Series Rewind: Angels Take Series in KC, Return to .500!

An Angel series win over the Royals in which the Halos finally get back to .500.

Game 1 – Angels 7, Royals 1

Game 2 – Royals 6, Angels 3

Game 3 – Angels 7, Royals 2

Game 4 – Angels 5, Royals 4

Los Angeles Angels of AWESOMENESS

• .500 again!  This shouldn’t be exciting, but it is.  Yes, the Halos should have sailed past .500 long ago but sometimes you gotta take what you can get and for LAA, getting to .500 again is a real accomplishment.  Despite all their struggles, they now find themselves just 1.5 games behind the Rangers and A’s.  Now the next trick for them will be to get over .500 for the first time in over a month and stay there.
• On a positive note, it seems like Kevin Frandsen is going to just keep on hitting and should probably be given a legitimate shot at playing somewhere on the field on a semi-regular basis.  On a negative note, I only just now realized I have been spelling his name wrong (“Fransden” instead of “Frandsen”) until I was watching Wednesday’s game and thought it was misspelled on his jersey only to have the epiphany that maybe I am the one that can’t spell.  Good job by me.
• Jered Weaver is now the ace killer.  He outdueled Greinke today to add him to the list of top notch pitchers that he has taken out.  The Angels don’t look like they are going to have any position players voted into the All-Star Game, but Weaver sure seems like a lock and might even get the starting nod if the bullpen would quit costing him wins like they almost did this series.
• Don’t look now, but Hideki Matsui is riding a streak of three straight multi-hit games.  In fact, forget I even mentioned it because I am scared that I might have jinxed it.
• You know the Angels are going well when Maicer Izturis homers in two straight games.

Angels of FAIL

• Wow, those Memorial Day white hats were fugly.  I’ve liked the previous hats MLB has produced for the holiday weekend, but those white ones have to go.  I felt like the Angels were suddenly turned into Good Humor ice cream vendors.
• Torii Hunter was great in this series, but he did make on major misstep in the loss where he somehow was in too shallow on a flyball that wound up being a two-run triple that pretty much cost the Angels the game.  I guess Hunter deserves some slack though considering how many runs he has saved over the years.
• After another rough outing, Kevin Jepsen has very quietly been having a bad few weeks.  He just seems to be one of those guys that comes in and is either lights out or gets lit up.  I can’t see the flaw myself, but I suspect he has some sort mechanical issue that is causing him to be so inconsistent.  Hopefully he can get it ironed out soon because for a moment there I was starting to kind of feel good about the bullpen.
• Will someone please explain to me why Brian Fuentes is still the Angels closer?  No real closer gives up five homers in just 13.2 innings and no closer gives up homers to Willie freaking Bloomquist.  Scioscia needs to stop with this ridiculous notion that Fuentes is the closer because it is pretty clear by now that he isn’t even a below average middle reliever.
• Don’t let the fact that Scott Kazmir only allowed one run in his start fool you, he was not good at all.  In fact, Joel Pineiro allowed six runs in his start and was arguably better than Kaz.  Scott may have avoided major damage, but he fell back into his old habit of pitching inefficiently, making it through just 5.2 innings on 103 pitches.  He walked four batters in that span while fanning just two.  On the bright side, his ERA is finally under 6.00, so he has that going for him… and that is pretty much all he has going for him right now.

Halo Hero of the Series

We still don’t know who is going to man first base in place of Morales, but Torii Hunter is clearly stepping up to take over his production.  He had two impressive homers in this series.  The first came Wednesday on a blast that damn near cleared the bleachers in left and the second was impressive because it came against Zack Greinke, which is no small feat unto itself.  This is why Torii is the leader of the Angels.  Not only does he inspire in the clubhouse, but he takes his game to the next level at the exact right time and leads by example on the field.  He could easily have pussed out this series and missed some games to nurse his re-aggravated leg injury, but he didn’t.  He knew the team needed him and gutted out a terrific performance.