Monday, September 20, 2004
Angels Continue to Flap Their Wings--And Miss
Speaking of losing, I have had just about enough of my beloved Angel team. The only thing worse than hanging Kelvim Escobar out to dry AGAIN on Saturday with zero runs of support was to do the exact same thing the following day to Jarrod Washburn. If the Angels can't hit pitchers like Texas' Erasmo Ramirez and Seattle's Bobby Madritsch who shut down the Angels last week, they're not going to make the playoffs. Espn.com doesn't even have pictures of these scrubs on file! Just for the sake of argument, let's say Oakland takes their traditional October choke a month early and Anaheim does make the playoffs. Do they really expect to do much better against Curt Schilling and Johan Santana?
The entire Halo batting order should be listed as day-to-day. They'll explode for 15 hits and 9 runs one night and go ice cold for 6 hits and 0 runs the following night. Despite having one of the most potent offenses in baseball and being 3rd in the American League in runs, their starting pitchers know they may need to throw a shutout to get a win these days. Kelvim Escobar will tell you that sometimes that's not even enough having shutout the Brewers for 8 innings only to watch the team lose 1-0 in the 14th back on June 8th. When the Halo hitters are on an off-night, it's like watching me try to hit anything faster than 60 mph at the batting cages; they just flail about and don't appear to have any chance of making solid contact. As much as I love what Jose Guillen has done for the team this year, at this point, I could strike him out. He can't lay off the outside breaking ball and anytime he gets two strikes on him, everyone in the stadium knows it's coming.
The Angels might be leading the AL in batting average (.285), but they're gaining the reputation of a team that doesn't take a walk. They're dead last in walks (404) and tenth in walks/strikeout (0.47). The frustrating part is, these statistics are very similar to those of the 2002 season when the Angels won the World Series. It's obvious they can hit and hit very well, but why can they not seem to do it consistently over a 3-game span? To put it simply, the Angels offense is crumbling under the pressure. Their margin for error is decreasing at a much faster rate than their number of games back in the standings. The batters know it and they're pressing. The team is trying too hard, especially at home where they don't want to let down the greatest Angels fan turnout in franchise history. The Angels have exactly the same number of wins at home as they do on the road (42). The five other contending AL teams are on average 10 games better at home. Once again, I call on Mike Scioscia to step in and get this team back on the right track. Maybe they need a team meeting, maybe they need extra batting practice, or maybe they need a team pancake breakfast, but whatever it takes, Scioscia has got to get his players to stop sweating under the pressure and start putting that pressure on the opposing defense.
The time for throwing up our hands and saying "we'll get 'em next time" has passed. This is the time to separate the men from the boys and right now the Angels appear to be stuck in offensive puberty.
# posted by j.h.k. @ 1:04 PM 
