Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (25-25) @ Toronto Blue Jays (30-24)
Starters: LAA – Jered Weaver (4-2, 2.36 ERA) TOR – Casey Janssen (1-1, 4.15 ERA)
Game Info: 4:07 PM PT TV-Fox Sports West, Radio-KLAA 830 AM, KFWB, KWKW 1330 AM
Thanks to Roy Halladay and the Angels new hitting approach of staring at fastballs, the Halos now stand on the precipice of falling under .500 for the first time since May 7th.
Though ultimately the .500 mark is an entirely arbitrary benchmark, the symbolism of falling below it is tough to handle. Once you are under .500 you are a LOSING team. Just a day ago the Angels were a WINNING team, but that won’t matter if they come up short tonight. Being a loser is a mindset. Once you believe you are a loser, you then expect to lose which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’ll start doing loser-like things such as striking out looking (8 TIMES!!!!!), overrunning flyballs or getting doubled off on a lazy flyball because you forgot how many out there were.
I’m sorry, what? You say that all happened last night? D’oh!!!!!!!!!!!
The Angels are clearly already teetering on the brink of accepting their loser-dom, let’s hope they wake up and get back to being WINNERS tonight.
Questions of the Night:
- Can Jered Weaver stem the tide? He has been one of the best pitchers in baseball this year, especially of late. If he wants to really prove he is an ace, putting the team on his back when they are down in the dumps is one way to prove it.
- Is Mike Scioscia actively trying not to score runs? Mike Napoli is sitting tonight as is Torii Hunter. Sitting your top two leaders in OPS on the season in the same game is never not a good idea. Why not just bench Abreu for Willits, Morales for Quinlan and Guerrero for Kendrick while your at it?
- Will the Angels be facing the Casey Janssen of 2006? You may not remember this, but Janssen owned the Angels back in 2006 allowing zero runs and just three hits over 15.1 innings in two starts. Since then, Janssen has faced the Angels on three separate occassions as a reliever, allowing just one run. I don’t see this ending well for the Halos.
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