the lefty flamethrower before the end of the fourth inning.  Not too shabby for a squad that had neither Vladimir Guerrero nor Torii Hunter in the starting line-up.

With Tim Lincecum scheduled to take the bump tomorrow, the Angels best hope they can keep the offensive surge going.

Good News:

• I can’t believe nobody told Pablo Sandoval that his glove got replaced with a frying pan.  I didn’t even think it was possible for a professional first baseman to make three errors in the same game.  And this is coming from a guy who remembers the Mo Vaughn era of the Angels.
• Sosh finally found a role Vladimir can thrive in this season: pinch-hitter.  Dude is batting 1.000 off the bench.  It probably isn’t the best investment of $15 million, but it is better than having him bat fourth with a sub-.650 OPS.
• I told you Mike Napoli was starting to heat up, but did anyone believe me… well, yes.  For all of his crappy line-up choices this year, major props to Scioscia for realizing Naps was on the brink of busting through again and having him hitting fifth tonight rather than buried in the seven-hole.

Bad News:

• Maicer Izturis continues to be on fire, even going yard for the first time this year.  Good luck getting him out of the line-up now.
• If Jason Bulger wants to take over as the top set-up guy, he might want to consider throwing the occasional stike.  Just an idea.  Sleep on it maybe.
• Two strikeouts and a GIDP.  Get used to these kinds of nights from Sean Rodriguez for awhile.  As I discussed earlier today, there could be a real adjustment period for S-Rod before he is ready to be a consistently productive big league hitter.

Hero Hero:

• Sean O’Sullivan

Or should I say Sock.

One of these guys had an impressive major league debut, limiting the Giants to one run on five hits and a walk through seven innings while striking out five.  The other is the character Sock from the now defunct CW comedy Reaper.  I’ll let you figure out which one is which.  Either way, I will be calling O’Sullivan “Sock” from this day forward.  I dare say that O’Sullivan was so impressive that he not only deserves another start at some point down the line, but that he has even earned the right for the clubhouse attendant to remember to put the apostrophe on his uniform’s name patch next time.