The Angels of Anaheim have the second-best record in baseball, but they're only 3 games ahead of Seattle. The Jays can do their part to help the Mariners make the playoffs by beating up on the Angels, a team against which they've won 37 of their last 54 home games. Los Angeles will send out their two weakest starting pitchers in the first two games of this series, but those two guys have a combined record of 10-1. Thursday's pitching matchup is a must-see.
Tonight, it's 26-year-old Gustavo Chacin pitchalike Joe Saunders. Saunders has a fastball around 90, a cutter, a curve, a slider and a solid changeup, and, more importantly, some powerful intangibles which Roy Halladay will be hard-pressed to match. Saunders owns a 6-0 record in his 9 starts this year to go with a 13-3 career mark. The Angels have only lost one of his 2007 starts, and they're 18-8 in his starts all-time.
He's also fared well against the Blue Jays, pitching 15 innings in 2 starts, allowing 3 runs and coming away with a 1-0 record. Unfortunately, he has not had much success against righty hitters ever. Righties are .283/.350/.440 against Saunders over his career; lefties, .223/.273/.291.
Tomorrow, it's swingman Dustin Moseley, a native of Texarkana, Arkansas. Moseley is a 25-year-old rookie righty. With Bartolo Colon injured, Moseley has been entrusted with a spot in the Angels' rotation, where he has put up '06 Casey Janssen numbers. He pitches to contact and gets a solidly above-average quantity of ground balls.
Moseley gets most of those ground balls with his two-seam fastball, which sits around 90 mph and has pretty good movement on it. He also brings a curveball in the mid-70s, a changeup and a cutter. Curiously, his splits are backwards this year, which is probably insignificant but bodes well for this Jays team. He has never faced the Jays in his career.
Thursday, it's a fascinating pitching matchup as Kelvim Escobar takes on Dustin McGowan. Watch this game. Escobar has been as overpowering as ever. Now 31 years of age, he is enjoying the best season of his career. He has been the Angels' ace. He throws in the mid-90s with his fastball and possesses a couple of vicious out pitches in his splitter and changeup. He also has a solid slider, and last time out he froze a couple of Twins hitters with Maddux-style front-door moving fastballs. (Unlike Maddux, Esco does it at 95 miles an hour.) When Escobar's command is on he's very, very tough.
Against Escobar, Gregg Zaun is 4-8 with a homer and Ray Olmedo is 1-1 with a double. Troy Glaus is 4-24 with 8 strikeouts and 2 walks; Frank Thomas is a decent 9-32 with 5 strikeouts and 3 walks. Vernon Wells and Aaron Hill want no part of this guy.
So the Angels have the second-best record in baseball. They have to win exactly 11 of their next 46 games to make the idiot who wrote their preseason preview here at Batter's Box look like a lucky idiot. Somehow I think that's a bit farfetched. I underestimated Orlando Cabrera (which I stand by) and Chone Figgins (uh, mulligan?), and forecast pitching injuries which never materialized, except for Bartolo Colon's, which probably helps this team. I also didn't see Escobar's career year coming at all.
One of the things that worried me about this team was its lack of a productive first baseman. Casey Kotchman has identified himself as the solution to that problem. He's a very Angels first baseman - he puts the ball in play a lot and hits many doubles. Kotchman has a level swing that enables him to keep a very low strikeout rate to go with his average walk rate. Guys like that are rare and valuable, especially when they're only 24 and figure to get even stingier at the plate as they gain experience. Because Kotchman is a double-play threat, I envision him as Scott Downs' target of the week.
Catcher Mike Napoli sits on the DL with a hamstring injury. He may return sometime this series. In his absence, Jeff Mathis has been the starting catcher.
The mound at Angel Stadium of Anaheim is crumbling. It's caused some damage to the Angels' pitching staff: K-Rod suffered a slight right ankle sprain over the weekend. In Saturday's game, the grounds crew actually had to come out to put more dirt on the mound in the middle of K-Rod's first batter. (There will be no such problems in Toronto - all K-Rod gets to deal with is the one franchise that's caused more trouble for him than any other over his career.)
Free-agent haul Gary Matthews feels like he's home at last in his seventh major-league organization. He's had a solid year, with a decent offensive contribution and good centerfield defense, in the first year of his shiny new contract with the Angels. He thinks Boston fans are more vicious than their New York counterparts and had a knee-on-knee collision with Kevin Youkilis last week which has forced him into a DH role for the last few days. When he's healthy again, expect him to take center and one of the other three starting outfielders to DH. Matthews is red-blooded: "I'm not crazy about DHing. You feel like you're removed from the game and all of a sudden, boom -- you're in the game. The sooner I can get back to playing center field, the better I'll feel."
And outfielder Reggie Willits is the Angels' designated pain in the ass. He works deep counts, hits ground balls and walks out of the 9-hole, and he's an excellent baserunner to go with all that. His surprising first-half success was one of the most important factors that kept the Angels ahead of the pack in the AL. Willits has absolutely no power, and the Angels like it that way - to ensure that Willits stays intensely focused on hitting grounders and liners, Mike Scioscia makes him run a lap for every batting-practice homer he hits. (Willits hasn't homered in the majors yet.)
The Credit Section: All offensive stats, pitches per PA for pitchers and league average stats are from the Hardball Times. Pitchers' stats and leverage indices are from Fangraphs. Minor-league stats are from Minor League Splits and First Inning. K% and BB% are strikeouts and walks as a percentage of plate appearances; GB% + LD% + FB% = 100.
Tonight, it's 26-year-old Gustavo Chacin pitchalike Joe Saunders. Saunders has a fastball around 90, a cutter, a curve, a slider and a solid changeup, and, more importantly, some powerful intangibles which Roy Halladay will be hard-pressed to match. Saunders owns a 6-0 record in his 9 starts this year to go with a 13-3 career mark. The Angels have only lost one of his 2007 starts, and they're 18-8 in his starts all-time.
He's also fared well against the Blue Jays, pitching 15 innings in 2 starts, allowing 3 runs and coming away with a 1-0 record. Unfortunately, he has not had much success against righty hitters ever. Righties are .283/.350/.440 against Saunders over his career; lefties, .223/.273/.291.
Tomorrow, it's swingman Dustin Moseley, a native of Texarkana, Arkansas. Moseley is a 25-year-old rookie righty. With Bartolo Colon injured, Moseley has been entrusted with a spot in the Angels' rotation, where he has put up '06 Casey Janssen numbers. He pitches to contact and gets a solidly above-average quantity of ground balls.
Moseley gets most of those ground balls with his two-seam fastball, which sits around 90 mph and has pretty good movement on it. He also brings a curveball in the mid-70s, a changeup and a cutter. Curiously, his splits are backwards this year, which is probably insignificant but bodes well for this Jays team. He has never faced the Jays in his career.
Thursday, it's a fascinating pitching matchup as Kelvim Escobar takes on Dustin McGowan. Watch this game. Escobar has been as overpowering as ever. Now 31 years of age, he is enjoying the best season of his career. He has been the Angels' ace. He throws in the mid-90s with his fastball and possesses a couple of vicious out pitches in his splitter and changeup. He also has a solid slider, and last time out he froze a couple of Twins hitters with Maddux-style front-door moving fastballs. (Unlike Maddux, Esco does it at 95 miles an hour.) When Escobar's command is on he's very, very tough.
Against Escobar, Gregg Zaun is 4-8 with a homer and Ray Olmedo is 1-1 with a double. Troy Glaus is 4-24 with 8 strikeouts and 2 walks; Frank Thomas is a decent 9-32 with 5 strikeouts and 3 walks. Vernon Wells and Aaron Hill want no part of this guy.
So the Angels have the second-best record in baseball. They have to win exactly 11 of their next 46 games to make the idiot who wrote their preseason preview here at Batter's Box look like a lucky idiot. Somehow I think that's a bit farfetched. I underestimated Orlando Cabrera (which I stand by) and Chone Figgins (uh, mulligan?), and forecast pitching injuries which never materialized, except for Bartolo Colon's, which probably helps this team. I also didn't see Escobar's career year coming at all.
One of the things that worried me about this team was its lack of a productive first baseman. Casey Kotchman has identified himself as the solution to that problem. He's a very Angels first baseman - he puts the ball in play a lot and hits many doubles. Kotchman has a level swing that enables him to keep a very low strikeout rate to go with his average walk rate. Guys like that are rare and valuable, especially when they're only 24 and figure to get even stingier at the plate as they gain experience. Because Kotchman is a double-play threat, I envision him as Scott Downs' target of the week.
Catcher Mike Napoli sits on the DL with a hamstring injury. He may return sometime this series. In his absence, Jeff Mathis has been the starting catcher.
The mound at Angel Stadium of Anaheim is crumbling. It's caused some damage to the Angels' pitching staff: K-Rod suffered a slight right ankle sprain over the weekend. In Saturday's game, the grounds crew actually had to come out to put more dirt on the mound in the middle of K-Rod's first batter. (There will be no such problems in Toronto - all K-Rod gets to deal with is the one franchise that's caused more trouble for him than any other over his career.)
Free-agent haul Gary Matthews feels like he's home at last in his seventh major-league organization. He's had a solid year, with a decent offensive contribution and good centerfield defense, in the first year of his shiny new contract with the Angels. He thinks Boston fans are more vicious than their New York counterparts and had a knee-on-knee collision with Kevin Youkilis last week which has forced him into a DH role for the last few days. When he's healthy again, expect him to take center and one of the other three starting outfielders to DH. Matthews is red-blooded: "I'm not crazy about DHing. You feel like you're removed from the game and all of a sudden, boom -- you're in the game. The sooner I can get back to playing center field, the better I'll feel."
And outfielder Reggie Willits is the Angels' designated pain in the ass. He works deep counts, hits ground balls and walks out of the 9-hole, and he's an excellent baserunner to go with all that. His surprising first-half success was one of the most important factors that kept the Angels ahead of the pack in the AL. Willits has absolutely no power, and the Angels like it that way - to ensure that Willits stays intensely focused on hitting grounders and liners, Mike Scioscia makes him run a lap for every batting-practice homer he hits. (Willits hasn't homered in the majors yet.)
The Credit Section: All offensive stats, pitches per PA for pitchers and league average stats are from the Hardball Times. Pitchers' stats and leverage indices are from Fangraphs. Minor-league stats are from Minor League Splits and First Inning. K% and BB% are strikeouts and walks as a percentage of plate appearances; GB% + LD% + FB% = 100.
