Toronto at Los Angeles*, May 26-29
Thursday, May 26 2022 @ 01:00 PM EDT
Contributed by: Magpie
California, here we come. Who's ready to stay up late?
Though it says Los Angeles Angels on the schedule, the Jays will not be playing in the City of Angels this weekend. They won't even be playing in Los Angeles County. The Angels moved out of there almost fifty years ago. We're all off to Anaheim, in Orange County. We'll be just across the way from Disneyland. Anaheim was an agricultural community (as if the name of the county wasn't enough of a hint) until Walt Disney built his famous amusement park. I should warn you - it's a little pricier than Canada's Wonderland.
It's a franchise that has had some trouble making up their minds about just who they are. They came into existence as the Los Angeles Angels, which was fine. After all, they spent their first season at Wrigley Field in South-Central L.A. and their next four seasons as tenants in Dodger Stadium. Then they moved to Anaheim, having cheekily taken on the "California Angels" moniker. As if the Giants and Dodgers played somewhere else. But after some thirty years of that, they finally embraced the basic facts of geography and accepted that they were, in fact, the Anaheim Angels. This, I submit, was a good thing. It's a fine name, with pleasing alliteration. Even better, the team soon enough won a championship. How do you mess with that?
Mess with it they did. They took on the ungainly name "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" for a decade, and these last five years they've reverted back to their original name of Los Angeles Angels. Even though they play in a different city. In a different county.
I don't really know why the team that plays in Phoenix calls itself the Arizona Diamondbacks. Nor do I get why the team that plays in Denver calls itself the Colorado Rockies. I guess they're both pretending to represent the entire state rather than just the place where the people actually live. I mean, Arizona? - outside of Phoenix it's mostly like the moon on a hot day, all rocks and desert and rattlesnakes. I kind of understand why the team that plays in Arlington calls itself the Texas Rangers - while Arlington is itself a substantial city, it sits smack-dab in between a pair of even bigger ones in Dallas and Fort Worth. I also understand the Minnesota Twins - in the beginning, the team belonged to neither of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul but to both instead. Conveniently they played their games in Bloomington - neither Minneapolis nor St.Paul but adjacent to both. Sure, they've been playing in Minneapolis for the last forty years now, but they got off to a different kind of start and got the other identity established. But the Angels? Who change their name as often as they change their uniform designs. Who now play their games in one city while using the name of a different city? In a different county?
Up with this I will not put. It is wrong, I say. It calls for punishment, I say. And punishment there has been, I suppose. They've employed the best baseball player in the world for the last ten years or so and Mike Trout is still looking for the first post-season win of his magnificent career. His next one gets him even with Dalton Pompey. Sheesh. Well, maybe Year Twelve will be the charm.
Mike Trout has, of course, punished many pitchers over the course of his brilliant career, and few have taken more of those lumps than our own Ross Stripling. Well, maybe Felix Hernandez. Or Bartolo Colon. Or Tajuan Walker. (You will note that two of those guys are now Out of the Game entirely, and the other has fled to the National League.) After being roughed up by Trout for a couple of hits and a homer last April, our man Ross lamented to Kaitlyn McGrath that there were really just two things Stripling did well as a pitcher - unfortunately they were both things that Trout generally feasted on (as his career mark vs Stripling of .700/.727/1.700 with 3 HRs in 10 ABs might suggest.) Stripling did note that you can have success against him working up in the zone with high 90s heat, something of no use to him whatsoever. "But I throw 91!" was his plaintive cry. Trout is 3-9 with a homer against Kikuchi, 3-5 (all singles) against Berrios - and 0-10 with 4 Ks against the unfrightening offerings of Hyun-Jin Ryu. No one in the galaxy, from here to eternity, has faced Trout so many times without allowing a hit. Or even a walk. Trout's line against Ryu is a positively pristine .000/.000/.000, so tonight should be interesting for that matchup alone.
Trout's lost quite a few games to injury these last few years, and he doesn't steal bases anymore, but otherwise he's the same awesome offensive force he's always been, proceeding from a baseline of .300/.400/.600 and building from there. Shohei Ohtani isn't having quite the same type of historic performance that earned him last year's MVP, but all that's really different is that he hasn't had the same home run stroke, being on pace to hit only - only - about 30 of them this season. He's on the hill tonight, and that part of his game has actually been slightly better than it was last season, when he went 9-2, 3.18. The Angels have made the brave (because no one else does it) decision to go with a six-man starting rotation. This was prompted by the unusual nature of Ohtani's double duty as a pitcher and a hitter and the assumed fragility of Noah Syndergaard. The mighty Thor had managed to work just two (that's a-one,and a-two) innings since 2019. Nevertheless, it's a pretty good time to be a Viking. They were the subject of a surprisingly entertaining television show (well, I was surprised, I didn't think much of The Tudors which was Michael Hirst's previous project.) And of course the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made too many films to count by now that feature their 1960s remodel (lose the beard, lose the red hair) of the old Norse thunderer.
We won't see Syndergaard or the rookie Reid Detmers this weekend. We should see Chase Silseth, who is another 22 year old rookie. Silseth was promoted when Jose Suarez was weighed in the balance and found to be wanting something, mainly some kind of an idea of where home plate was located. Silseth blanked the toothless A's on a single hit in his MLB debut - those same A's beat him in the rematch, and he'll make MLB start number three this weekend. Both Silseth and southpaw Patrick Sandoval were 11th round draft picks, which is not normally the best indicator that one is Bound For Glory. But here they are. Sandoval was drafted by Houston back in 2015 and worked his way up through many stops at many minor league levels. Chase Silseth is here in The Show exactly 11 months after being drafted. In the 11th round. This is unusual, I believe. Silseth worked just 5.1 IP last season, so this is really his first year as a professional. After being drafted in the 11th round. (Yes, I'm having a lot of trouble getting my head around this, folks. But look - he was the 321st player chosen in June 2021 and he's the first and only one to have appeared in the majors. Come on, that's just wild.). Silseth got here by tearing apart AA Rocket City in his five starts earlier this season. And by Suarez being bad.
The Angels other starter this weekend is Michael Lorenzen, and he's a story. Lorenzen was an outfielder-relief pitcher in college. He was drafted by the Reds in 2013 and he spent nine years in the Cincinnati organization, almost all of them as a relief pitcher. They did make him into a starter back in 2014, and he made it to the majors in 2015 - but he went 4-9, 5.40 and it was basically back to the bullpen for the rest of his days in Ohio. The Reds had used him occasionally - like a few times a year - as a pinch hitter in those first few seasons, but in 2018 his bat attracted a bit more attention. He hit .290/.333/.710 (yes, he slugged .710) with 4 HR (2 as a pitcher, two as a pinch-hitter.) He even made his major league outfield debut in the outfield that August, finishing a game in RF. So the Reds decided that in 2019 he would become a pitcher-outfielder. He pitched in 73 games, and played the outfield in 29 and while the pitching part went well, he didn't hit much at all. As a hitter, Lorenzen does seem to have real power but there do appear to be some pretty gaping holes in his swing, and he's probably past the point of being able to address these issues.
After six solid seasons in the Cincinnati bullpen (19-14, 3.65 in 268 games, all but five in relief, with an ERA+ of 123) Lorenzen signed with the Angels as a free agent last November. They put him in the rotation and left him alone and it's going rather nicely so far.
So the Angels are puttering along, playing .600 ball. That's only good enough for second place in the AL West, but it will surely get Mike Trout some October baseball. The pitching has been pretty good, mainly thanks to that six-man rotation (the bullpen is nothing to write anywhere about) and they have the best offense in the American League, despite the pitcher's park they call home and despite the two black holes in their lineup who comprise their double-play combination. Fans of the bunt should be in for a good weekend, as Joe Maddon bunts more often than any other manager in the American League. Of course there's not much else you can do with those two non-hitters in the middle of his infield. Anthony Rendon, who like Trout lost most of 2021 to injury, has shaken off a slow start and begun to look much more like himself in recent weeks. As noted, Ohtani has been perfectly fine. So too have first baseman Jared Walsh and left fielder Brandon Marsh. Mike Trout has merely been Trout-like - you know, freaking awesome (.319/.425/.674) and right fielder Taylor Ward has somehow been even better than Trout, although a neck stinger after crashing into the wall against Oakland last Friday has had him on the shelf all week. He's having issues with his shoulder and hasn't been cleared to play in the field although he is available to hit.
The Angels may have finally assembled a good team. There may be a sticky wicket, or two, or several, upcoming.
Matchups
Thu 26 May - Ryu (1-0, 6.00) vs Ohtani (3-2, 2.82)
Fri 27 May - Manoah (5-1, 1.62) vs Silseth (1-1, 2.61)
Sat 28 May - Kikuchi (2-1, 3.47) vs Lorenzen (5-2, 3.05)
Sun 29 May - Berrios (3-2, 4.75) vs Sandoval (3-1, 1.79)
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