Welp, that couldn’t have gone much worse. It didn’t take long for the Cubs to wipe the sheen off of baseball’s return for Angel fans, as they crushed the Angels by a combined score of 15-1 in the mini two-game series. If you hoped the Cubs would fall flat on their faces to open the season after succumbing to immense pressure and scrutiny, my friend, you’ve come to the wrong place.
All is not lost, though. It’s not time to trade Mike Trout or Fire Billy Eppler or burn Angel Stadium to the ground. We know all it’s a long season and that the race isn’t over and blah blah blah. Sure, it still would have been nice to bank two wins rather than two losses. But I think we all need to repeat the cliches to ourselves, because the season is FRIGGIN LONG. We still got a full Game of Thrones season, the entire NBA and NHL playoffs, and like eight comic book movies before we even hit the All-Star break. The 2014 Angels opened the season getting three-game swept at home against Seattle and they still went on to win 98 games. Opening week games matter but they tell us very little.
Besides, there’s no shame in losing to the best team in baseball and two of the best starting pitchers in baseball. And if you’re gonna drop your first two games, then losing to a team in the other league is the way to go. I’m as pessimistic as they come—I’m the only one on staff that didn’t pick the Angels to make the playoffs—and even I don’t really care about this series. It’s annoying, sure, but it’s much too early in the season to vent on Twitter. And if it turns out this series is a sign of things to come, well, they weren’t going to contend anyway.
Boxscore Breakdowns
Takeaways
A Rush of Blood to the Nose
Not a great start to the season for Andrew Heaney in particular. He lost the second game of the series after pissing off Gary Cole before the second inning and looking like Larry David on the mound. Then news came Wednesday afternoon that the Angels placed Heaney on the 15-day DL because of a left flexor muscle strain. The initial thought is that Heaney won’t require Tommy John surgery, but you don’t have to be a doctor to know that any injury to a pitcher’s throwing arm is bad. The best-case scenario is Heaney is back with no setbacks in a couple weeks. The worst-case scenario is the Angels are down their second-best starting pitcher for an entire season.
Just a couple months ago it felt like the Angels had significant pitching depth—nothing spectacular, but live bodies that could chip in and prevent Eppler from dipping into Triple-A and closing his eyes. Now, that depth is in question. Heaney and C.J. Wilson are out for an undetermined time frame. Jered Weaver can barely top 80 MPH with his fastball. Matt Shoemaker can’t stop allowing home runs. Fortunately, Garrett Richards‘ stuff looked lively on Monday and Tyler Skaggs will hopefully re-join the rotation soon. Nick Tropeano will take Heaney’s place for the time being and he might be the club’s third-best starting pitcher anyway. If Heaney is out for a prolonged time, though, it could be Richards, Skaggs, Trop, and pray for several days of rain.
Invasion of the Batsnatchers
Given the Cubs’ dominance with the bats in both games once the lineup turned over they probably would have won both contests regardless, but it didn’t help that the Angels’ three best hitters (Trout, Albert Pujols, Kole Calhoun) are a combined 1-for-21 this young season. I had become so used to Trout launching an Opening Day homer off a Cy Young winner that I forgot he is indeed allowed to make an occasional out. Those three will turn it around eventually, but their struggles could be symptomatic of a season-long issue: The lineup isn’t deep enough to pick up the slack if all three of these guys struggle simultaneously.
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