The Angels got back on track in St. Petersburg this week, earning their first series victory of the month thanks to strong performances from their starting pitching and the continued hot hitting of Albert Pujols and Mike Trout. After crumbling so spectacularly under the bright lights at Yankee Stadium over the weekend, one has to wonder if the club wasn’t relieved to play the next three in the league’s only post-apocalyptic stadium, Tropicana Field.
The Halos rotation went into the series with an earned-run average over 10.00 in the team’s last five games, but settled into a groove against the Rays and left the Sunshine State just one out away from three consecutive quality starts. (More on this later.) Outside of Trout and Pujols the offense didn’t exactly tear the cover off the ball, but they still ended up with 36 hits over the three-game set. With the worst team BABIP in baseball coming into the series, one had to imagine some of those bloops and blerps would start falling in eventually. Better now than later.
Overall, there was a heck of a lot to like about the club’s short stay in Florida. Not only did it mark the beginning of Kyle Kubitza’s big-league career, it also ushered in the return of Good Garrett Richards—thank god!—and seemingly jumpstarted the slow process of turning Mike Trout’s BABIP luck around.
The Angels now get a large spate of games with minimal travel—they don’t travel east of Texas again until August 10—which should keep them rested and, barring injuries, put them in good position to make the run everyone’s been waiting for all season. If they can’t take advantage of this 50-game stretch of their schedule, it’ll be a huge missed opportunity.
Boxscore Breakdowns
Series Takeaways
1) Scioscia Needs to Loosen His Leash on Weaver
When Jered Weaver has pitched poorly this season—a more frequent occurrence than the Angels would probably like—he’s been really, really bad. His four worst starts of the year account for nine (!!) of his AL-worst 14 home runs allowed, with all but two of those dingers coming in the first four innings. Not great.
As bad as those starts have been, though, I’m not sure they warrant the quick-hook approach Mike Scioscia has taken on nights when Weaver is pitching well. I understand the desire to pull a starter before the wheels come off, and am a firm believer in the Times Through the Order Penalty, but I feel Weaver’s track record has earned him a longer leash on good nights.
As noted above, Weaver’s trouble spots have come mostly early in games; he’s allowed a .818 OPS to the opposition in its first two turns through the order. On nights when he survives that gauntlet and has a chance to settle in, though, he really buckles down. The third time he faces a lineup, that OPS-against drops all the way to .660.
The way I see it, if Weaver can make it to that third spin through the lineup mostly unscathed, he deserves to stay in until he either erodes completely or his pitch count gets too high. No more of this pulling him at fewer than 95 pitches and/or with two outs and a runner on stuff. It’s already cost him two wins this season—thanks, bullpen!—and on Wednesday it cost him his eighth quality start of the year.
I’d sort of get it if the Angels had somebody who could come in and blow a hitter away to get that last out of the inning, but they don’t. Sure, Fernando Salas throws marginally harder than Weaver, but he’s not the one who just retired 15 of his last 18 batters faced heading into the eighth inning. If that kind of performance can’t buy Weaver some leeway on the mound, I’m not sure what will.
2) Pujols Is Still Crushing It
Holy crap, Albert Pujols. Over his last 23 games, The Machine is batting an absurd .330/.378/.736 with 11 home runs and 18 RBI. If it wasn’t for his Aybar-esque 5.1% BB rate, one might be tempted to believe he’d completely rediscovered his youth. He hasn’t, of course, but that doesn’t make his current run any less fun to watch.
The driving force behind Albert’s surge seem to be that his ground ball rate has finally stopped climbing. Into the middle of May, Albert looked to be on his way to another career-high in GB% and another career-low in ISO. Almost 50% of his balls in play were on the ground, which was causing serious BABIP issues (because shift) and pulling the rest of his numbers down. Since May 17, though, he’s hit grounders just 35% of the time, the results of which speak for themselves.
I don’t know if the huge dip in grounders is a conscious effort on the part of Pujols or just some statistical blip, but man do I sure hope it’s the former. Not only has the change in his batted-ball profile boosted his batting average by nearly 50 points, it also seems to have helped him hit the ball harder in general. Since his hot streak started, the average exit velocity on Albert’s mighty wallops has increased nearly three miles per hour to 93.30 mph, putting him on level with Jose Bautista and Paul Goldschmidt.
3) Trout’s Finally Remembered He Has Pull Power, Too
One of the many things that makes Mike Trout a great hitter is that he has power to all fields. Let’s all take a moment to marvel at his career extra-base-hit spray chart:
There are definite clusters down the left-field line (doubles) and in the left-center power alley (homers), but the almost even distribution of extra-base hits across the park is still incredible. Doesn’t matter where you throw it, he can drive it.
I bring this up because his spray chart this season has looked a little different. He’s still tallying extra bases in all parts of the ballpark, but until Thursday his pull power hadn’t really materialized:
Sure, there are a few dingers to left-center, but other than yesterday’s poke (not pictured) the only real pulled homer was one he launched into the Crawford Boxes in the second week of the season. Since then, most everything’s been launched to center or the opposite way. This isn’t a bad thing, just something of an oddity. I imagine that if pitchers keep coming inside, that more balls will start flying out toward the left-field foul pole.
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