After coming out of the All-Star break red hot and looking nearly unstoppable the Angels have continued their bi-polar act of looking amazing one day and looking like a little league team of rejects the next. A multitude of errors mixed with an inability to hit the ball led to the Angels dropping the final game of the series and missing a crucial sweep to start the 2nd half. One of the bigger disappointments so far has been Jerome Willams, going from stellar fifth starter to someone not worthy of taking Joe Blantons spot in the rotation.
Despite a horribly weak showing tonight the Angels are still coming off a strong start to the second half, taking 2 of 3 from their division rivals in Oakland. While they might be 10 games back now if they keep winning series, especially with the next few up against contenders in front of them; the Angels can chip a lot of that lead if they keep winning series like this.
Great series, terrible last game. As long as they keep winning in bulk you'll have to take what you can get.
Game Notes
— Bartolo Colon continues to dominate against the Angels, as usual, leaving them with only 4 hits in a CG shutout on his part. While it is rather strange that a man of his…uhhh…..proportions, to be so dominate in such a competitive environment. He does have a track record with PED's, one that is supposedly continuing, but this isn't about smearing him. He went out and completely handcuffed the Angels today, and that's saying a lot on his part after the Angels bats have been hitting hard the past couple days. While the Angels haven't been overloading the scoreboards they've been getting the runs when they count. The Angels have been struggling to hit .500, but with the Twins coming up the Angels might be able to hit that mark with a sweep before the A's come back around to rough up the Angels before the Rangers show up. A Minnesota sweep is crucial at this point, if they can gain the momentum they can come away with a better spot in the standings then we might have thought.
— While Jerome Williams was only able to hold up for 5 innings a lot of the pressure on him was due to inefficient fielding and lucky hits. Luck is a big game in baseball, so he isn't totally off the hook cause of some bad luck bloopers, but Aybar's inefficiencies at backing up his pitcher was definitely a shot to the knee for Williams. He's been incredibly inefficient lately and despite Garrett Richards rough season I think it's about time to shift Williams back to the bullpen to give the kid some work in. In all fairness he should have had a much larger role had Dipoto not dropped the ball with Blanton, regardless of this Richards still needs to get stretched out. I figure by next year he'll have a more secure spot in the rotation, getting him going again would be very beneficial to the future of the Angels rotation. Jerome and Blanton had their fun in the 1st half, now it's time for Richards to get a shot at it.
— How shocked would you be if I told you Iannetta collected more hits than anybody today? What if I told you the rest of the lineup combined equaled the numbers of hits he had? That number is 2 by the way. Two hits. Yeah, it was one of those games.
Halo A-hole
I always like to say "once an Angel, always an Angel". This is just a cheap excuse to throw the 'Tolo up there today. I am not surprised he threw such a great game, he pitched his ass off. Then again when you have that much ass to pitch off why aren't you throwing CG shutouts as often as possible?
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