Well, the Angels didn’t have their momentum ground to a halt by the All-Star break, no they waited a bit to have that happen in the form of a sweep at the hand of their new mortal foes, the Houston Astros. All that work the Angels did to catch the ‘Stros got swept right into the right field bleachers with that Castro home run ball. Between this sweep and the massive trades that Houston pulled off, the Astros have firmly established themselves as the team to beat in the AL West. That doesn’t mean they are unbeatable, but the scales are tipped in their favor now.
Boxscore Breakdowns
Series Takeaways
1) Mike Trout is important
Not to take away from the Astros, but let’s not forget that Mike Trout didn’t play in two of these games and likely wasn’t 100% healthy for the game he did play in. His presence might not have made the difference, but you never really know. At the very least, Trout’s injury allows us all to employ a little bit of cognitive dissonance and write this series off a bit to the ol’ “yeah, but the Angels didn’t have Trout” excuse.
2) The Astros aren’t going away
The wonderful Astros blogger @AstrosCounty does a bit on Twitter he calls “the thing” in which he basically RTs a bunch of fans of the opposing team that can’t believe their team lost to the “lowly Astros.” The Astros clearly aren’t lowly anymore. There was a lot of thought not all that long ago that the Angels would win the AL West because Houston would eventually play like the average to below average team that everyone thought they were coming into the season. This sweep and the big trades they made sufficiently prove that this isn’t an overachieving Astros squad. They have been playing to their true talent level and their true talent level just got a whole lot better.
3) The Angels rotation is really confusing right now
It is hard to tell who is coming and going in the rotation right now. C.J. Wilson has been lousy in the second half. Garrett Richards vacillates between dominant and underwhelming. Matt Shoemaker is suddenly spectacular. The regression dragons appear to be stalking Hector Santiago and, to a lesser extent, Andrew Heaney. And now they’ve got Jered Weaver just about ready to finally return and make it all even more confusing. The rotation is still the backbone of this team, but with all the weirdness that is going on with it right now, I’m deeply concerned that the Weaver situation is going to cause a big disruption one way or the other and ruin an otherwise good thing.
Or not. Who knows? Like I said, it is really confusing.
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